Marketing That Works

Why your school needs to be like Alexa

2018-04-11T13:12:00.001-04:00

The advent of digital assistants is having huge impact on our culture but Google and Alexa also account for larger shifts in how we engage with brands and technology. Those shifts are influencing the way parents engage with independent schools and are shaping their expectations. To be successful, schools need to pay attention and adapt to a changing marketplace. With that in mind, here are two reasons that your school needs to be like Alexa.

1. Your voice is more important than your logo or any other visual communication.

In a September 2017 Fast Company article, a CMO commenting on the rise of digital assistants said the following:

“What will brands look like in a more-voice-oriented world? Is there a post-logo world there? It’s just so interesting to think that the visual world may be less important and what that means.”

While the CMO was clearly talking about the voice of digital assistants, the reality is that schools have a voice as well. It is reflected in the language used in communication as well as in its tone and style. Your communication makes a statement about who you are and what’s important to you. In short, your communication is the voice of your brand and one should be as unique as the other. In fact, in an increasingly competitive environment, your school’s voice is a key differentiator.

In the same Fast Company article, an agency creative officer said, “…we shouldn’t be going at people with what we sell, we should be telling then what we believe in. Get them to buy into your brand by understanding what it stands for.”

The reality is that what you say and how you say it is more important then what it looks like. Content trumps design. That applies to everything from websites to email to print to video. Let's face it. The most popular YouTube videos are often shot on smartphones.

The design of the Amazon Echo is attractive but purposefully unobtrusive. It is a vehicle, a platform for its voice. And when you hear that voice, you know its Alexa.

An interesting test would be to give someone something written about your school that contains no give-away references. Would they recognize it as referring your school? Would your school’s voice be as distinctive as Alexa’s?

2. Customer expectations are being driven higher than ever.

Digital assistants are all about the user. A recent Google blog post presented results of a study of voice assistant owners. These are the reasons that people use voice-activated assistants:

It allows them to more easily multitask.
It enables them to do things faster than other devices.
It empowers them to instantly get answers and information.
It makes their daily routine easier.

Me. Me, me. In fact 41% of respondents said that using their voice assistant felt like talking to a friend.

So, here’s the obvious question. Is your school as customer focused as Alexa? Voice assistants are empowering, enabling and responsive. They answer the questions they are asked and, by the way, admit when they don’t know the answer. They provide the information you need to be better at what you do. They tell you what you absolutely need to know on any given day. They don’t hide facts and they make no assumptions about why you are asking a question. Alexa is never short or condescending.

You can also extend the capability of your voice assistant so that you can control your thermostat, lights or choose TV channels. Are you equally anticipating the needs of your customers and extending your capabilities? That could be before and after school care, parent education programs or financial planning seminars.

Just as was the case with social media, ongoing technological advances empower customers and raise expectations. They also put a premium, both literally and figuratively, on the voice of your school. There is no turning back. To be successful, schools must meet the challenge and be more like Alexa.

Meaty Messaging – The Messaging Inventory

2018-03-05T08:51:00.000-05:00

Thirty-four years ago, Wendys launched what was probably its most successful ad campaign ever. It featured three elderly women examining a hamburger from an unnamed restaurant and discovering it had a huge bun but a very tiny patty. One of the women repeatedly croaked, “Where’s the Beef” and in the process created a phrase that became part of the mid-80’s zeitgeist, even making into the rhetoric of that year’s presidential election campaign.

What’s more, “Where’s the beef” has become an accepted English idiom meaning that an argument or proposal lacks substantive content. And that’s what brings us to independent schools.

For schools, the road to underachieving marketing results is paved with beautiful full-width, photo-laden websites that include a video featuring a dramatic opening drone shot of the campus at sunrise. Often these websites are visually impressive but in reality tell you next to nothing about the school. There are all bun with no burger.

This is particularly relevant to the current cohort of millennial prospective parents – many of whom were also conceived along with the Wendys ad in 1984. Amongst the characteristics of this new parental generation (some are even calling them parennials) is a demand for authenticity and a distaste for marketing that is superficial, or even misleading. To be able to persuasively communicate with today’s parents, schools need to give them reasons to believe. They need to provide convincing evidence that demonstrates why parents should consider, choose, or, in the case of current parents, continue to choose a particular school. They need to show them the beef.

Enter the messaging inventory.

The messaging inventory is a highly strategic, targeted database of statements, each of which brings to life one of your school’s marketing proof points. And because your school is constantly adding to its programming and curricular repertoire, its messaging inventory is dynamic – growing with each new initiative and program.

The messaging inventory is organized by target audience or, better yet, target segment and for each of them includes these fields:

Needs or interests - the needs/interests of a particular target segment could be anything from more convenience for working parents, to greater athletic opportunities to enhanced initiatives supporting social-emotional development.

The Approach your school uses to address that need or interest – these will be areas of emphasis or a broad curricular/programming initiatives. Examples related to the needs above could be a robust before and after school program, an expansive athletics department or a well-defined character education initiative.

Specific programs, initiatives or outcomes – these are the proof points and there could be many of them for each need or interest.

The Messaging Statement expresses the specific initiative/outcome in a sentence. At this point, it doesn’t have to be award-winning communication. Later, the statement will be refined to better reflect your school's brand and will likely be combined with other statements to create effective copy.

Putting, all that into action, you end up with something like this:

(The table above is available as a Word doc)

Now imagine what happens when you add additional needs/interests, approaches and specific initiatives. This becomes a very expansive document. In addition, as your school introduces new programs, receives new recognition, or records specific accomplishments, the inventory also continues to grow. I have worked with schools with messaging inventories that included hundreds of statements.

Using the messaging inventory forces you to think strategically about communication because it creates messaging buckets. From a proactive point of view, it allows you to tell administrators and teachers exactly what types of stories you are interested in. Reactively, as items of interest come to your attention, you have the means to categorize them so they can be used more effectively.

The messaging inventory can be the backbone to social media editorial calendars – allowing you to identify categories of content and then find the posts to best represent them. The inventory is a communication source for open house and tour talking points. It can be the basis for website and online content as well as any print communication. It’s also a very effective way of developing video outlines and scripts.

The messaging inventory is the best way to make sure that your marketing communication is always grounded in proof points. It also highlights the need for everyone in a school – teachers, administrators, trustees – to be constantly aware of the need to prove what they say about themselves – to walk the talk. In that way, the messaging inventory is also an important branding tool.

This is not just a communication planning tool for prospective parents. In fact, it may be even more effective in informing and validating the decisions of current parents, ensuring that they are knowledgeable and enthusiastic ambassadors.

Developing and maintaining a messaging inventory is tedious. It requires great discipline and forethought. But the resulting improvement in marketing effectiveness easily provides the benefit of results that will far outweigh the cost of time. It will allow you to proudly and unequivocally declare, “Here’s the beef.”

Maximizing e-newsletter impact

2017-09-12T19:49:00.000-04:00

School e-newsletters are a huge pain. No one, other than those who have to prepare them, would believe the amount of time they take. On top of that, they are a magnet for all kinds of heated and time-consuming discussions about who should control content, why parents still don’t know about upcoming events and who is responsible for all those typos and errors (there’s not usually a lot of takers on that one).

Not surprisingly, by the time you hit week 15, the strong temptation is to minimize the pain and just get the bloody thing done. But here’s the thing. Retention is the key to enrolment success and that means that e-newsletters are a critical marketing communication vehicle that deserve (almost) all the time they take to prepare. The key is to maximize the investment. Here then are nine ways to focus your efforts and improve the effectiveness of e-newsletters.

1. Strategy first. Remember that the e-newsletter is a key to building brand among current parents and stakeholders. That means that content must be both functional and strategic. Choose content based on what best reflects strategic marketing goals and don’t be afraid to have multiple items – whether in news items or captions – speak to the same topic. What you imagine to be heavy-handed is likely not perceived that way by the casual reader.

2. Content control. Some weeks finding content is like pulling teeth. No one responds to your emails and two hours before deadline, you’re still tracking down photos and details about a school event. And then you have the polar opposite when the development department is convinced that each of their 32 school fundraisers must be represented in this week’s newsletter. The solution is to have established and agreed-upon guidelines that detail content categories, indicate exactly who is responsible for getting you content and determine in advance the number of items that can appear under any heading.

3. The tyranny of attention. Your e-newsletter may be chock full of all the things you want parents to know about like the softball team’s big win and the STEM contest that the 5th graders participated in. But none of that is going to get read unless you first meet parents’ most basic communication needs. It’s kind of like Maslow’s hierarchy. Tell parents what they need to survive the week ahead - the early closing days, the no-lunch days – and then they will pay attention to the stuff you think they should know.

4. Know your limits. Studies show that people read online material at a rate of about 200 words per minute. Now, how much time do you expect parents to spend reading the weekly e-newsletter? If three to five minutes sounds reasonable, that translates into no more than 600-1000 words.

5. Be photo-literate. Rest assured that a good photo paired with a strategic caption can outperform any paragraph of copy alone. Whatever you can say with a photo will get more attention and will be more compelling. However, not all photos are created equal – and some, if not most, of the ones provided to you should likely not be used. The group photo of 25 students who participated in an event will be indiscernible. Rather look for shots of one or two people who look interesting or are doing something interesting. Remember - you can fill in the details in a caption or short story that accompanies the image.

6. What's the subject. Data indicates that 33% of email recipients decide whether to open an email based on the subject line alone. And get this – there’s an 18.7% decrease in open rates when the word “newsletter” is used in subject lines. Don’t fool yourself into imagining that your e-newsletter is so important to parents that data on subject lines don’t apply. So, instead of “Your newsletter for the week of September 18” try writing a creative subject line about an item in the e-newsletter - maybe something like “Our B-Ballers Beat the Best.”

7. Be a tease. Not every detail about every item has to appear directly in the e-newsletter. By using links to pages on your website or other sources, you can provide readers with just enough copy to “tease” them or for them to decide whether it’s something they want to know more about. It’s a win-win approach that conserves space and respects the reader’s interests and judgment.

8. Make it mobile. It’s critical that your e-newsletter can be easily read on a smartphone. Between 2011 and 2016, the percentage of email open on mobile devices rose from 20% to 55% and from my experience the percentage of independent school parents using smartphones is higher than that. Content viewed on a mobile device always feels longer than on a tablet or desktop. That magnifies the importance of almost all of the points above. For example, the average mobile screen can only fit a 4-7 word subject line. So, in addition to being interesting, subject lines need to be concise.

9. Draw on data. Take advantage of the incredible array of data that is available to you in almost all email software. You can see which subject lines get better open rates and which items are more attracting clicks. You can even see who is opening emails and segment them by gender, location, campus or the grades of their children. All of that can be essential in the ongoing evaluation of the e-newsletter.

By using these nine points (and probably a bunch more that I didn’t think of) you can transform your weekly e-newsletters from a necessary evil into a superhero force for good.

What do you think?

