Do you need to increase admissions to your school or college? Or, recruit new staff? Perhaps you want to re-brand and improve your school or college reputation? Regardless of your objectives, a marketing strategy is paramount to achieving success.
Before you start having a new school website developed or college prospectus designed, take a step back from the tactical areas and reassess your school’s course of action from a strategic perspective, to ensure maximum success and return from your marketing spend.
If you are not 100% sure what your objectives are, or indeed what success really looks like for your school, then it’s important to determine these areas so you can be assured you’re investing in the most effective marketing tools to fulfil your needs.
If this sounds a little overwhelming, we can help! At Creativeworld, we are more than just a website and prospectus design agency – we have a team of education marketing experts and strategists to support your school and provide a full, 360 strategic consultancy service to develop a bespoke marketing strategy and make sure you take the right pathway to success. With over 30 years’ experience in the education sector, the Creativeworld Education team are ready to solve your education marketing strategy challenges!
5 reasons why your school or college needs a marketing strategy…
1. Competitive advantage
A strong marketing strategy will enable your school to identify its unique offerings and features that set you apart from your competitors and clearly position your school in the local area, as well as to your target student demographic.
Creating a distinctive school identity in your area will ensure your marketing activity is consistent and aligned with highlighting what makes you different and preferable to alternative competitor schools.
2. Clear direction to success
Reviewing your current position as a school, determining where you want to be, understanding your target audience, setting measurable and realistic objectives and developing a comprehensive plan of how you’re going to get to your desired position, enables focus and accountability.
You can invest in the most effective marketing and promotion tools which have been selected strategically in line with your goals, so you know your money is well spent and you are not just frittering your marketing budget away randomly in the hope that it ‘might’ solve your marketing challenges, without having any surety that it will.
3. Reputation
Developing a marketing strategy will allow your school to really understand its key target audiences and market niche; from prospective students and parents to existing staff, potential staff and existing students, including their wants and needs, as well as pain points and concerns. Subsequently, you can tailor your school communications consistently across all marketing channels to state how you will fulfil and address these through your unique school offerings and benefits.
Building a positive brand reputation alongside recognition is all about showing your target audience what benefit they will get from your school or college, so understanding their needs and proving how you can meet them is essential to create a strong and favourable brand reputation.
4. Marketing budget management
A sound marketing strategy ensures that every pound you spend on promotional activities counts! We know that a marketing budget can be a limiting factor for many schools and colleges, so developing an effective strategy is essential to get optimal value from your allocated funds. You will avoid making mistakes involving spending money on marketing tools and promotional activities that have low return on investments and don’t support achievement of your school’s marketing objectives.
5. Creative edge
Finally, working with a dedicated agency to develop your school marketing strategy goes hand in hand with gaining distinctive, stand-out, creative themes and ideas for marketing your school or college brand and making you stand out from the crowd. A specialist school marketing agency like Creativeworld, understand your marketing goals and target audience so they can generate new, exciting ideas and recommendations as part of your overall strategy, placing your school in the best position to achieve success!
View some of our education strategic work
Manchester Islamic Educational Trust
Creativeworld Education Spotlight
Why Creativeworld? Our strategic offering for schools and colleges…
Our team and partnerships of education marketing experts have supported over 400 clients throughout the UK and globally; our extensive knowledge and understanding of individual clients’ needs means we can offer…
- Marketing audits to advise direction and focus new marketing activity where it is needed
- Internal and external market research to design the right approach
- Brand co-creation and key message development workshops
- Marketing plan development, monitor success and offer recommendations
- Storytelling and content planning
- Working together to support the delivery and implementation of marketing and branding strategies.
Contact our expert education marketing team for more information about our strategic consultancy offering for schools and colleges, by calling 01282 858200 or dropping us an email here.
