“Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care”

Theodore Roosevelt

I love this quotation and when it comes to defining your marketing strategies and positioning your school, this should sit at the heart of how you think and what you do. Some of us operate in Primary Schools in isolated rural communities, others within huge MAT’s in urban conglomerations but we share the same passion and commitment to do the best we can for our children. It’s easy to lose sight of this when labouring over strategic approaches to income generation or devising cunning new ways to engage on social media platforms.

But what do we actually mean by Marketing in the education arena? There are many definitions of course but perhaps my favourite would be that offered by David & Ellison (1997) – “The means by which the school actively communicates and promotes its purpose, values and products to the pupils, parents, staff and wider community.” There are two key words here; purpose and values. So, ask yourself, do you really understand your school’s purpose and values?

There are many of course who doubt the value of marketing our schools. And to be fair, if we indulge in ad-hoc and wasteful campaigns then we deserve to invite scepticism and doubt. On the other hand, if we’re clear on what we’re looking to achieve and are able to demonstrate a return on our investment, then we have nothing to shy away from and the results can be overwhelmingly positive.

It is really important to have a strategic approach, a plan which can be costed and evaluated. It’s equally important to get away from thinking of marketing as an isolated activity (an advert, a poster) – marketing is something that all stakeholders should be aware of and appreciate. Students, staff, parents and governors – they are all stakeholders in the schools and as such should be considered as “brand ambassadors” – engage with them and they can be very powerful advocates of your school brand. We should avoid the natural (and understandable) kneejerk and panic stricken reaction to the issues faced and instead look to deploy an approach which sits alongside the over-arching school improvement plan. Placing some additional advertisements in the local newspaper is the cherry on the cake (so to speak!), whereas school leaders should look for the cake ingredients first – defining key messages, clarity on our branding and identity and understanding our purpose.

Your marketing plan may look to address some or even all of the following:
•Defining Brand and Values & promoting key messages
•To manage Reputation – reinforcing or modifying?
•To attract and retain the best staff – talented staff help drive standards
•For Communications/PR/Media/Crisis Management – business continuity, press releases
•To sustain or recruit more students – why your school? Key messages and USP.
•To attract funding and support – sponsors, funders, commercial engagement. Aligning of values.
•To engage with alumni/former students – £1bn+ donated to UK Universities by alumni in 2017.

I often refer to “Start With Why” from Simon Sinek’s Ted talk – Simon extols the virtues of defining your “why” and articulating that to your community, rather than focusing purely on the “how” and the “what”. This works for us in education; we operate in an emotive, human-centric environment – the language and tone we choose is critical when it comes to crafting emotive connections with your audiences. Astute school marketeers should also recognise the part culture has to play.

Peter Druker, the renowned management consultant once claimed “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. But how can we measure and articulate our culture? One way might be to run a small “brand mapping” exercise –pulling together a set of shared core values, involving students and staff. This is a very worthwhile exercise and will underpin your key marketing messages. Staff and students are ambassadors, engage with them first.

Remember Marketing and Income Generation go hand in hand – strategic marketing can help define and articulate key benefits to potential supporters and position your school so that it’s attractive to investors. Similarly, if you’re fully aware of the contents of your Income Generation plan then you can segment your target audience(s) and approach them accordingly. These two strategies need to synergise and support one-another – take the Independent/Private School sector – there’s a good reason why development, communications and marketing staff generally sit beside one another!

Developing sustainable partnerships with other organisations can be very fruitful and deliver real benefits to your school. Soft outcomes could include work experience opportunities, guest speakers and valuable insights into the world of industry.

Either way, marketing your school in a coherent and structured way can reinforce your reputation as an institution worth investing in.

The above is a guest blog from Justin Smith, the Managing Director of Chameleon Training and Consultancy

www.chameleon-training.co.uk

We know that budgets are tight at the moment and a lot of schools are now looking to commercial opportunities/sponsorship etc in order to raise non school budget ancillary income. So we would like to help in this respect too and there are a couple of programmes we are running at the moment.

