During one of my Five Pillars workshops, I had in attendance a director of admission who had just finished a branding campaign at her school. What would make her come to my marketing workshop on enrolling full-pay families? Didn’t she gain the marketing and communication strategies she needed to advance her full-pay application numbers?
After speaking with her about why she came, I started thinking about why those six figure campaigns need to change so quickly every few years or become ineffective after a short period of time. The campaign is usually followed by another campaign in which the next vendor tells you that he/she is going to create a unique image. Isn’t that what the previous one said? You never knew that you had so many unique positions, did you? Is there something missing in these branding campaigns that makes these unique positions not unique or not valuable for a longer period of time? Are schools not executing their part of the campaign correctly?
I found that the director was absolutely correct in identifying that something was missing. She was missing some key components of her marketing initiatives. It doesn’t appear to be within the scope of most branding and marketing campaigns. It wasn’t in the mind of her vendor or other short term, non-focus-on-full-pay fixes that agencies provide. So what is missing?
Imagine yourself in a bakery; you want to purchase a cake for your friend’s birthday. You walk in the bakery and you see many uniquely and beautifully designed cakes.
You ask the store attendant, “What kind of cakes are these?”
The sales person responds, “They are all chocolate cakes with their own unique designs. You should pick the design that you like, because they all have the same ingredients – the finest chocolate, sugar, flour, oil, and eggs. “
“They look so different, but I like a couple of them,” you say.”
The salesperson points excitedly, “This is our newest design this year.”
“That looks great,“ you respond. “I’ll take it.”
During the next occasion for buying a cake, would you buy the same cake, since they all taste the same anyway? I would say not. They all taste the same, so you might as well try a different design. The following year will the next customer take the latest design or last year’s design?
This seems to be the operating principle of many branding experiences. Schools receive these beautifully designed materials with some message or tagline that will last for a short period of time, but with the same primary focus – quality of faculty, program, and facilities. Also include breadth and depth of program or quality of the student body. There is usually some improvement in the school’s applications; maybe there is improvement in the full-pay applications. The branding company doesn’t usually segment and target the full-pay market. You know the group that you were hoping to target and the reason you spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. Were they asked to target this group?
Families come to you with questions. “What kind of school are you?” and you respond with the branding language that you designed with the marketing firm. You follow it up by
telling them that that you have great faculty, well-equipped facilities, smart students, and excellent breadth and depth of programs; these are the exact ingredients the previous school articulated. They are starting to question whether or not the same types of ingredients actually produce something different from school to school. They refocus their thinking and turn to figuring out which schools actually have the best ingredients – academics, faculty, impressive facilities, teaching of character, nurturing, individual attention, breadth and depth of program, or college placement list. Some parents will like your latest design, probably not enough to achieve a strong enrollment in both quality and quantity or not enough to give up the strongest branded school. You will still be looking for full-pay families, because the public schools have all the same ingredients too, perhaps not as good as yours, but close enough and the big difference is that they free.
Let’s go to another bakery. You are still looking for a special birthday cake. You see beautifully designed cakes once again.
You ask, “What kind of cakes are these?”
The salesperson responds, “This one is a Raspberry Almond, this one is Chocolate Mousse, this one is Passion Coconut, this one is Lemon Velvet Bundt, this one is All-American Chocolate* and then we have the chocolate common cakes. The common cakes are all the same inside.”
The sales person continues by telling you the unique ingredients used in the special cakes, plus telling you about the quality level of the sugar, milk, butter, flour. The specialty cakes are more expensive. He states, “The common cakes have varying quality and some of them are the best tasting cakes that you can buy among the “common cake “ category; others I don’t always recommend. The specialty cakes have their own unique flavors.”
You choose the Raspberry Almond, because you think it will fit the taste interest of the birthday girl. The others just won’t be the same. Which cake will you buy next year for the birthday girl? Assuming she loved it as expected, you will buy the Raspberry Almond again.
If the branding and marketing campaign misses identifying the unique ingredients, then you will need to develop this concept or the campaign won’t produce the level of results you are seeking. Remember these thoughts:
- The customers will seek the best of the common qualities – quality of faculty, quality of students, breadth and depth of program, college placement, etc. Why wouldn’t they, if there is no differentiation?
- The customers only give up the best in the common categories when the one that is different uniquely serves their needs.
- When the school solves the needs of the customer and it is worth the cost, they will pay the higher tuition.
Get the beautiful design website or viewbook, but without giving the consumer the differentiating ingredients, your branding campaign will not have enough teeth and will be short lived.
*Names taken from pastichefinedesserts.com.