Supporting a Prep School
Working with a Prep School - from strategy to tactical activity
“A case study to bring to life how we research, communicate, advise, get creative, and work as a team to bring about successful results that are meaningful and real (with great feedback)”.
MA Support services – here [SLIDE LINK]
Case study:
Supporting a prep school with marketing, communications, and profile boost project
Based on a live school project completed by the Marketing Advisers (MA) for Schools & Trusts team.
We cherish being referred for such a school project and when all the activity comes together, it’s an honour and a delight to be able share it, with results to-date, through a case study piece. We hope collectively this helps to inspire other schools.
We start with the affirmation that every development project sets out to achieve…
“Nick and the team were great.
They were friendly and didn’t bombard us with jargon and took things at a pace we were comfortable with…
As a result, we now have a more structured, strategic approach to marketing and with the help of some simple pointers and great templates our image on the socials is much smarter”.
Penny Woodcock
Head
Charlotte House School
How the brief started.
A support project for an independent prep school to review current marketing activity to:
- Improve external communication via recommendation actions.
- Seek to increase awareness and help boost enquiries.
Marketing Advisers (MA) for Schools pride ourselves on our ability to take a brief and to devise a plan that can bring material gains. Making a difference is, after all, what we are all about.
Our approach is to research, communicate, advise, get creative, and work as a team to bring about results that are meaningful and ultimately seek to make a difference over the long term. See our project work and results from working with a Multi Academy Trust (MAT).
Executive Summary
Charlotte House Preparatory School needed help with raising their profile and engaging with new audiences.
Working with Charlotte House, our stages of activity were:
- Discussion with the key contacts, from the Head, to marketing and a governor representative to establish the current position, what activity has or has not been put in motion, and to establish the goals of our support work.
- Review current marketing and collateral with fresh eyes.
- Affirmation that the website & social media presence/strategy is the best it can be.
- Confidence the school marketing is on the right path.
This was devised to achieve overall aims of reviewing and enhancing marketing materials, increasing awareness, receiving more parent enquiries &/or attending future Open Days.
Living and breathing the school values, the virtues, the school spirit, the achievements, the stories of happy well-round children, will over time shine through if communicated consistently and professionally.
We made this happen with our robust marketing and comms planning and our dedicated team.
Our MA Team worked through these goals with Charlotte House.
The project was split into four stages over a number of months:
Review & research
Observations & recommendations
Advice to action
Activity to handover
Review & Research
The project started with the review of the brand & logo, core values, the school unique selling proposition/point (USP) and the marketing collateral.
Our first step sought to understand Charlotte House School. Extensive discussions between our advisers and both the Head and the marketing lead strived to understand the position of the school, the challenges and what they aspire to.
MA conducted a review of existing promotional materials together with how the school was projecting its voice through the various channels. This included all external communication collateral, such as newsletters, welcome packs/letter, flyers/banners and online web content.
We also had the opportunity to review a recent strategy document completed in conjunction with a school association. With this momentum the process had started to bring to the fore what Charlotte House stands for and aims to instil.
We encouraged Charlotte House to follow their power-of-3 descriptive ethos words which best reflect how the school will achieve its ambitions.
Inspiration
– inspiring pupils to achieve
– inspiring teachers
– inspiring parents to be involved
Individuality
– helping pupils to be the best they can be
– instilling self-confidence
– bespoke teaching to create individual outcomes
Community
– a broad family, a supportive community
– cross-years mixing
– an alliance between pupils, teachers and parents
Observations & recommendations
Charlotte House logo and brand developments
Discussions were had about how the logo represented the school externally.
The school has roots back to the PNEU (Parents’ National Education Union) linked to Charlotte Mason.
The school logo features the letters PNEU, as a central feature together with the Sky Lark bird soaring forth, but currently no mention of Charlotte House School.
Charlotte House logo and brand developments
Discussions were had about how the logo represented the school externally.
The school has roots back to the PNEU (Parents’ National Education Union) linked to Charlotte Mason.
The school logo features the letters PNEU, as a central feature together with the Sky Lark bird soaring forth, but currently no mention of Charlotte House School.
We found through our internal research that the logo could be a possible source of confusion for new parents. We presented a sketch followed by a visual mock-up of how the logo could be adapted with ‘Charlotte House’ at the heart (see below).
A series of brand and logo recommendations for adjustments were presented, which can be brought through with time and budget planning.
Discussion around the stages of social media, from planning, scheduling and posting. A scheduling template was created (in Excel) with a view to testing a social media scheduling tool.
Examples were given on posting content and leveraging content across school associations and industry media supporters.
MA provided a social media guide offering posting tips and advice, together with three different styles of posting templates created to help creatively bring consistency across all social posts.
Open Day – from concept to graphics
We started this well-known activity off by outlining the basic rules, that the creative supporting the Open Day should have a firm tick next to the following:
- Create emotion (with strong visual and linking words)
- Be Clear (who is the school attracting, words can be read, timings)
- Offer the Call-to-action (what will encourage the best-fit parents to sign-up)
- Offer Contact detail options (how do you wish parents to reply and sign-up)
Examples presented of how a powerful image and captivating words can inspire and encourage ACTION.
