School marketing on a shoestring

When it comes to marketing an international school, we all feel we’re doing it on a shoestring budget.   The fact is, however, the length of that string seems to change from school to school and has certainly stretched over time.

Once upon a time, the sum of school marketing was making sure that the school prospectus was up to date.  Expensive schools turned to expensive professionals to produce glossy, colour brochures, filled with generic pictures of smiling, happy children; whilst the rest of us tried our best to produce what we could on slow, unreliable computers and a dot matrix printer.

Looking back over the school year that has just ended, I realize how far we’ve come.  If nothing else, this has certainly been a busy one!  We’ve started a new live-streaming video service for all major  school events; launched an online shopping portal that even provides new families with the option to purchase ‘student starter kit’ (with everything that’s needed for the first few days of school); implemented an award-winning advertising campaign; designed a Smartphone Application that, over time, will eventually replace our traditional, paper school directory; begun to think about the role of computer-generated animation in communicating complex curricular ideas; and implemented the ‘ISB Experience Stick’ – a state-of-the-art application for prospective families and teachers.

And this is to say nothing about the constant web-updating, brochure production, social media development going on behind the scenes, or the relentless ‘marketing’ performed by a highly-dedicated Admissions team – constantly telling the story of ISB and helping people find their place in that story.

To the outsider, perhaps, this is big budget stuff and, even if balanced by another record enrolment, is beyond what they consider feasible.  After all, as we know, it’s not just about the investment in technology and materials, but an even bigger investment in people and the team that is required to implement and sustain these various marketing initiatives.

The fact is, however, we’re still doing all this on a shoestring and with an annual commitment to reducing costs. 

And, for what they are worth, here are some of the principles that are helping us along this path:

1. Stop printing and see what happens.  The answer is ‘probably nothing.’  Over the last three years, we have dramatically reduced the volume of paper we use.  No one has complained, the story is still being told, and parents are still subscribing their children to our school.  We’ve begun to see the myth of print production for what it is.
2. Stop advertising and see what happens.  The answer, for sure, is ‘something’.  The point is, however, it may be time to re-focus on what kind of print and digital media enhance your brand in the ways you are looking for.  This is certainly one case where doing less can increase the effectiveness of your campaign.
3. Give young people the experience they are looking for.  We continue to turn to marketing and communications interns, often former students, who have recently completed their university studies to support the level of our ambition.  These innovative, dynamic young professionals have proven to be critical to our recent success.  Gone are the days when the intern stood next to a copier all day.  These individuals are the new project managers in this organization.
4. In-source gradually.  We’ve known for a while that it would be unrealistic to assume that we could immediately do everything ourselves and maintain the quality we have become used to.  The fact is, however, the nature of the marketing and communications task is changing.  A photo, a video or a document may only be valuable for a day… so why spend chunks of your marketing budget on high-end items that are rarely as adaptable as your changing story requires?  There is undoubtedly a place for ‘off-the-shelf’ templates.  Not everything needs to be bespoke.
5. Recycle everything you do.  The ‘replicable value’ of an action was a concept that I once learned from the European Commission.  In other words, how many times can your work be ‘repeated’ by others and in different contexts?  Over the years, we have learned constantly to ask how any piece of work can be used and re-used by different members of the team for multiple audiences.  After all, if a story is worth telling, it should be re-told time and time again to ensure maximum impact.

In the end, I guess all of us feel that our particular shoestring is not quite long enough to match the scale of our ambition.  The trick, though, is to find ways of extending the string and achieving what once we felt was impossible.

I guess that’s why it’s called a stretch goal.