What are your best e-newsletter tips? Or better yet, let’s see some examples of your outstanding e-newsletters.

10 Other Reasons Parents Are Choosing Your School

2017-04-25T18:30:00.000-04:00

Independent school marketing is in many ways a cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy. We promote schools based on certain attributes and then we research why parents have chosen our schools and remain satisfied with them based on those same attributes. That, in turn, provides the proof that we need to convince ourselves that we completely understand parents' decision-making. But, maybe it’s time to jump out of our comfort zone and look more deeply at parents’ motivation.

Let’s be more specific. If you were to scan the websites of any number of independent schools, you would find the following attributes that are being used to promote the school:

Academic excellence
Character Development
Whole Child Education
Acquisition of skills for learning
Being part of a community of students

To measure their success in attracting and retaining families, schools then survey parents. That’s good. But here’s the self-fulfilling part. Survey questions are based on the promotional attributes above or some variation on them. For example, every parent satisfaction survey that I’ve seen asks respondents to rate the school based on something like this series of questions:

How satisfied are you with the quality of the academic program/the Math curriculum/the Language Arts program?
To what extent do you feel your child is developing positive character traits?

And surveys to new families will most often ask parents to rank the reasons they chose the school based on variations of the attributes above.

Then the survey data is collected and analyzed and guess what? Yup, now we have proof that the features we are using to promote the school are exactly the reasons that parents have chosen our school and the criteria they use in deciding whether to stay. And with great confidence, we can continue to market our schools the way we always have. Phew!

So how do we break the cycle? Two recent Harvard Business Review articles provide some guidance. The first – Creativity in Marketing – is based on discussions with leading marketers and provides some approaches that will definitely lead to new insights.

For example, what if we think about marketing with parents as opposed to marketing to parents? Strategic marketing is targeted. We talk about target audiences or target segments. Implicitly that means that we keep our distance, disseminating marketing messages, like arrows, toward the bulls-eyes we seek to influence. But parents aren’t sitting idly waiting for our cupid-like missives. In fact, they are creating their own content in the lives they lead as reflected on social media. The imperative for independent school marketers is to remove the distance, have meaningful interactions with parents and make their stories and experiences the centerpiece of marketing efforts.

The second article advocates a less empirical and more experiential way of interacting with customers – or, in our case, parents. By intuitively analyzing the customer experience, it’s possible to discover previously hidden motivation for buying a product or service. The authors characterize these motivators as “jobs to be done.”

With these two articles in mind, if we were to market with parents and really immerse ourselves in the parent experience, we may discover other attributes upon which parents are selecting independent schools and choosing to remain at them. Here are some of the “jobs to be done” that we might find:

Creating a sense of accomplishment or status for parents
Building community and developing new friendships for parents
Developing a more homogeneous social circle for children and parents
Meeting the expectations of grandparents (parents’ parents) or other family members
Providing a worry-free experience that relieves the stress of having to continuously monitor school progress and advocate for children
Delivering convenience – in pick up/drop off and in scheduling of meetings, presentations and assemblies
Providing seamless access to tutoring or other supports
Communicating in ways that find the balance between providing “must-know” information and the validation of continuing to make the right choice

And, removing barriers to choosing independent schools, such as:

Assuring parents that they will fit in with other families at the school
Relieving a sense of guilt about their ability to afford higher tuition fees and separating themselves from peers (as may be the case with any luxury product)

Implicitly, each school will have its own meaningful promotional attributes which doubles down on the need for marketers – and, I would argue heads of school and other key administrators - to immerse themselves in the parent experience.

Uncovering these real attributes at your school is way more than an exercise in marketing because each of them is an expression of need that must be supported. Being attuned to the parent experience requires action in programming and communication.

Lest anyone thinks I am disparaging the use of data, I offer these points. As is best practice in the use of qualitative and quantitative data, once you uncover new motivational criteria, you can – and should - use broad based surveys to determine the degree to which they are a factor for all parents. But perhaps more importantly, I am reminded of an amazing quote by author and speaker Brené Brown, who said, “stories are data with a soul.”

The bottom line is that as independent school marketers, we may be looking for love in all the wrong places and by being shoulder to shoulder with our parents, we may discover the true path to their hearts.

What do you think?

What are some of the other reasons that parents are choosing your school? What have you done to validate those reasons empirically? More importantly, what programs or communication have you put in place to support them?

7 paths to being a parent-centred school

2016-10-10T09:29:00.000-04:00

To distinguish themselves in a competitive marketplace, schools must become parent-centred.

These days, being a child-centred school doesn’t provide much competitive advantage. Child-centred approaches are clearly linked to educational success and have been woven into the practice of most schools. Frankly, being child-centred is a must-have that parents expect.

On the other hand, being parent-centred represents an opportunity to differentiate and create recruitment and retention success. The data from the business world on the benefits of improving customer experience is incontrovertibly positive. Focusing on the quality and the characteristics of the parent experience in your school has innumerable benefits including fostering more satisfied parents who are more enthusiastic ambassadors. So, how do you do that? Here are seven paths to being a parent-centred school.

1. Think like a customer. This is primarily about empathy. Put your self in the shoes of a parent and use all your senses. For example, when you walk into the office, what do you see and how are you greeted? Are you talking to parents in language that they can understand? Often, there is a tendency to use internal technical terms like, “you need to complete an RTC form.” Sometimes, it’s easy to fall into “edu-speak,” using terms like authentic learning and differentiation while a parent’s eyes glaze over.

No matter how hard you try, it can be difficult to look at your school with fresh eyes. In that case, borrow an idea that retailers use all the time and enlist mystery shoppers – or in this case, mystery parents. Have two or three people contact the school (using various means) and express interest in enrolling their children. Be sure they record details of all their interactions. Review their reports to see if the experience that’s being delivered is what you really want it to be.

2. Collaborate. Parents aren’t really at the centre of your enrolment and marketing efforts unless you seek their opinions and participation in meaningful ways. Considering a change to the daily schedule? You’d be wise to consult parents. Partnering with parents also means encouraging feedback and, of course, being willing to accept criticism.

3. Be Transparent. There is no point in trying to hide information from parents. If you’ve made an error, you have got to own it. Let parents know what happened and how you’re going to fix it. Schools can be notoriously secretive about how decisions are made – often because they don’t want them to be questioned. A great example of this is class placement. A common statement is something like, “we place students using our best judgment in optimizing their academic performance and social environment.” This is vague enough that parents don’t really have a basis for questioning a placement decision. Contrast that to listing the specific criteria on which placement decisions are made and being prepared to entertain discussions with parents based on those criteria. Being transparent doesn’t mean having to accede to every parent request. Many times, parents will tolerate a decision that doesn’t go their way as long as they feel like they’ve been heard.

4. Solve Problems. Effective problem resolution requires many elements. First, you need to encourage openness. If staff members feel that every reported error is just another step toward discipline and dismissal, you won’t know about most of what goes wrong with parents. Second, you need to know the root cause of problems and that, in turn, requires asking incessant whys. Why did the Smiths get the wrong letter? Why were they on the wrong list? Why were they tagged incorrectly in the database? Why did someone edit their profile? You get the picture. Resolving problems is only half the battle. The real prize is problem prevention and that will require lots of internal collaboration with staff members at all levels.

5. Consider First Impressions. This isn’t just about the first-time visitor to your school, although focusing on that is a pretty good idea. But this could also be the first experience that parents have with your school every morning. You know, the dreaded drop off line. (Here’s a hilarious rant about drop-off). This is a great opportunity to greet parents and reduce their anxiety. What about the first impression of parents coming to the school for parent teacher conferences? They are totally stressed at having to quickly navigate the school and find the appropriate rooms so that they can then spend six minutes and 28 seconds with a teacher before being rushed out. Some schools place student docents in front of each room who can tell parents whether the teacher is ahead of or behind schedule and can even disarm parents by having a conversation with them.

6. Prove You’re Listening. It’s not enough to tell parents that you care about their opinions. You have to put your money where your mouth is. Be prepared to make changes based on parent feedback. You can take that to another level by making proactive changes. For example, let’s say a parent reports that her child was dropped off at the wrong spot when taking the bus home. In addition to finding out what happened to that child, you should likely be investigating whether the same thing has happened to other children – even if those parents haven’t said anything. And, make sure you tell parents about the action you are taking in response to their concerns. As consumers we all know how gratifying it is to be told that changes have been made because we spoke up. Be sure to give yourself credit for listening – and acting.

7. Break Down Silos. Making your school more parent-centred can’t be done as a unilateral initiative of the admissions department. Or the marketing department. It’s going to take a multi-disciplinary approach that has the parent experience on the agenda of every department in the school – including faculty and lay leadership. You may want to share articles about parent/customer service or better yet, be sure to communicate parent experience successes. In all likelihood, it will require the active involvement of the head of school to make it happen.

Technology and demography (think millennials) have created conditions where word of mouth is the most powerful channel in marketing success. While educational success is the most potent subject of word of mouth, being a parent-centred school will create the motivation and impetus for positive ambassadorship that will in turn lead to gains in recruitment and retention.

A more detailed look at the Parent Experience is available in the e-book, "Tailoring the Parent Experience."

The Parent Experience Prescription

2016-05-09T10:10:00.000-04:00

The Parent Experience (PX) at your school has the potential to be the greatest contributor to retention, ambassadorship and enrolment success. That’s why schools should be giving some serious thought what their PX prescription will be.

An e-book that I collaborated on withBlackbaud K12 explains the Parent Experience concept and design process in detail. In the past couple of months I’ve been taking the PX from words on a page and slides in a webinar to real-life school environments. The insights from that could be helpful to anyone thinking about PX in their schools.

For some context, here’s a quick Parent Experience primer. Increasingly companies are finding that their most effective competitive advantage is not the products they sell but rather the experience that their customers have using them and even shopping for them.

Why is that? Because, as the people at Bain & Company say, “If people love doing business with you, they become promoters. They sing your praises to friends, colleagues, and complete strangers over social networks, in online reviews, through blogs, and in every conceivable channel.”

To me, that sounds like the description of current parent ambassadors that every school would love to have. And that’s why the Parent Experience is so critical to schools.

In fact, as independent schools find themselves competing with not only public schools but charter schools, online schools and for-profit schools, experience becomes a critical differentiator and competitive advantage.

The Parent Experience is the sum of all experiences at various touch points a parent has with a school over the duration of their relationship with that school. This includes their first online contact to watching their youngest child graduate and everything in between.

To be more than just positive, Parent Experience must be the product of a reverse engineering project. Schools need to understand what memories and feelings they want their parents to have at the end of their journey with them. Once they’ve determined that destination, they can work backward to design the experience that will produce the desired results.

In other words, to be truly effective and to completely differentiate a school, the Parent Experience must align with a school’s brand. Schools must answer the question, “What do we want the parent experience at our school to be?”

Now, with that background, here are some practical Parent Experience insights.

