Step 4 – Investment, Marketing, Location and Structure
GEL is a highly professional and experienced education consulting firm committed to success offering sound, rigorous, expert and practical solutions. Our collective team of specialised professionals and supporting services in all areas of education will provide you with a premier service from a premier organisation.
Effective marketing is a vital component for ensuring growth and sustainability. Developing effective marketing strategies and an action plan will do much to raise awareness of a school’s identity and purpose both internally and externally and is particularly important for constituent groups to understand a school’s key message. Sending out a unified message will prevent confusion and loss of credibility.
Every school needs a marketing plan to identify its markets, analysis of return-on investment for each strategy, and adopting up-to-date media technology to maximise recruitment opportunities.
Effective communication has been described as simply a matter of the right person, communicating the right message, to the right audience, at the right time, and in the right way.
Internal School Marketing
Internal marketing is the first step in this overall area of focus. All members of the school community from students, alumni, faculty, parents and trustees are important carriers of the school’s message transmitted to the wider community. From the front of desk receptionist or the caretaker, to the support teacher or headmaster – each has an important influence and input to contribute. First impressions of visitors to a school are vital. How does a school create the right ethos and ambience to ensure that first impressions are positive rather than the opposite?
Surveys contribute greatly to determine a school’s marketing plan and strategies, which is one of many things in this area GEL can assist with.
Factors such as identifying and promoting a school’s unique brand and distinctives to prospective parents and students can also make the difference between success and failure.
External School Marketing
Whatever manner of effective diverse marketing strategies are employed, they must be appropriately designed and implemented to gain maximum impact, and be done at the right time of year.
Effective marketing requires the right answers to simple but essential questions. For example:
- Are you the only investor?
- Do you and your investors share the same vision and goals for your school?
- We will work with all investors to find the best financial solutions to ensure you both achieve your goals.
When thinking about fundraising, it is essential that you involve the community. The automatic knock-on effect of this is that your enrolment figures will also be driven by these same plans as well as word-of-mouth promotion from your donors and investors.
GEL will work with you to:
- Look closely at who your customers really are
- Understand why they have chosen the school their children are currently in and how you can help them make the shift to international education
- Understand how your parents make choices and how you can work with them to make the right choice for their child.
We will then begin the job of marketing your new school and promoting the opening in your local area and further afield. You will have built the planning and cost of any promotion and marketing into your Strategic Plan and your five year budget and it will include:
- Clarification and quantification of your objectives
- How to understand the marketing mix in your area and using it to your advantage Deciding how you want your school to be marketed and the subsequent advertising message
- Choosing the media you will use to market your school
- Deciding how you want your advertising medium to tell your story
- Tips to ensure you are placing your advertising and marketing appropriately and effectively
- How to make your advertising compelling and unusual
The location and structure of your new school are essential and having the right advice is critical.
At GEL, we will take these steps with you taking the following examples into consideration:
- Do you rent a purpose built property?
- Do you buy a purpose built structure?
- Do you rent a structure which is not purpose built and adapt it?
- Do you buy a structure which is not purpose built and adapt it?
- Do you build your own purpose built structure?
- Do you understand the legal requirements of each of the above options?
We will work closely with you to ensure that the outdoor environment and natural surroundings of the structure you plan to use are optimised.