How to stand out in a sea of school marketing
By Melissa McCaig
Recently, I asked a room full of school marketing, enrolment and advancement professionals a simple question:
“Who knows of a school that talks about academic excellence, student wellbeing, fostering independence and preparing students for the future?”
Every hand went up.
It got a laugh, but it also made a serious point.
These are important claims. We know parents want these things for their children.
The challenge is that they’re no longer points of difference.
For a family choosing a school, these claims have become an expectation. In marketing terms we call it a ‘category hygiene factor’ – a basic feature, service or policy that consumers fundamentally expect. The price of entry, if you will.
So how do you make an impact?
Start with evidence, not assumptions
The schools that communicate most effectively aren’t always the ones with the biggest marketing budgets.
More often, they’re the ones that have done the harder work first. They’ve taken the time to understand themselves through the eyes of the people they’re trying to reach and influence.
To avoid wasting marketing budgets on messaging that doesn’t shift the dial, these schools have mined rich sources of data (parent surveys, exit surveys, focus groups, enrolment data, web analytics, ABS, Real Estate Institute, REMPLAN) to challenge their own assumptions.
This research is imperative to discover why current families keep choosing your school, to understand the profiles of prospective families and to be clear on what they really value.
You can then overlay that data with your school’s offerings and the traits you most proudly, and authentically, hang your hat on.
This unique intersection between your school’s strengths and what matters most to prospective families is where you’ll find your true brilliance.
Finding the brand territory you can occupy
When a school has genuine clarity about who it is, everything else becomes easier.
You don’t have to claim to be better than every other school. But you do need a distinctive brand position that clearly articulates what makes your school meaningfully different to the families you’re trying to attract.
Schools live and breathe their culture every day.
They know the stories, the people, and the little things that make the place feel different. Prospective families don’t (yet!).
You’re looking for that golden nugget, that little gem that breaks through the repetitive word salad and really says something to your audience.
Most prospective parents experience a school through a website, a social media ad or post, a school tour or a conversation with another parent at Saturday sport. So once that point of difference is defined, every one of these touchpoints is an opportunity to bring it to life.
The words you choose, the stories you tell, the images you use and the way your brand is expressed visually, should all work together to reinforce the same idea.
It’s about creating a clear and memorable impression that grabs a family’s attention and makes them nod knowingly once they understand not just what you do, but why your school is the right fit for them.
Be brave enough to be distinctive
Generic, interchangeable messaging doesn’t always happen because nobody had a better idea. It sometimes happens because schools are collaborative, consultative, inclusive places. And, inherently, risk averse.
They have to be!
But the process of filtering branding, copywriting and design ideas through leadership teams, marketing teams, enrolment and advancement teams, sometimes parent groups and even a Board, can mean the edges are smoothed so much that the message no longer cuts through.
In an effort to ensure no audience is alienated and no school strength is overlooked, a bold and distinctive brand position could be watered down to another version of what everyone else is saying.
You can be left with something that is completely true, but completely forgettable.
It’s important to remember that just because you don’t say something, it doesn’t make itnot true. Your brand can’t, and shouldn’t, say everything all at once. Its job is to grab attention, make someone feel something, and get them in the door (to the website, on the school tour) so that you can then show them everything else that you are.
It has to be impactful and it absolutely has to be true. But it doesn’t have to be the entire story in one line.
Clarity is your biggest advantage
So, successful marketing isn’t always about shouting the loudest, spending the most, orbeing all things to all people. It’s underpinned by a clear understanding of who you are, what families genuinely value and where those two things intersect. When that clarity exists, marketing becomes less about trying to convince people and more about helping the right families recognise the right fit.
In a crowded market, that’s often the difference between being another good school and being the school community a family can genuinely see themselves becoming part of.