The Parent Experience exists whether you design it or not. Make no mistake. Parents are having an experience at your school. They are interacting with school staff, lay people and other parents all the time. The quality of that experience is up to you. You have the opportunity to not only make that experience positive but one that truly reflects what is unique about your school.

Parent Experience is more than just good customer service. The best illustration of this comes from a school at which I was leading a parent experience workshop. Support staff said they were always friendly and respectful with parents, often going above and beyond to help. That’s good customer service. However, one staff member said that she noticed that when the answer to a question was tailored to the cultural background of the parent, communication was more effective and the parent was more satisfied. In a school that truly celebrates diversity, the actions of that staff member are helping to build a positive parent experience that is unique to that school.

The Parent Experience brings your brand to life. Brand is a representation of the relationship that parents have with your school. If every interaction that parents have with your school is brand-aligned, PX is an opportunity for your parents to literally live the brand.

Developing the Parent Experience is an exercise in design thinking. It’s a painstaking process involving dozens of people and thousands of interactions. But with a clear goal in mind it’s an opportunity to incorporate all of the design thinking elements of empathizing, designing, ideating, prototyping and testing.

Heads of School are critical to the Parent Experience. There are three reasons for this. The head is the only person in a school with the authority and credibility to align disparate sectors – from faculty and educational leaders to the business office to the board of trustees. Given the symbiotic relationship between brand and PX, heads, as primary keepers of the brand, must be involved. Finally, PX is by definition future-focused. Its ten-year journey will be interwoven with your school’s vision – as articulated and driven by the head.

Faculty is essential to the Parent Experience PX – but be patient. The strongest link in the school-parent relationship is teachers and therefore developing an effective Parent Experience requires their cooperation and active participation. Teachers are very focused on the classroom and see student achievement as their primary success metric. However, there is growing appreciation of parent engagement and communication as critical elements in the educational process – which, in turn, is all about the parent experience.

As independent schools face increasing competition in an economic environment that is, at minimum, circumspect, it is essential to differentiate and find competitive advantages. Focusing on the Parent Experience may be the perfect prescription for doing just that.

Download your copy of Tailoring the Parent Experience

The Hierarchy of Parent Communication Needs

2016-03-28T15:55:00.000-04:00

The impact of word of mouth on independent school admissions is pretty much undeniable. There is a litany of data demonstrating that the most frequent and the most effective way that prospective parents hear about a school is from family, friends and peers.

Great. We all get that. Now here’s the hard part. The inescapable reality of word of mouth marketing is that its success is a function of parents being able to talk – or post – knowledgably and passionately about their school. The passion can potentially come from parents simply talking about their positive experiences. Knowledge, on the other hand, requires parents to have information about a school’s achievements or perhaps its comparative performance. Those facts can often supercharge the impact of peer to peer communication.

But how do you get parents to have that information at their fingertips when it’s a struggle to just get them to remember when its an early closing day or to sign up for parent teacher conferences? If informed ambassadorship is the apogee of parent communication, how do you get there?

The answer may lie in a construct with which we’re all familiar. Maslow’s pyramid, or hierarchy of needs, has been used by psychologists – and educators – for decades. Its premise is that for individuals to reach their greatest potential, there is a four-level progression of needs that must first be met. The highest level of the pyramid – or the pinnacle of human existence – is what Maslow called “self-actualization” which he defines as “the desire to become the most that one can be.”

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

What if we use that same paradigm to think about parent communication? How can we get parents to reach the ultimate goal of being well informed ambassadors with the independent ability to speak knowledgably about the school their kids attend? Perhaps the answer is that we need to first meet their more basic communication needs. It's only when those needs are met that parents feel free to discover more about the school and retain that information.

With deference to Professor Maslow, let’s see how we can translate his pyramid into a hierarchy of parent communication needs.

Physiological - These are survival needs like food and drink. The parent communication equivalent is what do I absolutely need to know for next week. Are there early closing days? Are there programs/events that I am supposed to be attending? Are there days on which my child needs to bring something different or unusual to school?

Safety – These are ongoing health and well-being needs like physical and economic security. In our communication hierarchy that translates into how can I help my child? This could be information about homework or resources parents can use to help their kids. Or maybe it’s about special lunch programs or extra-curriculars. However we define them, this level of communication relates to the ongoing needs of the child.

Love and Belonging – We need family, friendship and intimacy. Our parents need communication that makes them feel like part of a community. That could be information about other families’ lifecycle events or some kind of bulletin board with items for sale and upcoming community programs. Maybe this involves letting parents know about opportunities for involvement in the school community.

Esteem – We must feel valued, respected and confident. This relates to two types of communication. On one hand, parents need communication that validates their decision to send their children to our schools. This could be information about special achievements or educational milestones. Often this level is fulfilled through special programming to which parents are invited. In addition, parents must feel respected and appreciated. Communication must recognize the parent as customer.

Self actualization – The freedom to realize our fullest potential. Having fulfilled the other four levels, we can now provide the communication to parents that will allow them to be the consummate ambassador. This might be information on comparative test scores, college choices, athletic or academic achievements, faculty credentials, accreditations or endorsements. On the foundation of the other levels of communication, parents are ready to receive – and retain – the information that we really want them to be conveying to peers and friends.

Based on all of the above, this is what we arrive at:

The Hierarchy of Parent Communication Needs

Although to this point we have focused on substance, meeting communication needs is also a matter of finding the right channels and means of communication. Most schools have an arsenal of communication vehicles – e-newsletters, classroom newsletters, websites, password protected portals and even print communication. Fulfilling a communication need is dependent on matching it to the right channel.

If we accept the premise of this hierarchy, the indelible message is that for parents to become effective ambassadors, the onus is on school communicators. It could be time to take a good look at your communication plan and make sure it’s really needing the needs of parents and your school.

What do you think?

Does the hierarchical construct work or make sense? Does your experience with parent communication validate this analysis? What are your thoughts about how to get parents to be the best ambassadors?

My one-question branding hack

2016-02-24T08:07:00.002-05:00

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The terms “brand” and “DNA” appear together in business literature as often as “critical” and “thinking” do in the educational world. The assumption is that just as DNA is a way of defining a person’s uniqueness, so too brand is the way of articulating what is one-of-a-kind about any organization.

I think that “brand” and “DNA” have something else in common. While no one disputes that they exist and that each is very important, the truth is that almost nobody knows what they are. Seriously. What exactly is DNA? It’s some kind of molecular structure that somehow magically determines my uniqueness. Likewise, other than a bunch of marketing wonks, who can really define “brand” and explain exactly how it represents your school?

And yet no one can deny the importance of being able to tell prospective parents or prospective faculty or prospective donors what makes your school so special. So, if you haven’t yet engaged the experts to develop your brand – or maybe you have and either can’t remember or no longer use what they came up with – here is my one question branding hack. (By the way, "hack" is a term borrowed from the tech world that generally refers to a clever solution to a tricky problem.)

It’s based on Simon Sinek’s “why” TED talk. If you’re not one the almost 26 million people that have seen this video, you should stop reading and watch it now. In short, Sinek proposes that the most successful companies and organizations in the world achieved their success by focusing on “why” they do what they do – as opposed to “how” or “what” they do.

Sometimes thinking about “why” your school exists or operates can be difficult. It gets bogged down in mission and philosophy. So, in working with schools I ask them this:

What would be missing from your city or community
if your school did not exist?

And that’s the one-question branding hack. It’s a pretty important question that you should be able to answer before you meet a single prospective parent (or donor or teacher). When parents ask, “why should I send my children to your school,” they are really asking what can I get here that I can’t get elsewhere.

The answer you formulate to the question is not your brand but it will likely focus on the experience that your school delivers – the combination of academics, character development, extra-curriculars, spirit, relationships and philosophy. And that will provide a glimpse into the relationship students and parents have with your school – which is at the core of branding.

Even if the answer to the question is easy because your school’s offering is unique, it will still require some introspection. For example if yours is the only arts-based school for girls in your area, you will still need to be able to communicate why an arts based education for girls is important and what it can deliver.

For what its worth I believe branding can be explained and similarly, I have successfully articulated a brand for many schools. At the same time I’m enough of a realist to understand that branding can be time-consuming, complicated or out of reach for many schools. Interestingly, I have also encountered many schools that have undertaken branding projects and are still struggling to articulate their uniqueness.

Whatever the circumstances, if you’re looking for a clear, productive and reasonably quick way of thinking about branding, the one-question hack could be the answer.

What do you think?

Does my one question hack work for you? Have you got an alternative that you have successfully use? What are your branding hacks? Let me know.

Image courtesy of Suwit Ritjaroon at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

For better marketing results – Get Experiential!

2016-01-31T20:00:00.000-05:00

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Consumer brand marketers are finding innovative ways to cut through the clutter and independent schools would be wise to pay attention.

The goal of marketing is to make someone feel something. That’s becoming increasingly difficult in large part because we are inundated with marketing messages. So, marketers are continually on the hunt for tactics that can find a straighter route to the heart.

Enter experiential marketing, which is all about creating real-life experiences that form a memorable and emotional connection between the consumer and the brand. Some of the most talked about examples of experiential marketing are pretty outlandish. Have a look at this video that shows how the cable network TNT transformed a quiet corner in Belgium into a bizarre crime scene that ends with the message, “Your Daily Dose of Drama.” You can check out this page for lots of other examples of experiential marketing.

But not all experiential marketing has to have that "wow" factor. In December, chocolate maker Ferrero Rocher invited residents in Toronto and Montreal to drop by a home in their neighborhood for a “holiday house lighting ceremony.” Along with a beautifully lit home, carolers and hot chocolate, Ferrero Rocher chocolates were handed out to those who had come to be part of the event. When interviewed, the company’s spokesperson talked about creating “‘golden moments’ that have a special place in our hearts.”

There’s another dimension to experiential marketing that schools should pay attention to. It is being touted as a highly successful means of reaching millennials. People who have grown up with media and technology along with its ubiquitous stream of marketing have justifiably become a little cynical about sales pitches. As a recent article in theFinancial Post says, “millennials want to experience what a brand has to offer before they lend it their dollars or support. That’s why experiential marketing has taken on a new importance.”

Millennials are also characterized by being both values and relationship driven. Experiential marketing is seen as a means of “building consumer-to-brand relationships [that are] authentic and transparent” and reflecting “collective values” that are the key to supporting a brand.

So, what does all of this have to do with schools? In almost all elementary schools, prospective parents are millennials and you can bet that cynicism and marketing-immunity extend to the universe of prospective parents at all schools. Like any other player in competitive markets, schools have to find a way of cutting through and establishing a meaningful connection with those they want to attract.

For sure, schools don’t have the budget and resources to pull off elaborate experiential marketing events but there is no reason they can’t be guided by the goal of establishing an emotional connection with potential buyers. Here are a few ideas with a fair warning that many of these are simply a product of my imagination and, as far as I know, are untried.

