How do you dene your school’s values and communicate your passion and purpose to achieve results? Marketing expert Justin Smith explains


MARKETING MASTERCLASS


T


heodore Roosevelt once said, ‘Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care’. When


it comes to dening your marketing strategy, this should sit at the heart of how you think and what you do. Some of us work in primary schools


in rural communities, others within MATs in urban conglomerations, but we share the same commitment to do the best we can for our pupils. It’s easy to forget this when labouring over strategic approaches to income generation or devising cunning new ways to engage on social media!


Define ‘marketing’ What do we mean by marketing in the education arena? There are many denitions but my favourite is by Davies and Ellison (1997):


‘The means by which the school actively communicates and promotes its purpose, values and products to the pupils, parents, staff and wider community.’ Ask yourself, do you really understand your school’s purpose and values? There are many who doubt the


value of marketing our schools. And if we indulge in ad-hoc and wasteful campaigns then we deserve to invite scepticism. On the other hand, if we’re clear on what we’re looking to achieve and are able to demonstrate a return on our investment, then we have nothing to shy away from and the results can be hugely positive. It is important to have a strategic


plan that can be properly costed and evaluated. It’s equally important to get away from thinking of marketing as an isolated activity (an advert,


IDENTIFYING YOUR CORE VALUES When I joined Wymondham College as Marketing and Development Director, one of my first tasks was to revisit the mission statement and redefine our core values. There was clearly some confusion over brand identity – materials lacked consistency, while a mission statement, written some years earlier, was buried within the website! We conducted a value-mapping


exercise with staff and students, with the aim of defining the essence of the school – words that summed up how we felt about one another, how we saw our community and our place within it. Essentially, we were trying to articulate our culture, putting together words and phrases that defined our core values. This may sound complicated and overly


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FundEd members can download Justin’s marketing plan template from funded.org.uk.


a poster) – marketing is something that all stakeholders should be aware of and appreciate. Students, staff, parents and


corporate, but the exercise used a simple template with quadrants for staff and students to jot down how they felt, their gut instincts and reaction to key prompts. I was able to summarise their views and found commonality. I then took the five most common words and phrases: trusting and respectful, committed, passionate, sharing and caring and aspirational. We expanded these to produce five core values and introduced these into the prospectus, into our boarding houses and onto the website. Simplified versions appeared around the campus on large perspex signs. Taken directly from students and staff, these core values reflected our culture far more effectively than a page of text on a website.


governors should be thought of as ‘brand ambassadors’ – engage with them and they can be very powerful advocates of your school. Avoid the natural knee-jerk reaction to issues and instead deploy an approach that sits alongside the over-arching school improvement plan. Placing adverts in your local newspaper is the cherry on the cake (so to speak!), whereas school leaders should look for the cake ingredients rst – dening key messages, providing clarity on your brand identity and understanding your purpose. our marketing plan should address some or even all of the following: Dene brand and values and promote key messages. Manage your school’s reputation – reinforcing or modifying? Attract and retain the best staff – talented staff drive up standards. Communications, PR, media and crisis management. How to sustain or recruit more students – why your school? Key messages and USP. How to attract funding and support – sponsors, funders, commercial engagement. Aligning of values. Engage with former students.


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