Download 1 Marketing – the often overlooked ingredient necessary for a

Marketing – the often overlooked ingredient necessary for a school’s success.
I come from a family of school teachers.
Growing up in the central west of NSW, I lived in a succession of primary principal’s
residences as my father ascended the promotional ladder in what is purported as one
of the biggest educational bureaucracies in the world – the NSW Department of
Education.
I’m old enough to remember the ‘good old days’, not so long ago, when terms like
promotion and marketing were considered tainted.
Such activities might be necessary in the crass world of commerce, but certainly not
acceptable in the hallowed halls of education!
In the ‘good old days’, a child automatically went to her or his nearest school – state
or Catholic.
In the ‘good old days’, there was a clear separation between home and school. Parents
knew their rightful place – heating pies in the tuckshop, selling raffle tickets for the
fete, sizzling sausages, and forming a captive audience for he annual speech night.
Teachers were the educational experts and their authority was unquestioned. There
was no need for justification, or even clear communication with the parents of the
kids. They would keep turning up to the local school. No other options were even
considered.
Choice in education hadn’t been invented in the ‘good old days’, unless you were
wealthy enough to send your heirs to expensive independent day or boarding
establishments. Attracting students wasn’t a priority for these schools either. It was
only natural for the progeny of old girls and old boys to keep up the family tradition
by following in their educational footsteps – entrenching the ‘old school tie’ and its
connections.
In the ‘good old days’, Catholic schools had a captive market. Encouraged by edicts
from the pulpit, Catholic parents sent their children to the parish school as a matter of
course in spite of huge class sizes and poor facilities.
Marketing and promotion were almost unheard of in Catholic schools. Extolling one’s
virtues was seen as contrary to the Christian virtue of humility. In the ‘good old days’,
Catholic schools operated in the belief that the ‘good news’ would spread itself and
didn’t need a helping hand.
Many Catholic schools still follow this maxim today.
But, like it or not, the ‘good old days’ have well and truly gone.
Marketing – as everyone in this room will agree – is absorbing more and more time
and energy in an already overcrowded agenda – and for many, there is still a strong
resistance to the very notion of marketing in a school context.
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In my experience, marketing is a concept that tends to polarise educators. Some
educators energetically embrace the activity, while others reject it with equal
intensity.
Teachers as a group have finely tuned crap detectors. They are usually deeply
concerned about the welfare of their students, so it’s no surprise that they are reluctant
to become involved in an activity that could be associated with rampant consumerism
– the values we are trying to teach our students to avoid.
I believe that much of the resistance to marketing in schools comes from a basic
misunderstanding of the concept.
It’s often defined too narrowly and carries negative, exploitative and unethical
associations.
Many people confuse marketing with promotion or selling, but in practice, there is a
big difference.
In its simplest form, marketing is about developing long term relationships with your
clients. It begins long before the ‘sale’ is made, and continues long after.
Real marketing is a healthy ethical activity that benefits all concerned, providing, as it
does, that all important link between school a school and its customers.
Taken in its broadest sense, marketing touches every aspect of your school and its
performance. It is integral to a school’s operation.
“Marketing is about the ways the Principal presents herself, about leadership style, the
way she connects with parents, about the appearance of the school, the students, their
behaviour in and out of school. It’s about every conversation and speech you make –
every written communication. It’s also about the breadth of your school’s curriculum
and extra-curricular activities. Marketing is especially about the effectiveness of
classroom teaching and learning.”
Marketing is happening all the time in every school. It’s often not as effective as it
could be, but it’s occurring nevertheless.
You’re all no doubt aware of the massive changes that have taken place in the last
decade or so in the social, economic and political environment that have impacted on
the school sector.
Globalisation, greater demands made by parents, changes in government funding for
non-government schools, greater focus on consumer choice leading to increased
competition, more emphasis on consumerism and so on.
The way marketing is perceived has also changed over the years.
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With the arrival of mass production in the early 1900s, marketing was perceived as a
method of selling. It was thought that if you promoted a product well, it would sell in
large quantities. The focus was on promotion and recruiting new students.
This is the attitude of many schools today with the emphasis on recruiting more
students. At this level, if the numbers drop, the knee-jerk reaction is to promote – to
place and ad or produce a brochure.
Around 1950s, people came to realise that rather than merely focusing on product
promotion, sales could be enhanced by focusing on product quality. Attention turned
to improving product quality.