Experiential Open Houses – Let’s start with the obvious. The typical “talking head” open house presentation isn’t going to cut it. At a school that I worked with we had parents visit various classrooms where teachers taught them a mini-lesson as they would their students. Parents sat in a circle, sang songs, repeated words, jumped up and down – and, believe it or not, had a blast. They got to experience school the way their kids would. Best of all, they got to feel just a little bit like a kid and imagine the way their children would feel when they get to school.

Pop-up school – A growing marketing trend is the pop-up store or restaurant. Businesses rent space on a short-term basis to bring a sampling of their products to high traffic areas, to a particular venue that is thematically related to their business or to take advantage of an upcoming event or holiday.

What if you set up a pop-up school at your local mall. Children could drop in and participate in fun, educational activities. Parents could take part and be wowed with a robotics or other technology based activities. The broad idea is to allow people to experience your school. The other experiential points that get made are that learning can be fun and can take place beyond the four walls of a school.

Imagine the future event – The idea is to organize an event or perhaps even a contest for local parents that asks them to imagine what the world will look like in twenty years. Maybe people are asked to predict things like the price of gas, houses or groceries; what countries will or will not exist; the population of cities, countries or the world. It could have a light-hearted component with comedy routines about the future. However its done, the idea is to create an opportunity for parents to experientially consider the future in which their children will come of age and for which their education is preparing them.

School-mobile - The inspiration for this idea is the bookmobile. When I was growing up, we lived a long way from the local library but every week our neighborhood was visited by the bookmobile – an RV shaped vehicle that was a mini-library on wheels.

Schools could take a used school bus and re-model it at as a traveling educational activity centre. Advance publicity would let parents know when to expect the school-mobile in their area. Once it was parked in a particular neighbourhood, children and their parents could hop on the bus and spend an hour or so engaged in fun activities. The school-mobile allows parents and children to experience what a school has to offer and creates a sense of excitement about learning.

Ok, some of these ideas may be a little out there, but what is undeniable is that when schools find ways to experientially make a connection with prospective parents they will see better marketing results.

What do you think?

Have you used any experiential initiatives? Were they successful? Any ideas about other ways to create an emotional connection through experience? I’d love to hear from you.

Why bother branding?

2016-01-07T09:10:00.000-05:00

Let’s face it. Branding projects are a pain in the butt. They’re time consuming, expensive, require intense introspection, demand the finesse of giving stakeholder groups just the right amount of voice, risk exposing deep divisions about foundational principles in your school and when complete, will create an avalanche of work in updating admissions, development and other messaging as well as websites and all kinds of communications and promotional material. And all of that is after the painstaking process of decision making that led to a branding project in the first place.

So, given all of that, why bother branding?

Your knee jerk response might be to point to the potential enrolment benefits of re-branding. And that wouldn’t be wrong. However the benefits of branding extend well beyond the admissions office and into every facet of a school’s operation. Branding can have broad, positive and even transformative impact on a school.

Before going further let’s make sure we have a common understanding of branding. A school’s brand reflects its essence. It communicates the experience of being part of the school community. A brand is a representation of the multi-faceted relationship that parents, students, teachers, staff and other groups groups have with your school. Branding is the process of articulating a school’s essential nature.

Based on that, here are some examples of the profound benefits that come from a successful branding project:

Admissions efforts. Well understood branding gives focus to conversations with prospective parents. Without the clarity of good branding, admissions staff can grapple with what to say about a school and feel like they are constantly reinventing the wheel. Branding uncomplicates admissions efforts and makes it easier for prospective parents to decide if your school is right for their child and them.

Ambassadorship. Having a clearer understanding of what makes a school unique will sharpen the conversations that ambassadors have and ensure that the prospective parents they refer are a better fit.

Parent experience. Current parents can be equal beneficiaries of clearer branding. Tailor your parent experience to match the brand and at every interaction your parents will gain a deep understanding of what makes the school unique, have their choice of the school validated and be better ambassadors.

Customer service. Because the brand is all about the relationship that parents have with your school, more focused branding should make it easier to anticipate and satisfy the needs of parents. Great customer service is the foundation of positive word of mouth and intensifies the benefits of a strong brand.

Community. A brand can be a rallying point for a school, uniting parents, students, administrators, teachers and even trustees around a common quest or cause. When there is clarity about what a school is supposed to be, there can be greater purpose to living up to the brand.

Decision-making. Whether it’s about curriculum, policy, staffing or facilities, branding brings a clearer common basis for decision making. As Peter Gow says in an essential branding publication from NAIS, “Because it stems directly from experience, a school’s brand can be a reliable touchstone in the assessment of current programs as well as in future planning.”

Business Operations. A school’s business office acts in support of the brand as much as any other department. Selecting and assessing suppliers, decisions about facilities and payment policies – just to name a few items – are all given greater focus by a strong brand.

Advancement. A well-articulated brand will be a boon to fundraising efforts. It sharpens the case for giving and brings clarity to solicitations and fundraising appeals because prospective donors are better able to understand what makes the school unique. Likewise, a strong brand can re-affirm the commitment of alumni, strengthening their ties to the school.

Staffing. The brand becomes an effective criterion in staffing decisions. The degree to which prospective teachers and other staff members reflect the brand and are capable of furthering it are key hiring considerations. Conversely, a strong and clearly articulated brand makes a school more attractive to prospective faculty members and helps them decide whether they want to work there.

Classroom content. The head at a school that I worked with would regularly challenge faculty to consider how they would teach material differently if the school’s mission changed. Similarly a school’s brand can inform decisions about the way curriculum is delivered, integrating subject matter and making the brand deeply experiential to students.

Inspiration. The best brands are aspirational. They provide a higher purpose to everything that is done within a school. They make the collective goal clearer. They challenge and, in that way, unite a school community. A vibrant brand will inspire a school to reach higher, achieve more and serve its community better.

All of these factors can also provide a meaningful gauge of your current branding. If it’s not delivering enough of the benefits above, it needs your attention. It may just be that the brand is not being communicated well or it could be time to go back to the drawing board.

The next time you are considering whether to “bother” with a branding project make sure it’s as 360 degree decision and take all the factors above – and more – into consideration.

What do you think?

What’s been the breadth of your school’s experience with branding? What other aspects of school life and operation does branding touch? How do you decide whether it’s time to re-brand?

49 Independent School Content Marketing Topics

2015-12-08T09:35:00.002-05:00

Here are two facts. First, content marketing has been proven to be an extremely successful means of differentiating and driving results for businesses and organizations. Fact number two – independent schools should be doing way more content marketing.

Stop. Let’s make sure we understand what content marketing is. According to the Content Marketing Institute:

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

In very simple terms, content marketing is providing parents or prospective parents with information or experiences (think video) they will consider valuable and will share with others. The real point is that by providing this content, a school demonstrates both its expertise and its ability to relate to the interests and concerns of parents. Great content can make a school’s website or social media platforms a hub for those seeking valuable information or expert opinions.

To be clear, content marketing is not news about the basketball team’s big win, your school’s state-leading performance in standardized tests or a video from the latest science fair.

Content can be delivered from a resource section on your website, through blogs, in e-newsletters, videos, prezi-type presentations, via social media platforms, Vine videos or even apps if your school has one. Content is most effective when it’s written or developed by people within in a school – heads of school, educational leaders, faculty, administrators, lay leaders, staff people and maybe even students. Content marketing also works best when its themes align with your school’s brand or experience and when its part of a plan. This post provides some useful perspectives.

If you think about content marketing as a form of knowledge transfer, you would think that schools, which are wells of knowledge, should be overflowing with ideas for content marketing. And yet, when I talk to schools about content marketing the response I inevitably get is “what would we talk about?”

So, in the interest of making it easier for schools to get going with their content marketing planning, here are 49 suggested content marketing topics for independent schools.

Pre-literacy activities you can do with your child
The pros and cons of standardized testing
How to help your child with homework
How do you know if your child is gifted
Age/grade level book recommendations
How to prepare a pre-schooler for Grade 1
Activities at home to build fine motor skills
How do know if you should hire a tutor for your child
How to talk to children about terrorism
What exactly is critical thinking?
Humorous conversations overheard at school
Suggestions for educational apps
A teacher’s view of parent teacher conferences
Is being perfect a healthy goal?
The school day from the perspective of a front office staff member
Until what age should you read to your children?
The most outrageous rumors heard in the parking lot
How to watch TV with your children
What does 21^st century learning really mean?
How to help your child build self-confidence
What your children really does with the lunches you pack
The pros and cons of teenage cynicism
When is it too early to talk about college prep?
How to help your children learn from receiving a poor grade
The pros and cons of student competition
A teacher’s perspective on managing teenage angst
What’s better? – Summer camp or summer jobs
Do students need to know cursive writing anymore?
Strategies for improving SAT scores
Managing the transition to high school
How you can help your child find a school/career path
Is it really bad to be a helicopter parent?
The academic benefits of participating in athletics
How to help your child cope with the stress of exams
The best ways students can study for tests
The best excuses for not having homework done
Is it ever ok to complain about the mark your child received on a test?
How to argue with your teenager
The synergies of STEM
Where do teachers go to learn?
How do you know if your child is over programmed?
The differences between bullying and arguing
What to do when your child says, “I have no friends”
The challenges of raging hormones in a high school classroom
The funniest excuses students have used for being late
Some school-related signs that your child needs glasses
How students are using their phones in the classroom
Do students really need to know how to tell time?
Strategies for surviving car pool

You can see that topics don’t always have to be serious. They just have to be interesting or of value. I figure that if I could come up with 49 topics, there must be thousands more that you can write, blog, video, prezi or talk about.

What do you think?

Have you used any of these for your content marketing? Which ones do you hate? Which do you love? What’s the state of content marketing at your school?

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.netPhoto

Are you ready for a whole new generation?

2015-11-23T09:31:00.001-05:00

There’s something going on with your prospective parents and some of your newer parents. You may not know exactly what it is by I bet you recognize some of the symptoms. The diagnosis is that we’re on the cusp of a generational shift.

Here’s just a bit of background. Demographers categorize generations by year of birth. Each generation has unique characteristics shaped by the social dynamics and world events of its time. Knowing that, consider this.

Generation	Born	Age in 2015
Gen X	1965-1979	36-50
Millennials	1980-2000	15-35

You can see that over the past five years, more and more of your prospective parents have become millennials. They are very different than the GenXers that preceded them. So, what do you we know about millenials? Here are eight distinctive qualities.

Entitled. They have always been treated as special and important.
Sheltered. They were highly protected as children.
Confident. They are motivated and goal-oriented.
Collaborators. They are team-oriented and like to share
Achievers. Grade point averages and other success markers are rising with this generation.
Pressured. They are trophy kids and feel pushed to work hard, plan for the long term.
Conventional. They are very respectful of their parents’ opinions.
Digital Natives. They were raised on technology.

Is this starting to ring a bell yet? Parents that are driven, expect high levels of attention and are prepared to tell the world when they receive it – and when they don’t.

But wait. There’s more. Here’s some interesting marketing data on the millennial generation.

