SCHOOL LEADERS – IS YOUR FIRST THOUGHT ‘HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?’
School leaders and marketers often grapple with tight budgets, scrutinising every penny spent on marketing activities in the challenging world of independent education.
Therefore, often, their first thought, when presented with a marketing opportunity, is: how much does it cost and is it worth it?
Quite right too.
At The Stickman Consultancy, we understand these concerns and offer a refreshing perspective that actively challenges the belief that effective marketing demands hefty expenditures.
In fact, we show the schools we work with that starting with the fundamental zero-cost activities that will ‘move the needle’ for them, is crucial.
For instance, starting with a keen eye on admissions is key in generating quick and zero-cost wins for a school. A specific example would be sharing the power of a phone call to an enquiring family and how this can offer a powerful engagement, is free, quick and easy to action, and that also offers you a competitive advantage too.
Win. Win. Win.
To make this really wow the family, this phone call would come from the Head too.
Yeah yeah, I know what you’re thinking. The Head simply doesn’t have time for that kind of thing. Well, the brutal truth is, that ‘that kind of thing’, needs to be made time for.
Tips to achieve this in a manageable way:
- Protected time: carve out 1 hour of protected time per week for this kind of engagement.
- Focus on the priority families: the Admissions Manager or Registrar provide a list of the top 5 families to call – these might be the ‘warmest’ families that you need to get ‘over the line’. Or it might be ‘cooler’ families that need a wow injection to warm them up and to encourage them to take the next step.
- Make it easy and powerful: the Admissions Manager or Registrar could provide a short summary for each of the 5 families of where each one is up to in the enquiry journey, along with their requirements and a personal fact about them (e.g. a particular interest of the child’s) that the Head can weave in to impress.
Another example of a free marketing activity is social media. The cost here that schools incur however is that the time and effort spent on this, and that it doesn’t generate a tangible or significant return. This is where we help schools to make social media management quick, easy and effective with some simple tips – our 3 x E content pillars for starters:
- Educate
- Engage
- Entice
Map this out (1 per week) across a half term, and then simply rinse and repeat these. Suddenly, your engagement improves, the time spent on social media marketing reduces, and enquiries increase.
Again…win, win, win.
In summary, while budget constraints are a reality, they shouldn’t be a barrier to effective marketing as many of the very best activities are zero-cost.
So school leaders and marketers – bravo that your first thought is ‘How much does it cost and what is the return?’.
We applaud this.
Maybe then consider this as a second question: ‘What should we do for starters that will move the needle and cost nothing?’.
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The Stickman Consultancy specialises in crafting powerful, no-nonsense school marketing strategies focused on pupil recruitment. Our approach has helped schools all over the world generate significant additional revenue by boosting admissions and retaining pupils. Notably, most of our solutions are easily implemented and zero-cost, ensuring that schools can achieve remarkable results without straining their budgets.