Open Day – from concept to graphics
We started this well-known activity off by outlining the basic rules, that the creative supporting the Open Day should have a firm tick next to the following:
- Create emotion (with strong visual and linking words)
- Be Clear (who is the school attracting, words can be read, timings)
- Offer the Call-to-action (what will encourage the best-fit parents to sign-up)
- Offer Contact detail options (how do you wish parents to reply and sign-up)
Examples presented of how a powerful image and captivating words can inspire and encourage ACTION.
We noted that the March 2022 Open Day highlighted a visitor sign-up increase of 15% compared with the 2016 to 2020 results data. See further details with the Activity section below.
Website Enquiry Landing Page
A “New Enquiry” page with simple electronic registration for new pupils was recommended. Up until this point the process had been to download a PDF form, complete, scan and send back to the school.
MA created “Enquiry Landing page” wireframe: an outline of the core page elements required for an optimal enquiry page encouraging sign-up enquiries.
Objective – to outline how such a web page should be laid out to offer prospective parents the key facts with USPs to encourage them to want to make an online enquiry.
An effective electronic Registration Form is a must, it automates the process, helps to guide parents, offers wider data capture and can link with the school database for onward communication.
For a layout example (wireframe) to support an enquiry landing page – do reach out.
Advice to action
The MA round-up and action recommendations were presented and a follow-up clarity call to discuss and agree what can help support long term.
Social media was a core area of discussion, highlighting the numerous advantages of a scheduling tool to support ideation, planning the strategic posting of content. With clear benefits for bringing consistency through the use of new templates and forward planning.
Open Days supporting Admissions
We had open discussion on the effectiveness of these events versus the time to organise and numbers attending. With the Prep schools being smaller in numbers (as opposed to an all-through school with larger numbers) should the school being encouraging school visits at a time that suits parents. Also, encouraging the 1-2-1 tour whereby the school can more effectively deal with questions, objections and tailor the overall experience.
This is the thought, that the school is ‘always open’ to new enquiries and prepared to offer new parents the flexible visit.
Charlotte House keeps historical figures on sign-ups through to visitors on the day and so this proved useful to be able to review to see what had been achieved since 2016. Where were the patterns of parent enquiries coming from and what were the conversions from enquiry to sign-up?
On average, for every 10 enquiries the school were converting about 4 to 5: an approx 1 in 2 conversion. Generally regarded as a good conversion, with an increase in enquiries numbers being the main part of the challenge to solve longer term.
Creative off-line collage, supporting prospective parent communication
MA created this draft to both encouraging prospective parents to book an Open Day and then tailored for a follow-up.
The creative graphic (using the in-house photo library) complements & visually boosts the existing ‘Welcome’ info.
It aimed to offer a personalised and colouful first impression, to help support engagement and aid conversion.
This template was an example of how staff can creatively use their school images and photos.
Activity and handover
Over the months of working alongside Charlotte House, much activity was considered and where possible implemented across the brand, creative, communication and digital space (website and into social media).
A key piece of activity which took place during the support work was a number of story testimonials which focused on pupils from the past, current parents and looked ahead to the future. Why had a parent just signed their child up to attend Charlotte House (next year) and what was it that encouraged them?
See one of the experience stories here – the ex-pupil joy.
Digital marketing – Online adverts
We outlined the benefits of online Paid search/adverts and then later implemented a campaign of Paid advertising, focusing on the next Open Day (March 2022).
Paid search
Follow up activity, to support the next Open Day, was a program of Paid ads, running through Facebook, Instagram and also tested Google Ads. This online activity created a huge amount of awareness (via impressions, views and clicks on the social posts) and did result in an increase in enquiries, compared to the average of the past 4 years.
The activity was centred around a campaign, with objectives established, messages, creative in place and all conducted within an agreed budget to a set timeline.
The highlights of the activity
Facebook Paid Ads:
22,941 paid reach, with paid impressions of 50,088
327 viewed the posts with 198 visiting the Open Day landing pages.
Google Ads:
2,448 Impressions/Views with 116 Clicks on website (Open Day pages).
Visit results:
54% increase in enquiries (ref 2016-20 CH data) for the March event.
Following this campaign, our recommendation was to keep this online activity running on tick over, budgets permitting, with the ‘always open’ philosophy in mind and scaling the Paid ads up for particular parent events. Social channels generally reward the on-going ad programs, as opposed to the stop/start, so not only can the activity be more effective it will also be more manageable for staff to administer.
Summary
Our supporting work followed these steps…
Research-review > Recommendations > Actionable advice > Activity to action > Round-up of activity > to complete a handover conclusion.
The work undertaken with Charlotte House School sought to challenge the current marketing efforts and bring in enhancements and templates that would support the promotional endeavours of the school over time.
Success arrives in all manner of ways, for example, in the short term through content output, feedback from parents, staff and new parent online enquiries. For the longer term, it will be the perception and reputation built together with the required pupil numbers achieved.
On-going, our hope is Charlotte House will continue to thrive and drive forward, by continuing with the same methods, approach and templates to consistently and professionally position the school to appeal to future parents.
We thank the Head, Penny Woodcock, and the school for their on-site support efforts and kind words of feedback.
Marketing Advisers for Schools
“I would be happy to chat to any future potential customers if they want to speak to me for a verbal confirmation on how it will be money well spent!
Thank you for all your help”.
Penny Woodcock
Head
Charlotte House School
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