According to a recent study, millennials said they trusted the reviews of peers (68%) more than professionals (64%)

Millennials trust product information from user-generated content (social networks 50%; peer reviews 68%; conversations with friends 74%) far more than from traditional media (TV 34%; Radio 37%; Print 44%)

Another study found that this generation is heavily reliant on crowd sourcing to make brand purchase decisions. 94% said they use at least one outside source to make a decision and an incredible 40% said they use four or more sources.

And it works both ways because 74% of millennials believe that they influence the purchasing decisions of others.

So, what does all this mean in terms of your marketing and recruitment efforts? Here are some approaches to consider.

It’s all about ambassadors. Your most prized educational leader or the praise of a recognized educational expert doesn’t stand a chance against what other parents are saying about your school. Inform, engage and inspire your current parents to use all of their networks to say wonderful things about your school. Many of them crave the opportunity to do just that.

There are no secrets. You can’t play the game of telling parents only what they want to hear because they are so connected that they are going to hear about everything else anyway. And you can assume that any shortcomings – whether staff, program or facilities related – are well known to your prospective parent community. The only solution is to be open and honest. Many times, parents are more interested in how you are addressing challenges than the fact that they exist.

Meet them on their turf. If your prospects do most of their research and make most decisions online, then be a facilitator. Yes, this means you need to have a robust social media strategy to capture the crowdsourcing potential. But it also necessitates a strong content marketing plan. Provide valuable resources to engage and empower parents. And make sure that parents can take immediate action through online applications and registration.

Demonstrate results. There’s nothing like the success story of an alum to appeal to parents who are true achievers. Deliver that story in a way that makes it easy to share (like video) and you can magnify the impact. Take a data driven approach and post empirical results on your website. That doesn’t necessarily mean standardized test results. Transform assessment data that you are using into information that is of interest to prospective parents.

Involve grandparents. This is a generation that admires and respects their parents. You can bet they will consult them when making a decision about school. Grandparent and special friend days only happen once grandchildren once the sale has been made and students are in the school. But grandparents are important influencers for this cohort. It could be worth considering a recruitment campaign targeted specifically at grandparents.

Accept them for who they are. There’s no question that parents who always feel that they are deserving of special attention can be a pain in the butt. But trying to modify their behavior is an exercise in futility. They are paying significant amounts of money to send their kids to your school. Treat them like the customers they are.

As it relates to prospective parents, millennials are just coming of age and you are going to be dealing with them for many years. Now’s the time to develop your millennial strategy.

What do you think?
Are you seeing the millennial shift in your school? What are you doing about it? Let me know.

My Stupidly Simple Explanation of Branding

2015-06-04T13:32:00.002-04:00

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Branding is complicated. It’s time consuming. It can be damn expensive. So, selling your boss or your board on the idea of engaging in a branding project can be a monumental task.

But here’s what makes it even harder. Most people don’t know what a brand is. In part that’s because marketers create a whole language around branding that is totally unintelligible. It’s also a result of the way words get re-purposed and often misused – particularly in social media.

So, as a way of helping organizations, schools and businesses understand why branding is really important and with deference to the many, many marketing experts and authorities who know way more than me, I offer the following rather simple explanation of branding.

Have you ever had a conversation with a significant other that goes something like this?

“Do you love me?”

“Yes, I love you.”

“Why? Tell me why you love me.”

For most people that results in a big gulp and a desperate stalling tactic like, “What do you mean?”

But if you were able to provide an honest answer to that question, it would be complex and multi-layered. It would involve the way someone looks, thinks and acts, particularly when those acts are directed at you. The answer would be revealed in your experience with that person or perhaps in what others have told you about him. It would also be based on how you imagine your loved one would react in certain circumstances – perhaps as a spouse or a parent.

Now, imagine you want to replicate that relationship many times over. Let’s say you want more people to love you, or those who already love you to love you more. You are going to need an accurate and effective answer to “Why do you love me?” – one that reflects the many ways in which many different people can love you.

And guess what? The answer to that question is your brand. So, based on all that, here’s my definition of a brand.

A brand is an expressive representation of the complex relationship that customers and other stakeholders have with an organization.

It's a simple concept but I think that some of the words need explaning.

Expressive – Brands have to appeal to the head and the heart – and even more, they have to motivate, inspire and incite action. You want people to be excited about telling other people about you.

Representation – It can be words, photos, videos, graphics, events, and yes even a logo. A brand can be communicated in a myriad of ways.

Relationship – If it isn’t already obvious, just like relationships are two-way streets so is your brand. You can’t unilaterally decide what your brand is. In branding, perception is truly reality.

Customers – Many organizations don’t traditionally think about constituents as customers but the reality is that people have choices about whether they affiliate with your organization. For example, parents at independent schools pay a small fortune in tuition and deserve to be treated like customers. Fundraising organizations would also be wise to look at donors from a customer centric perspective.

Stakeholders – I know this one of those words that gets used too often but the point is that many people other than customers have important relationships with your business or organization. Think about previous buyers, suppliers, employees and alumni. All of those people have something to say about the nature of your brand.

By the way, I know the “love” thing is going to be a bit much for some people. If it makes you feel more comfortable you can substitute “respect” or “admire” for “love” and ask, “Why do you respect me?” I would argue however that the most passionate (and therefore successful) ambassadors for your organization are going to be those that can say, “Let me tell you why I love XYZ school.”

At a branding workshop for independent schools that I led early this year, the person opening the session said, “This morning we’re going to talk about the big, bad ‘B’ word.” One of the reasons that branding is a pain in the butt is that people don’t know what it is. Hopefully, my simple (some might say naïve or mushy) explanation is a step in the right direction.

What do you think?

Is a lack of understanding getting in the way of branding projects at your organization?

What definitions of branding have helped you?

How are you advancing branding projects in your organization?

Heads of school are the key to marketing success

2015-04-30T12:45:00.000-04:00

More than ever before, it is critical that heads of school become integrally involved with marketing.

Why now, you ask? Because marketing has morphed from being a fixed set of activities that emanates from a particular office to something that now touches every department in a school.

When parents register their children at your school, they are buying way more than an education. What was once a product has become an experience. And parents – as customers – now see their relationship with a school through the lens of that experience. A whole new imperative for school marketing has been established.

This is what the people at McKinsey have to say in a brilliant article called We’re all Marketers Now.

In today’s marketing environment, companies will be better off if they stop viewing customer engagement as a series of discrete interactions and instead think about it as customers do: a set of related interactions that, added together, make up the customer experience.

So, every interaction a parent has contributes to the quality of her overall experience with your school. The implications of that are far-reaching. As McKinsey puts it, “To engage customers whenever and wherever they interact with a company … marketing must pervade the entire organization.”

Putting that into practice, marketing has to be part of every department’s plans and the way that every staff person conducts himself. Interactions with the front office, teachers, educational leaders, the business office – even custodians – all contribute to the parent experience. Everyone now has some responsibility for marketing.

Now we get to the hard part. How exactly will the marketing department extend its influence and provide direction and support throughout the whole organization? And as the McKinsey article asks, “ … if everyone’s responsible for marketing, who’s accountable?"

Realistically this is not something that school admissions or marketing professionals are going to be able to deal with on their own. Even directors of enrolment management or advancement don’t have the implicit authority to put marketing on every department’s agenda and demand accountability. You don’t have to be a clairvoyant, to see, as McKinsey does, that, “Behind the scenes, that new reality creates a need for coordination and conflict resolution mechanisms within and across functions ...”

Enter heads of school. It is only with their involvement, influence and authority as well as their knowledge, experience and judgment that a positive and pervasive parent experience can be established.

Want to understand why that’s true? Who else can persuasively speak to faculty about the ways in which they can meaningfully contribute to the parent experience? Who is going to have the conversation with the people in the business office about ensuring positive interactions with parents?

How else can we ensure that the people who guide parents into a school – the admissions department - remain part of the parent experience and, in that way, contribute to retention success? And finally, who will speak with trustees and lay people about the ways in which their actions contribute to the parent experience and positive enrolment results?

Only heads of school have the reach and the credibility to raise the prominence of marketing and the parent experience. It is only heads of school that can demand marketing accountability from every department and every staff person.

I understand that the last thing that heads need is more on their management plate. Ultimately, this may be a responsibility that can be jointly assumed by heads and trustees or perhaps the appropriate authority can be conveyed to someone else in the organization. However, it seems inescapable to me that the head will have to maintain some increased involvement in marketing.

In the past year as I have spoken at admissions conferences about independent school marketing, I inevitably have encountered professionals who are confounded by how they are going to affect the necessary formidable change in their schools. As incredibly competent and well meaning as they are, the answer is that marketing’s effect on enrollment (and other) results will only be fully realized with the involvement of heads of school.

What do you think?

Am I wrong? Can this kind of change happen without the increased involvement of heads? Have you had some relevant, noteworthy experiences. I’d love to hear from you.

Let's hear those amazing independent school customer service stories

2015-04-06T15:48:00.000-04:00

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I’m betting that there are some independent schools that have “knock your socks off” customer service stories.

Exceptional customer service is increasingly becoming the most effective way for companies and organizations to differentiate themselves from their competition. Even so, there are some customer service stories that stand out as being truly remarkable. As an example, you can read this story of how someone from the Morton’s Steakhouse in Hackensack NJ personally delivered a meal 24 miles away at Newark Airport. Not surprisingly, social media channels lit up with this story being told and retold.

The potential for outstanding customer service to impact on organizational results is the reason that this past fall representatives of a number of colleges and universities attended a three-day conference with representatives of Ritz Carlton, Disney, Kimberly- Clark and Southwest Airlines.

Increasingly delivering outstanding customer service is becoming a necessity for independent schools. That’s why I’m currently working on a number of publications and presentations detailing the benefits to independent schools of focusing on the customer experience.

But I would also bet that there are dozens of great independent school customer service stories – occasions when a teacher, administrator or someone in the business office went absolutely above and beyond to solve a parent’s or a student’s problem. And I’d love to hear about them. If you have an amazing story that you would like to have retold, you can include it as a comment below or email me directly.

I’m looking forward to being blown away by your stories.

The truth about one-page letters

2014-12-09T10:37:00.000-05:00

Imagine this. You’re meeting with your lawyer to review an important business contract and she hands you one page. You ask, “Where is the rest of the contract?” and she replies, “We have a rule in our office that contracts can only be one page. I couldn’t get all of the clauses in, but I got the most important ones.”

Absurd, right? Who could possibly imagine that the length of a contract determines its effectiveness? When it comes to contracts, we clearly choose completeness over brevity.

Why is it then that when it comes to letters, we are convinced of the opposite? I can’t tell you how many times clients have asked me to draft a letter with the overriding instruction being it has to be one page.

I’m well aware of the many famous quotations that say it’s harder to write a short letter than a longer one. And as a writer, I know that my first draft will almost always be too long. But that just says that three pages might be better than four and yes, that one might be better than two. It doesn’t mean that a one-page letter is a necessarily superior form of communication.

