Private school’s brand will weaken without proper care and attention. Like the story of Tinker Bell in Peter Pan, Tinker Bell started to slowly disappear. Why, because the other characters stopped believing in her. Private schools don’t believe in brand nurturing. They don’t want to talk about the school brand, so their brand is starting to disappear among the other countless educational opportunities that cost less – different types of public schools, summer schools, and after school programs. In some cases, cost is similar, so why is the customer choosing the other option? Schools aren’t helping themselves by making brand nurturing a part of their marketing strategy.
I can always find teachers in private schools who say they would not pay full tuition, even if they had the means. There are faculty who don’t believe in the cost of our brand. Why, because even though they work in the school, and often have their children enroll, they still don’t see enough evidence showing them that it is worth the cost.
Why would full-pay families feel differently? They would have even higher expectations than non-full pay families and those of your employees. Many come from communities with the best public school choices. When they look at your school’s college placement list compared to their public school’s list they would say “our public school sends students to the same colleges and universities as the private schools do. Maybe a private school education isn’t necessary.”
Private school marketing needs to include a brand that the entire school’s faculty and staff will buy and get behind to support it. Brand nurturing can’t be only the responsibility of the marketing and admission offices. There is no time like the present, as ful-pay applicants are decreasing, to develop in your school’s marketing plan ways to help employee understand and articulate the brand as they engage with prospective students and their parents. If this doesn’t happen, your brand becomes weakened and the full-pay consumer will question your school’s value and slowly disappear from your pool.