Imagine yourself walking onto a car lot. You have an interest in a new car. The first one you come to is a Toyota Camry sedan. You are admiring the paint job, but you’re not interested in a Camry. The salesperson enters the picture. She begins by telling you about all of its features and how it is one of the top selling cars in the country. After about 5 minutes of being polite, you say to her that you aren’t interested in a Camry; you need an SUV to do your work.
Here is a big idea to help you build better marketing materials. In the marketing and recruitment process, schools don’t think that they take this salesperson’s approach, but they do something very similar. Often we don’t start out understanding exactly what the customer needs – customer-centric. Instead, they tell them about what they want to sell to them, for example, an excellent arts center, tons of advance classes, a nationally ranked soccer team, a nurturing environment, or small class sizes – school-centric. You know the lines. Schools assume that what would make them buy will, of course, make the customer buy. Schools can miss the mark (buyers’ needs) and offer them the Camry, when they should have offered them the RAV4.
How many times do you introduced families to your educational solutions, before you understood their educational needs and goals? If you collect some of this information about their needs, do you write it down in the interview notes or within your database or candidate file, so you can continue to address their needs during the recruitment cycle? Sometimes when schools ask the family, they still end up telling them what is important to them. Do you produce your marketing materials with the needs of the customer in mind? I remember in one of my schools that the head of school had to approve the viewbook, before it went to press. Why? Was it because she was the most familiar with the needs of the customer? No! It was because she had to like it, not because she understood the needs of the customer better the director of admission and marketing.
Let’s look at an inquiry letter. It’s often the first direct communication with a prospective family. They tend to go something like this:
Academy Right School is the premier 9-12, coed educational school in New England. The opportunities abound and with its 100-acre campus, the facilities serve as a lab for a superior education. The faculty is seasoned and understands how to get the most from teenagers. They are among the top in their profession with an average tenure of 15 years….
…We look forward to working with you and having you visit the campus. Please call us to schedule an appointment at your convenience.
This quite common approach to marketing is what I call school-centric. Almost every school uses this technique. It doesn’t recognize the need of the customer who is probably starting this journey for the first time. Furthermore, its tone can be pompous. This type of approach to marketing is less effective as the customer becomes harder to be convinced to pay your tuition dollars. Parents want to know how you are going to best serve the needs of their children and themselves. Although important, telling them how good you are, is not the same as demonstrating that you are interested in what they need and can offer them a great solution for it. Take a look at a more student-centric approach.
Finding the right school can be a challenge. Working with thousands of families, it is a common theme. We want to allay some of those worries by best understanding your educational needs. We can do this as partners in a way that will help you to learn about our school and give you guidelines to evaluate our program and others….
Academy Right School is the premier 9-12, coed educational school in New England. The opportunities abound and with its 100-acre campus, the facilities can serve as the lab for a superior education for your child. The faculty is seasoned and understands how to get the most from teenagers. They are among the top in their profession with an average tenure of 15 years….
…Come and visit us and experience the excellence that Academy Right School offers its students….
As you start to create your materials, keep this in mind. If you want to improve your skills in being more customer-centric in your approach and really strengthen your full-pay marketing efforts, come to the next Five Pillars workshop – November 6 and 7.