To be clear, I’m not talking about perfunctory letters that are simply designed to convey a small amount of information. The letter letting me know that my electricity is about to be disconnected for non-payment doesn’t need to be more than one page.

But if your letter is intended to have impact, to shape opinion or to influence decision-making, imposing a one-page limit is counter-productive. In discussing clarity v. impact, Seth Godin says, “…often, being crystal clear about categorization, topic sentences and the deliverable get in the way of actually making an impact.”

It seems to me that if you are bothering to write in the first place, you might as well do the best possible job of communicating. You demonstrate your respect for your customers by not sacrificing form over function. You are saying to the reader that you are so important to our organization that we are prepared to take the time to fully explain what it is we have to say.

On top of that, multi-page letters deliver greater results. For example, in the fundraising world, they have been proven to result in more donations.

Let’s turn this around. The real question isn’t whether a one-page letter is superior. Rather, it’s why your customers or constituents won’t read a multi-page letter from your organization. The answers to that question may reveal deeper, more important issues. Here are some possibilities.

Your letters aren’t well written. The insistence on brevity is often an admission of ineptitude. People read columns, articles and books every day. They all exceed one page. If a letter is well written – with an effective hook to interest the reader – and with content and style that is compelling, people will make it through that extra page or two.

It’s not important to them. If people aren’t reading your letters, it may indicate that you have lost touch with them. What you are writing about isn’t important to them. Or, apropos to the point above, you have in the first paragraph or two failed to establish why the reader should continue on. In either case, you need to spend a little more time re-connecting with your reader.

They are not engaged. If your customers don’t perceive there to be any value in their association with your company, they are not going to be interested in your letters – whether they are one page or four. Any communication with a constituent is only as good as the experience that has preceded it. You may have a much larger problem on your hands that has more to do with branding than letter-writing.

The reality is that when someone says, “People will never read more than one page” it’s not an assessment of the inclination or ability of the reader. It’s an admission that there’s something lacking in the relationship with the customer to whom the letter is being written.

So, the one-page letter becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Providing less information and context diminishes the possibility of engagement and makes it even less likely that the constituent will read a longer letter in the future. Unless you break the cycle, you will be doomed to a future of brief but ineffective communication.

What do you think?

Do you insist on one-page letters? Are people just too rushed to be bothered to read multi-page letters? Do you have any experience or data to shed light on the question?

How are you unboxing your school?

2014-09-08T08:50:00.002-04:00

You may never have heard of it, but "unboxing" is not only all over YouTube, it may be a great way of achieving marketing success at your independent school.

There’s a video on YouTube that shows a pair of hands unpacking five cartoon branded plastic eggs each with a toy surprise inside. No big deal. There are billions of videos on You Tube. But get this. This video has over 93 million views. Now that’s a big deal.

It’s all part of a phenomenon called “unboxing” that I recently discovered after listening to an interview with Mireille Silcoff who wrote an article about it for the New York Times. There are thousands of unboxing videos on YouTube. You can watch people unpacking everything from high tech gadgets to cosmetics to toys. Wikipedia even has an entry for unboxing.

What’s going on here? Why would millions of people watch someone else unpack something?

The process of unpacking something you have just bought is a very visceral experience. It’s pure emotion – excitement, expectation, pride of ownership. There is great anticipation. That first look at or feel of whatever is in the box can be a “oh wow!” kind of moment. And it’s so powerful that people love to watch other people unpack things. Think about birthdays or Christmas and watching someone unwrap a gift. There aren’t many other events that can provide such vicarious enjoyment.

From a marketing perspective, it’s one more reminder that sales is a transfer of emotion and that people don’t just want to buy a product – they want to have an experience. The best marketers meticulously consider those first moments that a customer spends with a product to ensure that the unboxing experience is not only fantastic but is consistent with the overall brand experience of the company.

So, here’s the question. Can the unboxing experience be replicated in independent schools? Are there interaction points and special moments or milestones that can effectively be unboxed?

Here’s one. When a student is accepted, the package that is sent to parents is an obvious unboxing opportunity. What does the envelope look like? Does it have to be an envelope? What’s the first thing that is visible when the package is opened and how does that shape the experience you are trying to create? Does it create a sense of excitement, pride and maybe even accomplishment? Is there something in the package for the student? Perhaps there should be a separate student package. If you don’t have a formal acceptance package, maybe you should create one just for the purpose of creating an experience. If your acceptance process is finalized online, there are ways of creating a web-based or email based unboxing experience. Acceptance is a key moment in the sales process. You want to completely validate the choice that parents have made and align it with your school’s brand.

Another possibility. A child’s first day of school is a watershed moment for parents. Tapping into that emotion and making it an essential part of their experience with their new school can be very powerful. How can you unbox that experience? Perhaps parents with first-time school goers can receive a kit in advance with helpful information and useful things like labels or tags as well as something for kids like stickers. Maybe it comes in a box or a special folder that identifies it as something the school has specially created for first-time school parents.

Here’s a related possibility. Every moment of a child’s first day of school is a real-time unboxing experience filled with awe and wonder. What if you use video to capture some of those moments and send it to parents. I saw a news segment the other day about a parent that had strapped a GoPro camera to her child’s chest so that she could experience her daughter’s first day of school. It’s a little extreme but there’s no question that it reflects one parent’s desire to vicariously be part of her child’s first-day unboxing experience.

Once you get comfortable with the premise, I’ll bet there are dozens of unboxing experiences that you can create in your schools – from things as momentous as grade 1 graduation to those as mundane as tuition packages.

The key is to always think about parents as customers and look for the ways in which you can create validating experiences that reinforce your school’s brand.

What do you think?

Is it possible to create unboxing experiences? Have you created unboxing experiences in your school? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Big data for not-so-big organizations

2014-04-07T09:33:00.000-04:00

Read any business, marketing or management publication these days and you're almost certain to find an article about Big Data. The natural conclusion is that big data is for big organizations. That could be because just the term "big data" will leave those responsible for smaller organizations either terror-stricken or in a boredom induced coma. But concluding that not-so-big organizations have nothing to learn from the lessons of big data is a big mistake.

First, let's deal with this big name, "big data." While its true that there are companies that are combing terabytes of data to develop the algorithm that will predict the buying patterns of consumers in Wichita, those organizations represent the vast minority. Don't be intimidated by references to big data. Rather, consider how increased use of data can help you make better decisions.

Quoted in a CNN Money post, Sheryl Pattek, a principal at Forrester Research said, "It's not really a question of big data as much as it's a question of the right data. It's about turning data into insights that you can act on to drive business."

In other words, when it comes to data, size doesn't matter. However the value of data is irrefutable. As a recent report from Teradata concludes, "The evidence is proving that companies that act quickly based on data-driven decisions are succeeding over their peers."

This is particularly the case with marketing efforts. As the same report says, "data-driven marketing bridges the gap between what you do and what customers want."

So, where to begin? What data should you be sure to be assembling and how can you use it?

Contact information. This may sound ridiculously obvious but an e-marketer report on big data (ironically titled, Using Big Data Still a Challenge for Marketers) concluded that contact data was the most important for marketing success. Do you have an email address, or better yet, the most current email address for every customer or constituent? Do you have a program in place that makes it easy and encourages people to update their contact info? Once you've dealt with those questions, shift the analysis to prospective customers or donors and ensure that you have complete information for them. For example, do you have a first and last name to go with every prospect email address? Without that info, you eliminate the possibility of email personalization and the chances of converting that prospect into a buyer become slim.

The e-marketer report also presented the most valuable data that execs said was unavailable to them. Those data categories are essential to organizations. These are some of them and what you can do about them.

Web behavior. You better have Google Analytics running on your site. If not, stop reading this post and immediately contact the person responsible for your site. There is a ton of information that Google Analytics makes available to you that in turn will give you insight into the behavior of visitors to your site. Some examples: Where are they coming from? Is it from searches in a browser and if so what are the keywords that are delivering them? Alternatively, is there an external link that is responsible for referrals? What pages are people looking at on your site? Are they the ones that are important to purchases or donations? Should you re-jig content to increase conversions? The list of questions and resultant actions is endless. Google even provides a bevy of success stories that you can learn from.

Demographics. Hopefully you have lots of information about the people you engage with - whether as prospects or buyers. This includes age, income, location, maybe even marital status, number of children and other data that might be uniquely important to your organization. For example an independent school may want to know what schools siblings attend or attended. You should be able to construct the profile or profiles of your archetypical buyers. Then the question becomes where do you find more just like them.

Purchase (or donation) history. If you can track not only what people have committed to but the path they took getting there, you have powerful information. Combine this with demographic data and you could build powerful personas that you you can use to target marketing and messaging. For example if you discover that people with a particular combination of demographic markers are more likely to buy (donate/apply) when presented with certain information, you can target that segment and get them that information sooner or exclusively.

You can see that the same big data that C-level execs are looking at can benefit any organization - even those that aren't so big. The CNN post referenced above said that big data "seems to mean everything and nothing at the same time." That may be true but there is no denying that, as I said in a previous post, the discipline of data is the foundation for marketing innovation. No matter how large your organization don't dismiss the big ideas behind big data.

What do you think?
How are using the premise of big data to further the success of your organization? What did I miss? What advice do you have?

Save your marketing dollars. Focus on fundamentals.

2014-03-19T18:21:00.000-04:00

My suggestion to most schools is to stop whatever marketing you are doing and re-consider everything.

The impetus for this unusual advice was the plethora of independent school radio ads I heard this year. It seemed to me that twice as many schools as last year were running radio spots. They weren't very effective but there were lots of them and they were undoubtedly very expensive.

Of all people, I understand that the independent school marketplace is incredibly and increasingly competitive. That in turn, drives schools - almost desperately - to ratchet up marketing efforts using as many channels as they can think of or afford. The result is ads on buses, bus shelters, national newspapers, billboards and yes, radio. It's an ad rep's dream but do they really do anything? After all, these are wide-net advertising vehicles being used for narrow target markets.

In addition, there are now more "education guide" type publications than ever before. Here in Toronto, there are four or five of these. This has created two other dynamics. First, schools are scrambling to get their ads in these publications – in many cases for fear of being notable by their absence. That produces the second effect which is the need for pithy headlines and taglines. These gems of copywriting may keep some of my colleagues in business but they do nothing to differentiate. Here are some examples:

Be yourself. Be great.
Be remarkable
I am limitless
Dedicated to Developing the Whole Child
Become. Go Beyond.
Confidence. It's Who We Are
Igniting A Passion for the Art of Learning
Learning for Life. Creating the Future.
Education with Balance

Let's be honest. Each of those could apply to any one of about 50 schools. They become meaningless – as does much of the marketing effort I've described above.

All of this marketing activity – with its accompanying expense – is more mystifying when every piece of market research that I have ever done or read clearly indicates that word of mouth is the principal driver of the decision to choose any independent school.