Firstly if we were lucky enough to be given an order from you, we would pay your school or PTA an introductory commission of 3% to any new business which you introduced to us (assuming of course the referral turns into a firm sale). If we can also send another interested party to your school to have a look at the product we supplied you, we would pay you a fee for your time to help with this.

And if you are able to feature our product on your school website with a photo (usually this is on the school news section of the website or the PTA pages) and with a mention of our company with a website link, then we can look at giving you a discount.

And we have some products which you could use for interesting PTA events such as our pedal powered disco or cinema. We would set up a certain amount of special dynamo bikes which the children, staff or parents have to pedal in order to produce electricity to power  up the film or music system. And if they stop pedalling, so does the power supply! So you could organise a novel pedal powered film night, charge people to come along to watch it and get everyone sponsored who is pedalling (like you would a sponsored bike ride).

And although not directly linked to us, you must always remember that you could gain some useful lettings income from our bigger enclosed classroom buildings by renting them out to the local community or local businesses.

For further information on these promotions and others, please contact the Hideout House Company on 01832 275902 or email: info@hideouthouse.com

The forest schools programme and initiative in the UK is definitely gaining momentum as we do now receive quite a few enquiries from schools who are looking for outdoor shelters for forest schools which they can use in these designated areas.

A common request is to provide for some sort of outdoor shelter or outdoor classroom provision where the children can seek refuge from the elements when so required or which the forest school practitioner can use as an outdoor learning & teaching base. And as making and building fires is a major part of this initiative, we have developed our very own fire pit shelter and outdoor classroom where you can actually have a fire pit in the middle. These tend to be open-sided structures although we can partially enclose them with either solid infill panels or roll-up/roll-down canvas panels to enclose some further protection. The smoke from the fire exhausts through a special ventilation hole in the roof with a special roof cap to stop rain getting in.

But we have been asked also for a facility where as well as lighting fires, the children would also like to be able to cook somewhere and ideally in a building which is fully enclosed so that it can be used all year round. And if you can have some desks in there as well, all the better!

So we are pleased to now be selling stylish outdoor shelters for forest schools cabin which come in different sizes to suit different class sizes or forest school groups and which have a special central fire/BBQ cooking facility where a fire can be lit to both heat up the cabin and to cook on. It is also possible to have internal benching and desks in the cabin as well and in this instance a flue positioned above the fire allows the smoke to easily escape. So this product offers up the ideal solution for a forest school – it allows children to make fires (and thereby also provide for internal heat if “off grid” which these sites usually are), it allows them to cook, it provides for shelter for all year round use and it can be an outdoor learning resource with desks and tables.

There are some options available – firstly the sizes as they come in 10m2, 14m2, 17m2 and 25m2 variants. On some of these models, you can have either sloping walls or straight, there are a couple of colour choices of felt shingle tiles for the roof, internal benches and desks, seating cushions, LED lights and bases. Our prices always allow for delivery and installation.

For further details, please contact the Hideout House Company on 01865 858982 or email: info@hideouthouse.com

www.hideouthouse.com

We have developed some creative activities for outdoor classrooms which include features to promote a lot of the core themes of the Eco Schools programme – namely renewable energy, bio-diversity, growing and healthy living. First of all though, you need access to the following essential ingredients:

* Outdoor classroom or shelter – preferably with a living sedum roof and an internal mini dipping pond

* Dynamo electric pedal bikes which produce electricity when pedalled

* Mini wind turbine/solar panel and energy monitoring board with power sockets

* Guttering and water butt for rainwater harvesting

* Planters

So now we have an outdoor classroom which is actually a learning resource too. For bio-diversity, the children can see how the sedum on the roof changes colour and texture and how it attracts wildlife. And in no time at all, the mini dipping pond will be thriving with life and providing a natural habitat for all sorts of creatures. For renewable energy, children can pedal on the special dynamo electric pedal bikes to create power which can then be used for all kinds of creative outdoor learning exercises; they can monitor the energy created by the wind turbine or solar panel and then use this to power up laptops, tablets etc. And they can plant and grow their own food which is turn is fed and watered by natural rainwater.

And this happens all year round as well!

For further information as to how your school can benefit from the above, please contact Simon Fearnehough on 01865 858982 or email simon@hideouthouse.com

 or visit eco school activities