Applied to schools, this meant that the marketing strategies were more proactive,
moving from visual identity (eg. prospectus, presentation) to systems, processes and
courses.
More recently, in the 1990s, it was realised that quality can only be measured through
customer satisfaction. Therefore, the benefits that customers see in products and
services have become the true measure of marketing effectiveness.
Promotion and product quality are still important, however are now seen in
perspective as parts of a more integrated approach that incorporates a range of
strategies.
For schools, emphasis changed to customer benefits - looking at ways to add value for
the customer. The attention shifts to customer service, relationship and loyalty
development, course design, staff development in which everyone has joint
responsibility.
In this scenario, everyone is continually asking the question: How can we best satisfy
the wants and needs of our customers?
Relationship marketing recognises that it is just as important to focus on current
customers as it is to gain new customers and that long term relationships are more
important than one-off transactions. Good word of mouth is perhaps our most
powerful promotional tool, and only comes from satisfied clients.
They say good marketing is about giving the customer what they expect, but excellent
marketing is giving more than they anticipate!
The changes I’ve outlined are reflected in the content and direction of the two books
I’ve written on school marketing over the last decade.
SuperMarketing your School (1996) concentrated on promotional strategies – 34 case
studies of best practice from around Australia. It’s a ‘how-to’ manual with lots of
ideas to help schools with their marketing.
Marketing for Better Schools (2003) builds on its predecessor and shows how
attitudes to marketing in schools are becoming more mature.
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The narrow focus on promotion is slowly being replaced by a mind-set in principals
and staff that seriously considers the customers – finding out who they are, what they
really want and how their needs can be met.
This awareness of the needs of the customer is a big step for those schools still locked
into a model of marketing from the past that told the customers – mainly parents –
what, when and how much they should have.
Generally, today’s customers, after a century of conditioning in consumerism, have
strong views, are prepared to go the hard yards in research, make it their business to
become well-informed, and consequently, demand and expect the best, and will
complain bitterly if they don’t get it (or worse still, take their business elsewhere!).
Dealing with the customer of today is very different from even a generation ago, as
most principals will attest, after being grilled by a prospective parent who is leaving
no stone unturned in the quest for the best school for their child.
My experience in working with 150 Sydney Catholic schools for 17 years indicates
strongly to me that schools that have an active marketing orientation have fewer
enrolment pressures, better resources, a highly regarded image and cohesive
community relationships, as well as some evidence of strong performance outcomes
from students.
This personal experience now has academic support from a PhD research project
undertaken by Lawrie Drysdale of the University of Melbourne.
His study or seven Victorian schools, each with a varying degree of marketing
effectiveness, pointed the pivotal role of the principal in adopting a focus on
marketing, and confirmed a high correlation between a strong marketing orientation
and school performance.
Marketing for Better Schools is divided into three sections, all illustrated with
comprehensive case studies of Sydney schools
The first part looks at the importance of mind-set in developing a customer
orientation. This is crucial for the effectiveness of the marketing program.
The second part looks at research – or the ways schools can really find out just what
the needs and wants of parents are. This involves asking and listening carefully.
The third part deals with strategies – or the ways in which a school can actually meet
the needs of customers.
A theme that threads its way through the book is the importance of planning. Every
school needs a detailed written marketing plan, and the book explains how this can be
done.
Planning is something schools usually do very well, but in my experience, evidence of
marketing planning is very rare.
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As the title of this presentation suggests – the importance of the contribution of
marketing to the success of a school IS very often overlooked – but when a school
develops a marketing orientation, performance over a whole range of measures
improves.
The 12 case studies in the book provide examples.
The former principal of LaSalle Catholic College at Bankstown (boys, 7 to 12) Br
Ambrose Payne said after the College’s first year into a five year strategic marketing
plan that there is ample evidence of increased performance as a result of their
adoption of a marketing orientation.
He cited increased enrolments, stronger links with feeder schools, evidence of value
adding in a variety of courses, higher ‘school esteem’ and steadily improving student
performances across the board.
There isn’t time to detail the strategies used in this brief address, but an increase in
enrolments from 607 in 1999 to 836 in 2006 is a sure sign of success.
In another primary school case study – in the inner west of Sydney – tiny St
Brendan’s was on the verge of extinction – with enrolments dropping to just 70
students.
A new principal, with no marketing background, but who had the flair and energy
required to develop personal relationships with current and prospective parents
boosted enrolments to 180 plus in just five years.
