MARCOM Professionals Track

MARCOM Professionals Track

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Session Title Description
Photography Part 1: Hiring a Professional Photographer  Research shows that audiences remember and connect significantly better with content that includes photography. While you can take tons of snapshots with your smartphone for free, hiring a professional photographer for your school marketing is a sure-fire way to boost your brand. “But it’s expensive,” you say. “And how do I know I’ll get what I need?” In Part 1 of this session, professional photographer Michael Branscom and InspirED School Marketers’ Liza Fisher Norman will give you the tools you need to select the right photographer for the job and write the RFP.
Photography Part 2: Scheduling the Shoot to Maximize Your Investment  Research shows that audiences remember and connect significantly better with content that includes photography. While you can take tons of snapshots with your smartphone for free, hiring a professional photographer for your school marketing is a sure-fire way to boost your brand. “But it’s expensive,” you say. “And how do I know I’ll get what I need?” In Part 2 of this session, professional photographer Michael Branscom and InspirED School Marketers’ Liza Fisher Norman will show you how to schedule a shoot to maximize the photographer’s time on campus and give you the most bang for your buck.
Ask the MarCom Power Panel
In this session, we’ll gather a panel of experts in the field of school admissions marketing who will field questions from the floor. Or write your question down anonymously during the session and the moderators will ask it for you. Here are some to get you thinking… How can nurture marketing help in a tactical manner to move families through the admission funnel? How do you create a content map based on personas and the buyer's journey for your school? Who leads the way in admissions marketing…admissions or marketing?
Bucking Tradition: The Move From Printed Viewbook to Digital
The “coffee table” quality view book, has been a staple of the Independent School Admission Office since the earliest days of marketing our schools.  It has been debated for years as to their value in today’s digital word.  Newark Academy in Livingston NJ, a school whose roots are as deep and old as any school you can think of, stopped debating and made the move away from a printed view book this year. Will Taylor, Director of Admission and Enrollment Management, will share their journey to this decision with you. What are the regrets?  Has it proven effective? What have the benefits been? An interactive Q&A will follow. 
What is Inbound Marketing - and Why Should You Care?
Inbound is a long-term marketing strategy that will not only serve as your school's strongest promotional vehicle, but if done correctly can set you up to have better retention in the future. So what is inbound marketing, what does it look like in practice and why does it matter for your school? Get the answers to these questions and more during this session.
Inbound Marketing Deep Dive: Planning for the Year Ahead 
Once you understand the basic principles behind inbound marketing, it's time to start formulating a plan to get buy-in from your community, develop compelling content and generate the website traffic you need to succeed. During this session we will take a step by step look at the key inbound elements so you can walk away today with an action plan for your school.
Do You Really Need 'A Brand New Brand'? 
What happens when your brand becomes uninspiring? Or your tagline has become trite? Or you really don't like the rounded corners on your view book anymore? This presentation will focus on the successes (and failures!) that come with re-imagining a brand - including how to tackle this challenge with an integrated communications solution in mind.  Learn to dream big, scale down and fail forward in order to give your brand the second chance it deserves.  The result? Brand new brand synergy. 
Why You Should Be using Pinterest and Instagram to Market Your School
Visual content matters in a cluttered social media world.  Instagram and Pinterest are two exciting platforms that not enough schools are using to market themselves to prospective families.  Both of these platforms are also perfectly suited to cultivate a strong loyal ambassadorship among current families, but their power to connect with prospective students and their parents is not being harnessed by schools.  In this session, you will learn why these two platforms are unique for reaching your target audience and creative and practical suggestions on the type of content that you should post in each platform.  Even though you are already busy enough with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, you will also learn the tools that successful schools use to incorporate Pinterest and Instagram into your marketing system of recruiting, retention and referrals.