What is school marketing and communications to you?
Our approach to communications and marketing at Appleby may be a little different from other schools or traditional practices in the education sector. To us, marketing and communications are mainly about strategy. It’s 80% strategy and 20% execution. Strategy means understanding our audiences and ensuring our messaging is aligned with our brand and purpose. Once those are done, the execution is the remaining 20%.
How can schools make their marketing more efficient?
I think the efficiency depends, to a large extent, on the seniority and role of the person overseeing the marketing activities, because it's crucial that marketing strategies align with the overall goals and direction of the school.
In the corporate sector, marketing is essentially strategic: where MarCom (Marketing and Communications) focuses on executing these strategies, the educational sector often perceives marketing primarily as MarCom and tactical, limited to advertising and social media. However, I think marketing is fundamentally about strategy, about the school's overarching strategy and value propositions. So, the role of marketing professionals should be central to strategic discussions.
How would you define a school brand?
To me, a brand is the essence of the school. It's who we are at our core, reflecting our mission, vision, purpose, and values. It's crucial for a school's strategy to highlight unique value propositions, which I then leverage in communicating with families.
When I joined Appleby, we went through an exercise to identify what sets the Appleby experience apart. We identified our global approach to education as our unique selling point. This global perspective was already embedded in our academic programs and our affiliation with Round Square. We decided to emphasize this global aspect as our distinctive feature, which coincided with developing a Global Leadership diploma program that encouraged a deeper engagement with global issues, learning a third language, and developing a global action plan.
Over time, we broadened our identity to include experiential learning as a key component. The experiential component complements our global identity and supports our evolution as an institution.
What are some common errors school marketers make in aligning their strategies with their brand identity?
Schools and organizations generally get into trouble when they're not consistent with their brand messaging and strategy.
Let me give you an example. Every Appleby student in Grade 12 is required to board, with no exceptions. We used to see a loss of 15 to 18 students annually between Grades 11 and 12, largely because we hadn't communicated the value of the Grade 12 boarding year effectively. We shied away from discussing it with prospective or current families. Recognizing this, we made a strategic decision to not shy away from this essential part of our identity. Instead of viewing it as a detriment, we played it up. That significantly reduced the attrition to maybe 3 to 4 students annually, which is mostly due to academic acceleration or a family relocating, rather than not wanting to go through the boarding process.
A challenge schools face comes from trying to be all things to all people. When I started 15 years ago, Appleby College was a very good school, but it didn't necessarily stand out. That’s why we concentrated on being succinct, targeted, and consistent in our messaging. Credit goes to the leadership at Appleby for their patience and support as we went through this mindset shift.
How do you balance consistency and adaptability in your communication strategy across various audience segments?
The core message has to remain the same across all our communications. There are different elements or means of expression, but we try to maintain consistency in the language we use and in speaking to the elements of experience. Whether it's a digital ad, our website, or our printed prospectus, if we’re doing our job properly, there should be a consistent thread that weaves its way through all of them.
This year we announced that, in addition to the Global Leadership diploma and the AP Capstone program, we're offering three other diplomas of distinction, one in business, one in STEM, and one in the creative arts. That's the next evolution of our approach to experiential learning. And, we'll continue to use experiential learning as the springboard to differentiate the Appleby student learning experience.