The positive word-of-mouth about this school and its principal spread like wildfire
through the parent grapevine. In a matter of a few years, it was transformed from a
school on its last legs to first choice in a competitive inner city marketplace – with a
long waiting list to get in.
All the case studies in the book have the same theme with variations of strategy.
The theme in all cases is that the principal has a strong marketing mind-set; is intent
on finding out what the clients want; and works tirelessly with her/his staff to satisfy
consumer needs.
Each understands that marketing is about building enduring relationships with every
part of the community.
The strategies to meet the need vary in each case according to needs, resources and
the personality and skills of the principal.
The end result of a successful marketing program will be a customer who is satisfied
with your school, believes they have made the right choice, is happy to remain there
and recommends it to others – becomes an advocate!
When that happens, everyone is satisfied.
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What is the situation in Australia now?
There’s evidence everywhere – including the attendance here today – that school
marketing is taking off – and is receiving more attention across all sectors than ever
before.
However, in my experience, marketing effectiveness in most schools is patchy, to say
the most.
Few schools develop marketing plans. Most are reactive and adopt an ad hoc
approach. Most schools still mistake marketing as promotion – equating it with and
advertisement in the paper or a letter box drop. If enrolments are healthy, I hear
principals say time and time again; “Oh, we don’t need to market our school,” when
that’s just the time when marketing should be proactive to maintain enrolments. There
are still large pockets of resistance in the nation’s staff rooms and it’s rare for
marketing to have a regular place on a school’s agenda.
How might this situation be improved?
1. Selection of principals
Firstly I’d look long and hard at the criteria used for selection of principals. Given the
pivotal role the principal plays in the success or otherwise of the marketing process in
any school, awareness, understanding and skills about marketing should be included
in the selection process.
A newly-appointed principal to a Sydney school experiencing falling enrolments told
me recently that he was spending up to 80 per cent of his time on marketing, a
workload necessary to keep the school open. He also said that prior to his
appointment; he was given no indication that marketing would be such an all
consuming issue in the school. Marketing skills were not part of selection criteria for
the principal’s role.
This same principal is learning fast, by the seat of his pants, and is succeeding. This is
not an uncommon experience.
A recent report on the shortage of applicants for principalship by the Australian
Research Council says that their data suggests strongly that the pool of principal
applicants, under the existing selection system, has become somewhat self-selecting.
Only those willing to fit into preferred models, especially the model of conformity
(except in areas where progressive directors hold sway), tend to remain in the
selection game.
It goes on to say that it is not easy for a different kind of applicant to get a hearing and
that new ideas are not always welcome.
How would imaginative skills in marketing go down with a normal selection panel?
Would a marketing mind-set be seen as an asset of hindrance?
2. Marketing planning
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Every school needs to develop a marketing plan either as a separate process or as part
of its normal Strategic Management Plan. This then needs to be included in the
regular staff meetings as an on-going process. A marketing plan that is developed
collaboratively by the staff also has the effect of galvanising support.
3. Assistance with marketing
Limited financial resources are a fact of life in all schools, but if the marketing
program is to be really effective, the principal needs help. Executing marketing
strategies is time consuming and should not take a principal away from their role as
educational leader. A marketing officer or my preferred title of Community Relations
Coordinator will help enormously.
4. Formal training
Principals and key staff would benefit from any kind of formal training in aspects of
marketing.
5. Working together
Given the shortage of funds for marketing – cooperative programs between noncompeting schools is a way to save money and have more impact. Many Sydney
schools are now organised into District School Councils which might include a
secondary school and its feeder primary schools. Many of these councils undertake
joint marketing activities such as advertisements in local papers drawing attention to
the Kindergarten through Year 12 pathway that exists for Catholic schools in a
particular area. There are many other imaginative ways that schools can work
together.
6. Developing partnerships
Schools might enter into partnerships with commercial organisations to extend their
resources, improve educational programs and gain community exposure. An example
could be a partnership with a technology company. This is rarely done in Australia to
date, but is becoming increasingly prominent in the UK and USA. Imagination and
drive from the right people could make this happen for mutual advantage.
To conclude, there is enormous potential for marketing to improve a school’s success
and it’s a sad fact that it’s so often overlooked.
But, at least, today has been a start. Good luck and better management.
Ted Myers
Head, Communications Unit
Catholic Education Office, Sydney (18 May 2006)
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