There are many audiences you want to reach when marketing your school. You want to appeal to prospective and current parents and students to bolster recruitment and re-recruitment efforts; educators to showcase future teaching opportunities; and to prominent community members to appeal for their generous support.
And while every audience has unique needs, a main component of your marketing messages must remain consistent—students are the heart of your mission and your school. Therefore, all marketing must be unequivocally student-centered.
So how does the Marketing Communications Director ensure all marketing messages are student-centered and remain consistent across all areas with all audiences? Here are a few tips to accomplish just that.
Set up times to meet with students each week. Student-centered marketing must start right there—with your students. Listening to students must be the focus of your ongoing research.
Organize your time such that every week you visit at least two classrooms and enjoy what is happening in them. Make it a priority to sit with a different group of students each week during lunch and engage with them about what’s happening in the school. What excites them? What don’t they like? What do they hope to see more of?
Follow up on compelling stories and experiences with case studies, blog posts, videos, and social media updates that can be shared on your website and through other social channels.
Be deeply involved in your school’s survey process. Surveys supply valuable information to help you better understand what appeals to students and what isn’t working well. Educate yourself about the best ways to conduct surveys to support your school’s internal data team and help ensure surveys are conducted regularly and methodically. Use the data collected to influence your messaging.
Get feedback from students. This isn’t to say that you must show students every piece of work you create. But you want students to continually provide their thoughts while you refine messaging and materials. Ensure the student voice is prominent in both print and video materials, with affirmation of mission delivery, stories illustrating mission impact, and testimonials—and then make sure those stories continue to resonate with students.
Including the student perspective in your marketing materials shouldn’t be an afterthought. It must be an intrinsic element that illustrates how students work, live, and play in your school. The student voice is the most powerful affirmation of what you do—make sure it shows through your marketing materials.
Additional ISM resources:
The Source for Advancement Vol. 16 No. 6 Using Analytics to Improve Your Marketing Communications Efforts
The Source for Advancement Vol. 16 No. 4 Small Tweaks That Can Make a Big Impact on Your Website
Additional ISM resources for Gold members:
I&P Vol. 43 No. 9 Create a Digital Workflow to Maximize Marketing Resources
I&P Vol. 43 No. 6 Create a Rich Inbound Marketing Strategy to Increase Website Traffic and Inquiries
