Conducting a School Marketing Communications Audit: A How-to Guide

With all the time and effort your team puts into various marketing efforts—including emails, content marketing, social media marketing, print, partnerships, and more—you want to ensure your methods are effective. A great way to evaluate everything you share is through a marketing communications audit.

An audit helps your team get a holistic view of everything your school puts into the marketplace. It helps you decide which methods are effective and which are simply “noise”. A few weeks ago, we shared the four steps to conduct a successful marketing communications audit. Today we’re going to explore certain elements to ensure your audit is effective.

How to Conduct an Audit

As a recap, the four steps of an audit are as follows.

Step 1: Define the Scope

Determine your audit’s direction and scope. Think about which aspects of your communications you want to include. You can focus on digital, print, or a combination.

Step 2: Gather Constituent Feedback

To determine what’s most effective, you need to gather feedback from your constituencies. We recommend surveying your parents, faculty, and alumni. This helps you get a better sense of what’s working and what isn’t. Address teacher-parent communication, school-parent communication, school publications, and interpersonal interactions.

Step 3: Review Your Materials

Evaluate everything your school has sent over the past six to nine months for consistency in message and tone. Does each piece align with your image, brand, mission, and values? Review your social media, website, email, newsletters, and print media.

You can also include spirit wear, fine arts, athletic event fliers and programs, campus signs, and even parent group communications. Is everything consistent with your brand?

A few more tips to help in this step.

• Establish a process for collecting and reviewing these materials. Gather a team of people to comb through all digital and print materials from the various divisions, departments, and groups within your school.
• Identify specifics for each piece. Everything collected must be sorted by division, department, group, and purpose. Note the titles, including the subject lines of email communications and the names of brochures. Indicate the medium—such as print, email, a blog post, etc. If it is digital communication, note the URL or the directory link if you have it stored online.
• Identify the audience for the piece. Also note the author and date it was last updated. Make space in your checklist for additional notes that might help when you review the item.
• Create a tracking calendar. Plot the dates when print and digital materials are sent. Note the specific materials sent by each department. For example, the marketing department should avoid sending materials on the same days as tuition bills or annual fund solicitations.
• Evaluate your materials. Once you have an idea of everything you created in a year, look over each piece. Decide whether it should be maintained, updated, or removed from your marketing communications efforts. Taking this time allows you to determine what is moving the needle, what is no longer useful.
• Set a timeline. Don't rush the process---allow from six to nine months for a complete review. Set a start date and end date for collecting a year’s worth of communications and materials. Allow ample time to complete and return surveys, and schedule any follow-ups.

Step 4: Review Your Competition

A competitive analysis helps you gain a clearer understanding of your marketplace position by examining your true competitors. Remember, not every school in your area is a competitor. Look only at those that match your value and price point.

Collect information about your competition’s mission, their key messages, and differentiators. Evaluate their perceived marketplace stance. Also, consider each school’s enrollment, grades served, tuition, and fees. Note their website and social media presence in your analysis. If possible, see if you can collect and include their print materials.

Next, search online for each competing school as if you were a consumer. Search “private schools near me” and see what comes up in search engine page results. Is your competition running display or text ads? Does the school appear organically? Run multiple permutations to see how results change.

What Happens When Your Audit Is Complete?

Once you have completed these steps, compile your findings into a report with recommendations for future actions. Use a combination of quantitative and qualitative data in your analysis.

Action steps may include changing who sends each piece, along with cadence or delivery mechanisms. You may also recommend new ways to organize your systems, such as using new technology like Asana or Coschedule. Google also provides a suite of products that can keep track of your communications.

Present your findings and recommendations to your school leaders. With their buy-in, incorporate any needed action steps into your marketing communications plan moving forward.

Remember, marketing communications is a team effort. Do not try to conduct this project in isolation! It is a long-term process, and you need cooperation, alignment, and organization to accomplish your goal.