Felsted School Case Study

Sophy Aitken, Head of Marketing at Felsted School, contacted MTM looking for support in understanding her market. She was looking to launch some new marketing campaigns but wanted to understand her market better and focus her investment accordingly. Sophy and her team wanted to understand:

• Where current families were travelling from
• How that compares with previous years
• Where they could find more families
• Their lifestyles & values

Using their Market Area Catchment Intelligence (MACI), MTM were able to provide specific data, including finding “lookalike” families from which Felsted could target their campaigns and base their future strategy around. In this case study, Sophy explains her rationale:

“We asked MTM to conduct a postcode analysis in order for us to understand our regional marketplace better. This included an analysis of our current, former and prospective parents. MTM were able to analyse data from our different databases and overlay this with information gained from their own research into the independent sector and their own mosaic consumer database. Our data was then analysed according to the location of our competitor schools to understand how well we were penetrating our market.

Whilst we had a ‘gut feel’ as to what to expect, the results confirmed our thoughts and gave us the detailed market research we needed to convince senior management and governors to invest in launching several targeted marketing campaigns. We were able to use direct mail and outdoor advertising (using the postcodes provided) to specifically target markets where we had potential to penetrate further and so far, the results are encouraging.

“I would highly recommend commissioning this type of research on a regular basis to keep in touch with your potential market and consumer profiles.”

MTM are extremely professional in their approach and methodology and will provide real value to your marketing strategy. Using research experts such as this provided us with the real facts on which to base our marketing campaigns, which have recently been shortlisted for a TES Best Marketing Campaign Award.”

Sophy Aitken, Head of Marketing, Felsted School

Attracting more families

If you’re looking to attract more families to your school, our unique Market and Catchment Intelligence (MACI) is a necessity. At MTM, we strongly believe that research powers everything and whilst you may have a feel as to where your market is located, until you look at the research it is highly unlikely that you’ll know exactly where your potential is. If you’re investing in marketing your school, the MACI will give you all the information you need to target your marketing effectively, ensuring that you receive return on your investment and achieve your pupil recruitment objectives. All we need from you is a set of postcodes and you’ll receive:

• A clear insight into your school’s real potential market – now and in the future

• The location and number of children within your catchment area, who could access independent education

• Details of your market share at a postcode sector level, as well as those of your competitors, including any recent changes

• Information on where to find your prospective pupils at postcode sector level including information on what lifestyles they lead, their household income and how far they travel to school

• Specific information not only to target your prospective parents them, but also to refine your messaging (according to their priorities), ultimately converting more of them to joiners

• Information on pupils’ characteristics, the size of the available market, population projections over the next 10 years and the location and density of families from which you should recruit

• The option to expand by carrying our detailed competitor, transport, alumni and bursary analysis as part of the study

Contact James on 01502 722787, or email james@mtmconsulting.co.uk to find out more.