It’s not the easiest time to do marketing. There have, you may have noticed, been some kerfuffles around the world - Brexit, pandemics, transport and supply chains and all that. A vague sense that handbasket has tapped the coordinates to hell into Google maps.
But we have to plan and rebuild and get shifting to get schools and businesses back to capacity. Travel is opening up and while only fools are predicting a smooth flip back to relative prosperity, now is certainly the time to begin marketing your organisation and services to get students through the door again.
The chances are, though, that you’ll have fewer marketing resources and a smaller budget while still having everyone around you demanding that their part of your universe needs all the attention.
So what now? How do you work out your marketing priorities? What questions do you need to ask yourself as a way to work out your next steps?
Set your goals
Your marketing activity doesn’t sit separately from everything you do. It’s designed to deliver the consumers you need to make your organisation function. Sounds simplistic, but some organisations sit in such a range of silos that that gets forgotten.
But the marketing people cannot deliver your goals unless you tell them what they are. It’s likely you need more paying customers of one kind or another: but do you want returning students or new ones? Do you want a lot of people paying less, or fewer paying more?
Those choices will make a difference as to what kind of marketing you choose (the channels), who you are marketing to (the audience) and what you are telling them (the message). And you need to understand the buying process - is it just an online booking form or do your consumers need a conversation with a sales consultant?
Priority question: Do you (as an organisation, not as an individual) understand your brand, your targets, your strategy and your processes as the framework for your key decisions? That needs to be agreed and shared so that you can move on to the other priority decisions.
Which include:
Audience first
Many marketing plans start with an organisation looking at itself and wondering about how to tell everyone how clever it is. They just think that the more they tell you about the conference the CEO spoke at, or the charity run that the admin team just did, the more an audience will like them.
And these messages can have a place - that conference is important if you’re in the B2B business. That charity run might align with your company values. But there is also the very real possibility that most of your audience couldn’t care less.
So don’t think about yourself so much. Think about your audience. Your customers. In the language school market that might divide into consumers, influencers and enablers:
The parent and/or teacher who will advise - they will be looking at a range of issues that you have to ‘sell in’: the quality of the teaching; the quality of the wider experience; the safety of the students and, of course, the price.
The agent who will offer a range of alternatives to choose from and push students towards a smaller range of options: They’ll be invested in the nature of the relationship with the school; how reputable it is and how repeatable the transaction with a different cohort of students and what sort of product the school can offer.
And, of course,
- the student who will be looking to all the above, but with differing priorities - perhaps on the experiential side - not just the education but beyond: the location, the fellow students, the wider aspects that make it a memorable time.
Priority questions: Who is in your audience? Can you differentiate between the different groups you are trying to reach? And tailor your messages accordingly?
And then move on to...
Message
For those different audiences, you’ll need different messages. They’ll overlap quite a bit - most of your audience might be interested in what a school will teach for example - but the emphasis might differ.
It might suit to emphasise your brand value and purpose. To show that you care about bringing people together from around the world, or that you are passionate about climate change. In a crowded market, sincerely held values can be a real boon.
But they are not much use if you don’t have clarity over the services you offer. If you’re a language school, what languages are you teaching and for what purpose? English for business? For entry into higher education? To support a wider cultural agenda?
And how good are you at teaching in the first place? Underpinning all your messages must be the sense of authority and expertise that, yes, this is the school where those children should learn. That this is The Place.
Priorities: Map the message to the audience. Which messages resonate best with those students, their influencers and their enablers? Map out that messaging matrix so you know what you’re saying to whom.
And then move on to …
The channel mix
So you’ve worked out who your key audiences are, and what you want to say to them. Where do you say it?
Your knowledge of your audience should also include an understanding of their wider media use. What are the touchpoints for them? What search terms do they use? How about social media? Who are the influencers? Have you their data to contact them directly via email for example?
In any marketing strategy, the channel mix is key and dependent on your understanding of your market and where you can reach them. As your audience may be divided into different groups, then each may need a different approach.
It’s complicated. That’s why you sometimes need a marketing agency.
Priority questions: Simple questions - do you understand the habits of your audiences? Can you create a strategy and a channel mix from that? Do you need help?
And then...
Measurement
The ultimate measurement of success in all this will be in the revenues and it’s wise to bear in mind that when someone tells you that your engagement on TikTok has rocketed, that doesn’t mean that anyone has bought anything. But it could have been part of their journey to purchase.
But you need to mark the homework and you need to know what numbers are key indicators of success, what are indicators of healthy interest and what are mere vanity measures. It’s dependent on the media mix above as to what is more important - social media engagement (which can build brand profile), visits to the website (which might mean genuine interest) or incoming emails (which might be the intent to buy).
And measure early and often - and use that to test what works, and learn where success (and failure) lies. Use the data to tweak your activity, to learn what audiences react to, and to understand how valuable that reaction is.
Priority points: Make data a key part of the measurement and delivery of your marketing strategy, but attach it to your audience and channel decisions (where are you measuring and are you checking influence, interest, or purchase?). Take the time to understand the numbers and to react quickly to what they are telling you.
These are all the decisions you need to make with your marketing people (or yourself if that’s on your desk). Understand what you are trying to achieve, with whom, and how and where - and whether you’ll know when you’ve done it.
Crack that, and you’re made...
