BEYOND THE LOGO: Pulling Off a Stakeholder Heist with Brand Strategy!
Hey, come on in! Watch out for Jimmy the Snake there - he's a slippery character. I just wanted to initiate you as the newest recruit of the School Brand Bandits! From that scar on your face, I can see you're going to fit right in.
I have gathered all of you brand bandits together to propose the biggest stakeholder heist ever. But, before we go in "all newsletters blazing," we need a plan, so let's get to work on our brand strategy.
What is a brand strategy?
In short, it's an incredibly smart way to communicate your school's core values with the right people in the right way. It has all the critical elements you need to "find your mark" and pull off your prospective heist with pinpoint accuracy.
Why do I need one?
Any successful heist starts with research and a plan in place. You need short, medium, and long-term targets to aim for. How else can you understand your school's brand and your audiences' needs? Powerful stories that resonate with stakeholders don't write themselves after all!
So, let's get to work defining your school brand and its objectives. Jimmy, pass me those blueprints!
If you have been following my brand-based ramblings, you should already know your school's brand strengths. But, just to be sure, let's do a quick house check to make sure everything is in order.
What is your school's brand story?
Do you know what your school stands for and what its key strengths are in your marketplace?
What promises are you making to your stakeholders?
What are the key differentiators you need to uphold?
What personality (brand character) are you conveying through your communications with your stakeholders, and how do you want them to feel when you reach out to them?
What level of emotional engagement are you looking for from your stakeholders? Do you want them to fall head over heels in love with your school or just know you're there?
What problems are you solving for your stakeholders, and how?
Do you know what your competitors are doing and saying? Are you treading on the toes on any of them?
Once you have been able to jot these points down, it's time to identify our targets, so let's get stuck into a bit of recon!
Stakeholder Research
I see that confident gleam in your eye. The one that says you know your school's brand inside and out. Maybe so, but what about your stakeholders? Not just parents, but alumni, inspectors, prospective teachers, and everyone in between? Maybe not. So let's put the effort in to do some research and understand your audiences.
First things first, let's break this down into what you will need to do to understand them.
STEP ONE: Identify the audiences that play a part in your school community
STEP TWO: Select your audience in relation to your project goals
STEP THREE: Pick how best to communicate with that group
So, here we go. Let's work out who on earth these people are.
Gather your team together and brainstorm an exhaustive list of stakeholders. Think parents, students, teachers, leadership teams, alumni, etc.
Once you have a "big ol' list," it's time to leverage information from Google Analytics, school questionnaires, and focus groups. Take that intel and create a series of personas that list the essential information about each stakeholder. Bonus: There may be more than one persona in each stakeholder group. That is, prospective parents might be split into day and boarding, or prep and senior!
When creating your personas, try to gather as much detail as possible as this will make the final personas more relevant and believable. Try to include the following information:
Age
Nationality
Language barriers
Location
Age of children
What motivates them (This should be tied to your own school strengths!)
What frustrates them
What would they want to do with your "product"?
What products do they use?
What companies do they relate to
What social channels are they active in
Accessibility considerations, which might impact their own experience with the school
Then pop this all in a lovely little document complete with an image that encapsulates that persona, and put a tick in the box for this task!
Right then, the next step is to pick our target (I mean key audiences!).
Take some time to reflect on the heist you are about to undertake, and think about the key stakeholder groups that you will need to focus on to achieve your goals.
Leverage something like a Power/Interest grid to determine focus areas and stakeholder groups needing attention. A couple of examples:
If your project is the creation of a new website to increase enquiries, your prospective parent stakeholders are essential. But, prospective pupils of a certain age may also need to be kept satisfied as they can influence the final school choice.
Equally, if you're using your website to recruit staff, then your prospective teacher stakeholders should be your focus.
Now, let's get the message across to your audiences!
I must say, team, this plan is coming together. The guys and gals from “Ocean’s Eleven” have nothing on us! We know which stakeholders we are targeting. We know the right messages to engage them. The final piece of the puzzle is getting the message across.
It would be naive of us to think that we can use the same channel to appeal to every stakeholder group. For example, sixth-form students might love seeing your messages on TikTok. Meanwhile, their grandparents, who may be helping pay tuition, might end up staring at their clocks wondering what's going on!
To help work out what channels and messages are going to work best with each audience, we need to take our personas and imagine we are sat face to face with them. Or, even better, you have embodied this persona, and you can imagine them interacting with your school.
Ask what would motivate this persona or stakeholder group. For a prospective parent, it might be giving their child opportunities they never had. A potential teacher might see a chance to live in a different part of the world or work at a school that champions innovative ways of teaching.
Find other priorities your school can align with. (Bonus: leverage brand love to develop deeper connections with your stakeholders.)
Question if they have a favourable view of your school, if not how do you change this?
Use data to understand which channels would work best to engage with this set of stakeholders.
Finally, think about the journey that this stakeholder might go on when interacting with your school. Who might they talk to? What might they see and experience on your campus? Answering these questions uncovers valuable insights into where your brand messages can continue to grow!
That's it, gang. We've done it! We have the plan in place to pull off the biggest-ever stakeholder heist:
We know our brand message.
We know our target audience.
We know how we are going to get our message to that audience!
All that's left is to do it! Don't go getting cold feet now. I'll meet you all back here tomorrow for disguise fitting - dibs on the grandma outfit!
If you want to explore anything mentioned in this blog in more detail, don’t hesitate to e-mail us!