Are Your Admission and Communications Offices in Sync?

At many independent schools, the creation of admission and  communications offices, for the most part, came well after the development of the educational programs. These offices were often put together to fill a particular need the school had at the time. For admission, it may have been a lack of students and the need to recruit; for communications, perhaps it was the need for a major publication.

Nonetheless, it’s helpful to examine the roles these offices play today in the enrollment of new students and why the crossing of admission and communications roles in this effort, can create conflict and inefficiency for the school.

Let’s begin with a few quick definitions.  Marketing is the determination and development of the right content to convey your school’s educational expertise and offerings to the customer. Communication is the determination and development of the right distribution and packaging of those messages in a way that the customer is willing to receive and consume. Sales is the ability to connect the solutions your school offers with the needs of the consumer while managing any objections that families have for choosing your school.

Towards the process of recruiting/enrolling new students, the admission office will use marketing, communications and sales initiatives. The communications and marketing office does marketing and communications. By looking at some typical activities and programs used to enroll new students you can determine who in your school is responsible for each program and perhaps start to see some of the conflicts. Under marketing, communications and sales place an “A” if the responsibility belongs to admission and a “C” if it belongs to communications.

A Director of Admission or Enrollment may be hired with marketing and communications experience, and brings to the school their philosophy, methodology, and/or some particular approach they believe works. However, the Director of Marketing and Communications also has marketing and communications expertise and a belief in their own approach. So who makes the final decisions on issues of messaging, viewbooks and videos? It’s the “two cooks in the kitchen” concept and the key question becomes, whose job is it? The individual skill sets of each director and how they are incorporated into the positioning-of-the-school program will make the difference.

Conflicts or inefficiencies often come from overlap. Schools seeking to maintain enough full-pay families are going to hire admission and communications and marketing people who have an excellent grasp of both marketing and communications. The problem arises when the roles and expectations of each office are not clearly defined. Take an Open House event for example. It has marketing and communications aspects in terms of the messages and content to be delivered to the customer. But who gets to determine what goes into the marketing and communications aspects of this event? Usually, it’s the admission director; but wouldn’t it seem that the director of marketing and communications is the right person to determine the messages and content to be delivered to the customer for this event?

What about a school’s Home Page or News and Events headlines on their website – are prospective families seeing messages determined by the admission office’s approach, the communications office, or from a collaboration of the admission and communications offices? When collaborating, if the two offices disagree, who then makes the final decision?

To solve this dilemma many school’s simply divide the admission and communications responsibilities by activities. The admission office manages the open house events, off-campus receptions, and promotional literature. The communications office manages the website, advertisements/school listings, video and Facebook. But, there is a lack of efficiency and effectiveness in this type of operation. Who determines the institution’s brand and the messages that are conveyed throughout each of these activities and programs? Are the same messages being conveyed at open house events, school fairs and on the website? How are resources being used for marketing and communications efforts, who manages the budget, and is it effective?

I have heard many frustrations from both admission and communications. One communications person loved videos, but the videos weren’t benefitting the development or admission offices in their immediate work, despite that person’s best intention. In another case, the communications person and admission director did not agree about the information being conveyed in Facebook. In a third situation the admission director didn’t believe in segmenting, so target marketing wasn’t an option. So, just whose marketing methodology is being implemented?

It’s a difficult situation with no easy solution. School heads need to carefully examine the skillsets of the individuals they are bringing together from both offices, then meet with both parties to work out the dynamics that will assure their school has a cohesive team on the same page as to their final goal.  It can work out by itself, if the two directors have different skillsets, but I am going to suggest that it is not a cohesive, efficient process.

In seeking to enroll more full-pay families, my biased opinion is that you hire a director of admission who is talented in marketing as well as other common admission responsibilities and you hire a director of communications and marketing whose job it is to support the director of admission.  A second choice idea is to hire a director of marketing and communications whose responsibility is to lead the marketing and communications charge. The director of admission is responsible for the selection process of students and executing the admission events based on the established messaging by the Director of Marketing and Communications. With the right personnel, either idea could be an effective option, or although not perfect, it would probably cut down on the inefficiencies.  Letting them just figure it out may yield a marketing and communications program without a strategic vision.

Ultimately, the person responsible for meeting enrollment goals needs to have the right marketing and communications resources to get the job done.   Who gets the blame at the board of trustees meeting when the numbers aren’t coming in as expected?