SHOWING OFF YOUR SCHOOL IS A MULTI-CHANNEL AFFAIR

Long gone are the days of focusing on your website to do the hard selling work in the hope that it alone will encourage your parents onto the school campus. Promptly followed by them signing on the dotted line and committing 1000's upon 1000’s of their well earned money to your school for the pleasure of educating their bundle of joy.

Channels and humans (or parents as we like to call them) have become far more complicated and varied, evolving far beyond our hopes that a simple website and a visit will seal the deal.

Parents need to be nurtured and reminded every step of their journey before they finally part with their cash (and even after that they want incredible experiences that reassure them the investment they made in your school was a winner!).

There is even an old 1930’s marketing rule (yep that long ago) developed in the movie industry that suggests a “customer” needs to have seven touch points with your brand before they take action. So if you take into account your website and a tour of the school, that's only two potential touch points. Where on earth could these other five come from? Don't worry, in a few short paragraphs I'll reveal all!

Another way to look at this is when we say “widening the funnel”. This suggests the more people you make aware of your brand, the higher the chance that some will end up being paying customers. It’s simple maths really - and trust me it is simple... (because I never did very well in Maths!).

FINDING YOUR SEVEN POINTS

In a previous blog I wrote about the on-site experience of a prospective parent. But, as we have established, that is only one potential area to share your message with your parents! It's time to take a step back (heck let's take ten) and look at the full journey and the incredible opportunities to bake your brand message into every one of them!

A great place to start would be something like the touchpoint diagram below, which starts to highlight how many incredible opportunities you have to interact with your parents.

Now I appreciate this typical diagram is more aligned with a brand that offers physical products but it doesn't take too much of a stretch of imagination to see how this can be applied to the school market!

If you ignore all of the lovely circles and focus on the core stages, we can do a quick conversion of titles that look a little like this...

Awareness becomes Attract - the opportunity to grab the attention of your prospective parents.
Consideration becomes Inspire - when you give your parents all the great brand messages that they cannot resist!
Purchase becomes Nurture - as your parents step foot across the campus this is where the magic happens!
Service becomes Convert - where you finally seal the deal.
Loyalty becomes Retention - now your prospective parent is an existing parent and your messages need to evolve to keep them as one!

Now we have five areas that we can focus on, so let's take one and look at an example of how we can bake that brand right in there!

“ATTRACT PHASE. I CHOOSE YOU!”

Ok, it's lazy of me, but I've picked the very top of the funnel to show how you can really tell your brand story - but this approach works at every stage. So take these principles and run like the wind!

Here, at the ‘Attract phase’, we are at the top of the funnel, and this is where you need to put the effort in to get as many lovely parents to know about your school as possible.

So what are our options here…

Radio/TV adverts
Outdoor print
Mail drops
Word of mouth
Email
Online adverts

Wow six potential touch points for those prospective parents of yours, and we haven't even got into the ‘Inspire’ phase. AMAZING!

Now let's apply our brand messaging to one of these, go on you pick one…. any one, I’ll wait….. sorry I can't hear you. Fine, it looks like I’ll have to pick then...

So I have selected a mail drop as one way to attract prospective parents to my school (old school, I know!). Now let's take some example brand messages that we might want to bake into this mail-out (and, yes, I know these will sound familiar, but I've decided to pick the most generic messages out there. I’m hoping your messages will be far more personal to your school. If not get back and read my other blogs!) …

An inclusive community, where all are welcome!
An unrivalled co-curricular provision allowing every student to find their passion.
Incredible facilities that other schools cannot compete with.

Beyond just sticking these as bullet points on an A5 flyer, how can we bring these to life and show your brand messaging in action in your mail-out? Let's break it down…

An inclusive community, where all are welcome!

When I distil this down, we are looking at a community of individuals, so let's focus on that. Instead of a predictable picture of various students looking happy, why don't we find a way to combine lots of individual shots, almost like a puzzle?

Each piece reflecting the individual, but combined reflects this whole school community - see what I did there?

What's more, if we actually made a simple puzzle, this could be sent at various points to your parents as a campaign that builds interest leading to the final call-to-action to visit the school.

Ok, cool, now we are cooking - or should I say, baking! Let's take this puzzle one step further and work in our next brand message about…

An unrivalled co-curricular provision allowing every student to find their passion

Now, we could just flip the puzzle over and list all of the cool opportunities students can get at school, but, again, it's so much more exciting to show it.

So let's consider this when capturing shots of the students for the puzzle. Let's make sure we show diversity through costumes and props. There's hundreds to pick from, from various sporting masks and uniforms to performing arts, to the normal school uniform. You could even work in a well-known alumni! For bonus points, you could even add a little social handle or branded hashtag that users can look up and follow along with the related stories.

Blimey, this is getting exciting! (I’m a bit worried I'm sharing this great idea with you now!)

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound - let's get the facilities in there...

Incredible facilities that other schools cannot compete with

Much like the idea of the co-curricular provision, it's far better to show than tell. We have considered the front of this awesome puzzle mail-out, but still have a back to play with, so why not leverage the other side of each puzzle piece to show off a facility, something that relates to the community member you have met on the front.

Imagine if one of the puzzle pieces was an alumnae who's an Olympic swimmer, flip it over and there is a shot of your school's swimming pool and a caption mentioning where that community member’s story began.

An irresistible call to action

You’ve put in all this effort to bake your brand into one new incredible touch point, let's seal it with a metaphorical bow. This bow is going to reach out and ensure that the recipient has no choice but to get in touch with your school.

We need to think of a great call-to-action, something that inspires and motivates your audience over the finish line. So why don't we avoid sending the last puzzle piece to them, and tell the recipient on the second to last piece, “the only piece missing is you!”. This would then lead the recipient to an online contact form to sign-up for a visit, and when they have completed their tour you pop that magical last piece of the puzzle in their hand!

MIC DROP!

One awesome branded, unique, tailored experience to knock your parents socks off.

Now imagine if you applied this same process to every step of your stakeholder’s journey (you need six more by my count!). What incredible experiences would they have that would “seal the deal,” and if the idea of doing this six more times sounds exhausting ….. you can drop me a message and I can do it for you!

BEYOND THE LOGO: Applying Your Brand Across A Full Customer Journey