The Value of Marketing in Schools

Marketing is an ill-understood field, often confused with sales or PR. Staff may see marketing in schools simply as adverts and making things look pretty. The reality is that they can – and should – of course, be so much more than that.

In this article, we look at ensuring those responsible for marketing in schools have the tools and the voice that they need to contribute fully to the school.

It is perhaps useful to start by looking at what marketing really is.

The Chartered Institute’s (CIM) definition is:

“… the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably”.

So a key management discipline.  One that ensures your school or educational provider can interpret target families’ desires and match, or exceed them.  This involves the marketing mix, historically broken down into the 4 P’s.  There is plenty of argument nowadays around whether there are 7 but we’ll leave that discussion for another day.  For now, 4 covers the basics!

The 4 main ones are Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

A successful marketing department will be involved in decision-making in all these areas within a school. They will deliver real value in each, but in reality, their involvement varies hugely from school to school. It will come as no surprise to my marketing colleagues that those schools doing this best have a marketing role within their Senior Leadership Team. This ensures their voices can really be heard.

Some things to consider…

• Do you regularly check you are delivering the product that people want? If not, talk to your marketing team and think about ways you can do this. There are some excellent examples in the sector of schools regularly checking what their families think they should be providing, from parent satisfaction surveys to larger research projects. We were proud to be involved in the Future Fwd research project with Warwick Schools Foundation, which looked at exactly this.

• How do you set your fees? Do you simply look at your competitors’ fees and set the same increase? If so, please do sign up for our webinar on Fee Elasticity and bring your Head of Marketing along with you.

• Do you ensure that marketing has representation on your Senior Leadership Team and if not, how can you address this so that marketing can deliver its full value to your organisation?

Budget cuts

With a recession looming, the cost-of-living crisis and political bombs coming down the line, everyone is looking to cut costs and schools are no exception.

Marketing on the whole drives long-term revenue and it is often tempting to cut back on those areas that won’t deliver immediate results. Especially in terms of marketing in schools which traditionally we have not viewed as requiring the same commercial activity as other sectors. But those days are long gone, and as the adage goes:

“If sales is your problem today, marketing was your problem 12 months ago”

…and all you are doing is kicking the problem further down the line.

Add to this the fact that numerous studies, going back to the 1980s and beyond, have shown that those brands that invest in their marketing during a recession traditionally perform better, even three years later, than those that reduced it. Many forms of advertising direct mail, for example, have better results during a recession and can yield great short-term results.

Future trends

The CIM has also identified some distinct trends for the future. Marketers are now placing renewed emphasis on the collection, analysis and use of more (and better) marketing information. The data available to marketing departments in schools now also offers incredible opportunities to reach prospective families in a targeted way.

Secondly, we are attaching more importance to measuring and monitoring performance and developing more sophisticated tools to do the job as part of the general drive to be more accountable. “Big data”, analytics and measurement are rightly playing ever greater roles in marketing strategy.

If you would like to learn more about how your school can stay ahead of the curve, do get in touch by calling us at 01502 722787 or by emailing Dan.