marketing school

What is school marketing?

To some, marketing may sound like a corporate term that doesn’t apply to a school. While we can all recognize how a school is very different from a big consumer brand, most marketing principles can and have been applied successfully to schools. We have tried in as few words as possible to explain what marketing is for schools and how they should approach it.

Every school provides a service (education), has customers (students and their parents), has competitors (similar schools) and operates within a market (student).

While it may seem a bit crude to see education as a product and the learner as a customer, marketing would probably help most schools better understand the environment in which they operate and more clearly define their identity (or ‘brand’). ). The benefit of marketing for schools, as it is for all businesses, is recognizing the factors that influence them, understanding those factors, and using this information to plan for future success. School Marketing Plan A marketing plan is usually created in three stages: goals, strategies, and tactics. Objectives have the longest time frame (typically 1-5 years) and are the company’s key market ambitions. Strategies have a medium time frame and contribute to achieving a particular goal, while Tactics have a shorter time frame, are the most adaptive and facilitate strategy. Marketing objectives should be agreed upon in accordance with admissions, fundraising and development plans.

Who in the school does marketing?

We find that the job roles of people within schools vary, much depending on the size of the school, whether it is state or private, and also on the need for expansion or prevention of falling numbers. Marketing is most commonly done, as you might expect, by the chief marketing officer, but it also falls under the purview of principals, deputy principals, administrators, and class teachers; roughly in that order.

School Marketing Levels

We propose that there are three different levels:

1. Research-level marketing: environmental analysis, competitor research, customer research

2. Brand-level marketing: vision, mission statement, brand identity, logo elements

3. Communication-level marketing: logo design, uniform style/colors, school website, school brochure, signage, livery (such as vehicles), stationery, etc.

One element that is not included is the name of the school, as it is not typically decided in the same way as other marketing/identity decisions for the school. Those responsible for creating a new school or rebranding/marketing an existing school will need to make decisions regarding all of the separate elements listed above and will likely work chronologically through categories one, two, and three (as the bullet points ).