Making a marketing plan for a private school or college can feel like a daunting task. You might face many stakeholders with little marketing knowledge, incomplete customer data, and complex programs to promote. On top of these difficulties, there are a few pitfalls that await you.
Many schools plans look only at their primary audience – as it is common for most marketing plans for other industries. For example, a higher-education school might address only prospective students in its plan, or a primary school might address only prospective parents.
However, choosing a school involves a number of decision makers and influencers There is no standard answer on who has the most influence: it can be parents, students or even school counselors. Depending on culture, student’s maturity and individual family habits, the respective roles of each stakeholder can vary greatly. One thing is sure, though: you can’t afford to ignore them.
Marketing plans tend to look at the next 12 months, in line with the fiscal year.
However, school decisions processes can be much longer: 14 to 18 months for example for a Bachelor degree.
Existing schools can have a strong brand awareness that is further reinforced for those that are present in worldwide rankings. The tendency is then to focus on selling your program’s key strengths, taking for granted that the target audience is aware (and already loves) your school.
However, although awareness about your school can be strong with employers, with the industry you serve and with students and alumni from similar schools, it is often not the case for your prospective students, especially if they are younger, and for their parents, especially if they don’t work in the industry you serve.
If you don’t build sufficient awareness for your institution, prospective parents and students will rely mostly on tertiary sources and word of mouth to choose between schools, and you will lose an opportunity to influence their perception.
Most school marketing plans will address their direct competitors. For example, a business school will look at gaining share from other business schools in its geography.
However, a student decision process is much more complex than choosing between two similar schools. He/she might hesitate between business school and hospitality management – both serving the same industries in different ways. Or, it can be a choice on studying for a Master at a university versus taking a range of online certificates.
If you ignore adjacent markets, you risk being blindsided by new entrants and overinvesting your resources fighting your traditional competitive set.
Today’s world is overloaded with sources of information and interactions, especially with teenagers. It can be overwhelming for a school marketing team. To address this difficulty, some schools decide to spread their marketing efforts across as many channels as possible, in an attempt to be everywhere their audience is. The risk with this approach is to dilute resources and impact - especially when it comes to paid channel - and to annoy your audience by being present in places they don’t expect you to be.
Most school marketing plans focus on advertising strategies to grow their revenues.
Given the length of the decision process, it often leads to bombarding the target audience with repetitive messages such as “apply now”, “last seats”, “discover our program”, as marketing teams run out of things to say about the school’s program.
Look out for these pitfalls as you are developing or reviewing your school marketing plan. This will give you an edge over most institutions that rely on the traditional marketing strategies applied in other industries. A few parting thoughts: In addition to a strong customer-centric mindset, ensure that you have at your disposal content marketing and customer journey design expertise applied to education. It is worth getting external help from industry practitioners. Finally, investing in a solid CRM/CMS platform will provide you with some of the insights you need to make your marketing plan truly customer-centric.