So, as I said, it's time to stop and re-discover the fundamentals. How? For that I turn to a great social fresh post from the beginning of the year that presented tips for 2014 from marketing pros. Here are the ones that make the most sense for independent schools.

1. Focus on the product. I always tell the educators with whom I work that my job is to take their great work and put in on a pedestal. But there has to be great work. The social fresh post goes even farther. "90% of companies would see more “marketing” success if they focused that energy NOT on marketing, but rather on improving the product or the service. Doing something worth talking about is more difficult."

2. Create and sustain buzz. Fuel and enable word of mouth through effective ambassador and communication programs. The marketing tip puts it this way: "Nurture advocacy! And instead of creating marketing campaigns, build movements around your brand. Only brands that focus deeply on building and nurturing long-term relationships with their true advocates will see sustainable business results."

3. Treat your parents like customers. My previous blog post provided some advice on how do that but here's what social fresh says. "Focus on customer experience. Brands like USAA, Amazon, Apple, and Google don’t succeed in social media because they have better content or social strategies, but because they offer great experiences and let customers do the talking for them."

4. Make social media a two-way channel. It's your opportunity to learn, listen and really be able to empathize. Or as the experts say, "social Media is not just a news broadcasting tool. Engage with your fan base: it is a blessing to have fans and customers, so treat them as such."

5. Stop, take a breath and do a reality check. Then, create (or re-create) a plan. The expert advice goes like this: "Re-evaluate everything. Do you think you know who your customers are, what they need, and how they are getting their information about your products?"

The irony is that sometimes it's harder to stop what you're doing and re-evaluate its effectiveness. It's easy to get caught up in the vortex of needing more marketing – and more marketing dollars. Smart school marketers will find a way to stop the cycle and re-focus on fundamentals.

What do you think?
Is independent school marketing out of control? What are you doing to stay focused on effectiveness? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

How to personalize the parent experience

2014-03-05T14:03:00.000-05:00

A recent Huffington Post article asks the question, “Is 2014 the year of personalization?” Examples of personalization in marketing abound from the sublime of Virgin America's Chatter initiative that will use video screens to deliver a personalized travel experience to the ridiculous of Nordstrom's personalized panties.

For any business or organization, personalization is an important, and maybe even essential way to differentiate and build strong customer relationships. So, how do independent schools jump on the bandwagon and begin to offer their customers a personalized experience?

Let's start with the obvious. Parents expect that their children are going to receive individualized attention and that any interaction related to their child's progress will be uniquely focused. But let's face it - meeting the individual needs of diverse learners isn't exactly groundbreaking in 2014. You are more likely be notable by the absence of differentiation, than by its presence.

Also, let's be clear about who the customer is. Parents pay for the education their children receive. From a customer relations perspective, students are essentially a proxy. If you want to impress the customer, it's the parent that must be the focus.

First, let’s deal with the prerequisites to personalization.

Data is the foundation of personalization. It starts with basics – contact info, names of other family members like siblings or grandparents. Beyond that good data could include birthdays and other milestone dates. However, the real crux of useful data is that the details of every meaningful interaction a parent has with the school must be recorded whether its a meeting with a principal or a negotiation with the tuition office. That leads to the next point.

Data discipline and consistency are vital to personalization. Every staff member must understand the importance of recording the details of interactions and effective data conventions must be in place. Something as simple as recording a date as 3/5/14 as opposed to 5/3/14 can yield disastrous results. This also means using the right tools. Schools need a database that provides necessary structured data fields as well as the ability to create specialized areas in which to record information that is particular to the school.

What can you do with all this data? Here are a few basic ideas that share one common theme. Parents want to know that you know who they are.

Personalize the personal meeting. Any time a head of school, a principal, an educational consultant or someone from the business office meets with a parent, it’s essential that they access to detailed information and ideally have familiarized themselves with it. It’s both impressive and comforting to a parent when the person with whom they are meeting can ask about other family members, knows about unique circumstances and the details of previous meetings or calls.

Acknowledge important events. This should include personal letters recognizing a birth or a death in a parent's family. Personal birthday wishes for students are commonplace. Take that to the next level and send each parent a birthday greeting. What if you sent birthday cards to siblings not yet at the school? You can also recognize significant achievements in parents’ lives, whether those are in business or in communal efforts.

Personalize the business experience. Think about your last call to a local utility or financial services company. It makes a huge difference when the person with whom you are speaking can access notes about your individual circumstances and previous interactions. A parent’s communication with the school’s business is no different. When a parent calls, the person on the line should be able to call up a database record and speak knowledgably about that parent’s circumstances. In addition, every form that a parent is required to fill out, whether online or on paper, could have the name, address and contact info fields already completed.

Tailor the web. A school that I work with recently introduced a personalized parent dashboard that upon login, presents essential links for each child including teacher names and contact info, class lists and parent resources. Using cookies would make it possible for a parent visiting the website to be presented with the items he or she viewed most often.

While these may all sound like common sense, in a busy school environment, it takes forethought and discipline to make any of these happen on a routine basis. Think about all the ways a parent interacts with the school and be vigilant about finding ways to personalize the parent experience.

What do you think?
Is personalization a key to independent school success? How are you personalizing the parent experience in your school? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

4 ways to change your customer relationships forever

2014-02-20T15:00:00.000-05:00

Forget about customer satisfaction. Your real goal ought to be customer transformation.

Every now and then you come across an idea that is just brilliant. Do yourself a favour and read a Harvard Business Review post from a couple of years ago called, "Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become?" In it, Michael Schrage a research fellow at MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business, argues that just meeting the needs of customers or even addressing their pain points, isn't good enough.

His assertion is that most business owners see customers only as a means to the end goal of growth or profitability. True success however comes from making the customer the raison d'etre of all business activity and asking the question, who do you want your customers to become? Shrage turns the classic approach to innovation on its head. Instead of asking how can we design better products and services, the more powerful question is how can we design better customers. Think about Apple. Ten years ago, their customers never imagined the ways in which a smartphone would impact their lives.

It's a powerful idea. But does it have practical application for the 99.9% of businesses that lack the god-like aura of Apple? Can a manufacturing company or a professional services firm really transform the lives of its customers? The answer is a resounding yes but it demands that you answer an incredibly challenging question. For my business, what do I want my customers to become? Do you want them to use products differently or implement new processes or take a more sophisticated view of an industry? Another way of looking at it is what is the intersection point of a better state of being for my customers and improved business performance for me?

The path to changing the reality of your customers begins with a very practical question. How can you begin to transform the lives of customers today? Here are 4 ways.

Engage. You can't begin to think about making customers' lives better without knowing who and what your customers are today. Give them tons of opportunities to tell you about what they want and need. That can be done using social media or various forms of market research. Or better yet, go out and meet with your customers. In person. Nothing can replace the power of a face to face conversation.

Inform. Make sure your customers are up to date with the latest trends and best practices. Yes, they should be subscribed to your blog and receiving of all your case studies. But you can also point them to other sources of information – industry sites and newsletters, conferences and webinars for example.

Connect. Create communities for your customers. Give them the opportunity to talk to others in the same industry or those from different industries with similar challenges. How? You can create online forums or social media communities. But the low tech approach may be the best. Introduce your customers to other customers – one-on-one or in gatherings. Enable them to develop the relationships that will make a difference to their business.

Inspire. Help customers set the bar higher. Empower your customers to see beyond their current realities and imagine something better - whether its a new product, process or ultimately better results. Provide your customers with white papers that detail the cutting edge of the industry. Connect them to inspiring people. Talk to them about – or better yet introduce them to – businesspeople who dared to dream. Share your own aspirations.

The reality is that by making your customers both the means and the end goal of business success – by putting them at the very centre of what you do, you not only have the potential to transform your customers, but you will create a truly powerful relationship with them. No pricing strategy, customer satisfaction plan or quality assurance program can match the impact of transforming the lives of customers.

What do you think?

Is the goal of customer transformation reasonable and attainable? How would you achieve it? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

9 ways to get survey results that matter

2013-02-13T20:10:00.000-05:00

You probably know that surveying stakeholders is critically important to the marketing success of your business, school or organization. That’s the easy part. The hard part is how to get started.

There are consultants and firms that will develop surveys and provide analysis but like all good things in life, they come at a cost. On the other hand there are numerous online alternatives, many of which are very robust and cost effective – and are worth using. But, for your research to be effective, you need to know what you are doing. With that in mind here are a few (nine to be exact) tips on how to create surveys so that you get results that matter.

1. Link questions to decisions. Think about the questions you need to have answered in order to make important decisions for your organization. You may want to start with a list of issues that are currently under discussion. For example, you may want reaction to the new product line, the revised curriculum or updated donation opportunities. Survey questions should also support decision-making on longer term issues like service, quality and pricing because it's not going to be practical or meaningful to survey more than once a year.

2. Make it actionable. Don’t ask questions for the sake of asking questions. If you can’t or are not prepared to act upon the results related to a particular question, don’t ask it. You don’t want to ask your customers how they feel about your hours of operation if you do business in a mall where those hours are restricted. Similarly, you don’t want to ask for feedback on your organization’s mission or philosophy if is there is no mandate from the Board to make changes. In addition to wasting the time of the respondent in answering these questions and your own time in tracking results, you will be setting unattainable expectations. If you ask me whether I would prefer to have expanded donation opportunities, I assume that by answering the question I may influence change. If that change is not possible, you’re just leading me toward inevitable disappointment.

3. It’s got to be measurable. If you just want to hear what people are saying about your organization, you can monitor social media or stand in the school parking lot. The point of surveying is to arrive at results that you can analyze and compare – year over year or to other similar organizations. Questions have to be framed in a way that allows for measurable results. Have respondents rank or rate statements or choose from a list of potential responses.

4. Make questions precise. You want to zone in on exactly what it is you want to know and make sure the question will provide the response. Instead of asking a respondent to rate their satisfaction with the service provided, ask them about the various aspects of that service. Was it prompt? Were their questions answered? Was it delivered pleasantly? This will not only provide precise information, it will be a more effective guide to changes in customer service you may want to consider.

5. Use clarity. What you are asking the respondent needs to be crystal clear. Test your question by imagining yourself in the shoes of your customer and ask yourself whether you would understand what’s being asked. When people take a survey and don’t really understand what’s being asked, they skip the question or answer indiscriminately.

6. Be polite and conversational. Phrases like “Now we want to ask you some questions about why you support our organization” are effective because they show respect and they may even make the intent of the question clearer. Questions that begin with please – as in “Please rate the following ….” value the respondent and by making the experience more pleasant. In that way, you also increase the chances that someone will complete the survey.

7. Open-ends add context. Open-ended questions – those that require a narrative response – are important for two reasons. They add context to the measurable parts of the survey. By reviewing the open-ended responses you will likely begin to understand the reasons for empirical results. In addition, respondents often want the opportunity to express an opinion or tell you their story. The responses can be very rich. Just be prepared for the bad news as well as the good.

8. Be time sensitive. There are probably tons of questions that you would like answered but a survey that is too long compromises the quality of responses in two ways. This research from the people at Survey Monkey proves that the longer the survey, the fewer people will complete it. But the deeper finding is that the longer the survey, the less time respondents spend on each question. While greater respondent affinity (as is the case with schools and religious organizations) buys more time tolerance, your survey should take no more than 10 minutes for maximum effectiveness.

9. Report back. This is the step that is probably most often missed by organizations that conduct research. Close the loop by reporting back to your stakeholders on the results of the survey. You can brag about the positive responses and in addition tell your community what action you are taking as a result of negative responses. It demonstrates accountability, transparency and a commitment to your customers and to continuous improvement. It will also encourage people to participate in future surveys.

Done well, surveying stakeholders will allow you to gauge satisfaction, determine the effectiveness of marketing or operational initiatives and verify the assumptions you are making about customer behaviour. Perhaps most importantly it is the best way to evaluate the success of branding efforts.

What do you think? Do you have any advice for those doing their own research or any experience wit your own research that you think can be helpful?. Please share.

Branding gaps and 6 ways to bridge them

2013-02-06T10:45:00.001-05:00

Branding gaps are the most likely source of declining enrolment in an independent school. But where do you find them and what do you do about them?

First, some ground rules. For the purpose of this discussion I am using Seth Godin’s definition of a brand: “A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.” So, you can see that a brand is infinitely more than logo, tagline and ad copy.

Now, to define branding gaps we need to accept that organizations effectively have two brands. One is the promised brand – the one that marketing, communication, mission and other efforts have been designed to convey. The other is the delivered brand. This is the one you find out about when you survey stakeholders and ask them to characterize their experience with and perceptions of your school. In organizations that really have their branding act together (think Apple, Whole Foods), the two are aligned. In most organizations, there are going to be differences between the promised brand and the delivered brand and those differences are the branding gaps.

There are many sources of branding gaps. Most of them can and should be considered proactively. Here are some ideas for where those gaps maybe lurking in your school and what to do about them.

Teachers – There is no one more important to delivering your school’s brand than teachers. For most families, they are the most common point of communication. It’s critical that teachers know and understand the school’s brand. Clearly it should be reflected in all their communication with students and parents and that includes classroom websites and email blasts. I would contend that the brand should also be evident in the classroom. I know a Head of School that challenges teachers to consider the changes they would make to classroom content if the mission of the school changed. If mission and curriculum are married, then brand must also be part of the educational product.

Everyday Communication – Parents are recipients of what sometimes seems like an endless stream of communication from the school. While this often deals with day-to-day issues like early closings, lunch programs and upcoming events, there’s no reason that it shouldn’t reflect the school’s brand. The danger is that much of this type of communication is often written hastily by people other than marketing and communications staff. There are a number of solutions. Many of these communications can be anticipated and templates can be prepared in advance. Everyone in the organization should be brand-trained and understand how that affects even the most mundane messaging. Finally, a review system that gives the communications staff the final say could help maintain the brand.

Office staff – We all know the adage about having one chance to make a first impression and office staff are the front line of most interaction with stakeholders – whether in person, by phone or by email. Like everyone else, they need to understand the school’s brand promise but more importantly they need to know how to incorporate that into daily activity. Front-line staff in a school that emphasizes inclusivity and diversity should communicate differently than those in an elite IB school.

Board members – Lay people are often represent the greatest brand challenge. Their implicit contract with the school is not employment based and requires more refined management measures. Yet they wield tremendous influence –within the school community and the community at large. Brand training for board members is essential. What’s more is that lay people are often not aware of the ways in which they subtly make brand impressions in their everyday conversation.

Mission/Marketing Misalignment – Finally, it’s possible that everyone in the organization is delivering the brand experience dictated by its mission or even brand strategy and the real problem is that marketing efforts have missed the mark. What’s being promised isn’t what’s being delivered. Assuming that most people are satisfied with their interaction with the organization, the fix is to re-tool the marketing effort.

The real solution is the 3 M’s - You can only fix branding gaps that you are aware of. The key to brand management is to measure, monitor and modify. You have to survey stakeholders on a regular basis to determine if you are delivering your intended brand. Likewise, it’s critical to be monitoring social media including the parking lot that, in a school, is often the most potent social media channel. Final, you have to be prepared to act based on what you discover.

Branding gaps can undo the most masterful marketing efforts and create enrolment crises. Knowing how to find them – and bridge them – will undoubtedly improve results.

What do you think? What branding gaps have you uncovered in your organization and what are you doing about them?

Content marketing can't close the sale

2013-01-28T09:44:00.000-05:00

It takes a person to do that.

I read an article last week that promoted the use of content marketing in automobile sales. It started by detailing the way the Internet has changed the relationship between salesperson and customer. Salespeople used to have exclusive access to product and industry knowledge. With it came credibility. They were the experts. Now that consumers can use online resources to know just as much as the salesperson, the power balance in the relationship has shifted.

So, how does the salesperson re-gain control? The article suggested that the solution was for salespeople to use various content marketing techniques. A post on the Dealer Communications site makes the point that product information is ubiquitous online and that consumers are actually looking for perspectives to help them parse all the data. That in turn provides opportunities for salespeople to provide consumers with unique insights using blogs, videos and other online content.

As I was reading this, I kept thinking about a famous quote from the hugely successful insurance salesman Ben Feldman. “Sales is 98% people knowledge and 2% product knowledge.” I began my working life as a headhunter, which is the most challenging sales environment you can imagine. My experience then and throughout my career has proven the wisdom of Feldman's words.

It seems to me that content marketing addresses the product knowledge portion of the quote. But that’s only 2% of the sale. What about the other 98%? Sooner or later, the sale must be consummated in a personal meeting. What happens then?

The same Dealer Communications post makes the following assertion. “When customers consume your self-published content prior to sale they have a stronger connection with you.” Really?? This assumes that sales connections are built on the knowledge or perspectives of the salesperson as opposed to the salesperson’s knowledge of the customer.

In his Sales Lion blog, Marcus Sheridan talks about using content marketing to boost the sales of a company that installs inground pools. The company changed its sales approach from a traditional model to one where a request for a quote is met with an invitation to review the company’s vast online resources (blogs, videos, e-books). I found the next two steps in their sales process astounding:

Once a potential customer educates themselves through our content, they tell us the pool and options they want, at which point we send them via email an actual quote.

If the customer reviews the quote and agrees to its terms, we then go out to their home to confirm there are no hidden costs and write up the contract.

It would appear that we’ve gone one step further and virtually eliminated the salesperson. The first personal contact with the company is to confirm the details of the order. According to e-how.com the average cost of an inground pool is $20-30,000. I’m not sure about you, but there’s no way I would make a $20,000 buying decision without seeing someone. And even if I was prepared to do the preliminary work online, my interaction with the company rep would have huge impact on my decision. Content marketing may deliver the salesperson to my doorstep but it’s her sales ability that’s going to close the deal.

Even companies like Zappos that do all their business online have staked their success on the quality of the personal interaction with the customer. Tony Hsieh’s mantra of Delivering Happiness cannot be rendered by content alone and the training and selection of their customer service reps is now legendary.

In talking about great salespeople, Enterprise Rent-A-Car CEO Andy Taylor says, “the people who are the most successful are the ones who listen most closely to the customer.” Continuing, he adds, “We follow the two ears, one mouth rule here.” Sales success is built on asking tons of questions and listening carefully to the answers. Moreover, sales is always a transfer of emotion. The only way to close a sale is to deliver what the customer has told you she wants in an way that makes her feel good about her decision. Content marketing can’t do that.

There’s no question that content marketing is valuable to the sales cycle. It can definitely generate leads and it can even help to qualify prospects. But capitalizing on that value and making the sale is going to take that 98% of people knowledge. The bottom line is that to improve sales results your human resources are still more important than online resources.

What do you think?

Major gifts fundraising isn’t normal

2013-01-16T19:12:00.002-05:00

Those who have been involved in major gifts solicitations and have spent years trying to get inside the head and heart of a single donor in the hopes of securing that elusive impact gift will agree with the headline. Likewise, major givers who have endured countless presentations for projects in which they have no interest and asking for amounts that are patently absurd, may also agree. But that’s not the “not normal” I’m referring to.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to Major Gifts lately. No, my Powerball number hasn’t come up but I am co-authoring a book based on interviews with many of Canada’s top philanthropists. I’ve been considering how I can use what I’ve learned to help fundraising organizations. The yardstick I often use in approaching challenges in nonprofit organizations is what’s the equivalent for-profit situation and what would the ideal business response be.

I was trying to think of a business that offers products or services that range in price from $10 to $10 million. I couldn’t come up with one. And yet, that’s exactly what a hospital or college foundation is doing. They are selling opportunities that range from two digits to those that often exceed seven digits. Even if your organization’s definition of major giving is 5 digits, that’s still an incredible spread. I suspect that if you proposed a business venture with those parameters to your local bank, you’d be given a lecture about how a $10 sale requires a very different approach than one that is worth tens of thousands or millions.

And yet fundraising organizations have no choice but to do that which would be scoffed upon in the business world – and that’s why I say that major gifts fundraising isn’t normal. So, what’s a fundraising organization to do?

Be honest about the challenge. The for-profit world understands that a large ticket item requires a very different sales approach and so should you. Major gifts fundraising is, in may ways, its own discipline. It requires distinct knowledge and dedicated resources. If you’re going to be successful at it, you have to make the investment in time and people.

Resist the temptation. News of a philanthropist’s record-setting gift to a local organization is like the lure of a lottery ticket. “If she can give that organization $1 million, then maybe she will give mine $100,000.” You likely know nothing about that donor’s interests and have no relationship with her, but that doesn’t stop many organizations from thinking that they are going to secure that donor’s support. The reality is it's not going to happen. So, save yourself the time and the heartache and mine your current donor base. Maybe, the rule of tens (for every ten donors at one level, there is one donor who has the ability to add a zero to their gift) will work for you.

Be true to your organization. I mean this in two ways. First, define a major gift according to your needs and resources. For some, that will be a four digit amount and that’s OK – especially if it’s within your reach. Second, concentrate on developing a powerhouse case for giving that is authentic and compelling. In the interviews we conducted with major givers, we found that the the most likely determinant of whether and how much a philanthropist would give is the confidence that their gift would make a difference as well as the passion of the cause and its prime mover. There were also many, many instances in which a philanthropist gave more than asked – because the case for giving was so strong. If you worry about building a strong case and even stronger relationships, you may find that major gifts opportunities are less contrived and more organic.

It’s not for everyone. Let me completely contradict myself (I do it often) and say there may be organizations that are simply not set up for any kind of major gifts programs. Maybe that’s ok – as long as you can build a funding model that works on the volume of smaller gifts.

Normal or not, the challenge of major gifts is extremely demanding. Developing a realistic strategy that makes sense for your organization will help you save your sanity.