Claude Anderson (@fullpayfamilies)
Dean of Enrollment
Northfield Mount Hermon
MarketingtoFullPay.com
During one of my Five Pillars workshops, I had in attendance a
director of admission who had just finished a branding campaign at her
school. What would make her come to my marketing workshop on enrolling
full-pay families? Didn’t she gain the marketing and communication
strategies she needed to advance her full-pay application numbers?
After
speaking with her about why she came, I started thinking about why
those six figure campaigns need to change so quickly every few years or
become ineffective after a short period of time. The campaign is
usually followed by another campaign in which the next vendor tells you
that he/she is going to create a unique image. Isn’t that what the
previous one said? You never knew that you had so many unique
positions, did you? Is there something missing in these branding
campaigns that makes these unique positions not unique or not valuable
for a longer period of time? Are schools not executing their part of
the campaign correctly?
I found that the director was absolutely
correct in identifying that something was missing. She was missing some
key components of her marketing initiatives. It doesn’t appear to be
within the scope of most branding and marketing campaigns. It wasn’t in
the mind of her vendor or other short term, non-focus-on-full-pay fixes
that agencies provide. So what is missing?
Imagine yourself in a
bakery; you want to purchase a cake for your friend’s birthday. You
walk in the bakery and you see many uniquely and beautifully designed
cakes.
You ask the store attendant, “What kind of cakes are these?”
The
sales person responds, “They are all chocolate cakes with their own
unique designs. You should pick the design that you like, because they
all have the same ingredients – the finest chocolate, sugar, flour, oil,
and eggs. “
“They look so different, but I like a couple of them,” you say.”
The salesperson points excitedly, “This is our newest design this year.”
“That looks great,“ you respond. “I’ll take it.”
During
the next occasion for buying a cake, would you buy the same cake, since
they all taste the same anyway? I would say not. They all taste the
same, so you might as well try a different design. The following year
will the next customer take the latest design or last year’s design?
This
seems to be the operating principle of many branding experiences.
Schools receive these beautifully designed materials with some message
or tagline that will last for a short period of time, but with the same
primary focus – quality of faculty, program, and facilities. Also
include breadth and depth of program or quality of the student body.
There is usually some improvement in the school’s applications; maybe
there is improvement in the full-pay applications. The branding company
doesn’t usually segment and target the full-pay market. You know the
group that you were hoping to target and the reason you spent hundreds
of thousands of dollars. Were they asked to target this group?
Families
come to you with questions. “What kind of school are you?” and you
respond with the branding language that you designed with the marketing
firm. You follow it up by telling
them that that you have great faculty, well-equipped facilities, smart
students, and excellent breadth and depth of programs; these are the
exact ingredients the previous school articulated. They are starting to
question whether or not the same types of ingredients actually produce
something different from school to school. They refocus their thinking
and turn to figuring out which schools actually have the best
ingredients – academics, faculty, impressive facilities, teaching of
character, nurturing, individual attention, breadth and depth of
program, or college placement list. Some parents will like your latest
design, probably not enough to achieve a strong enrollment in both
quality and quantity or not enough to give up the strongest branded
school. You will still be looking for full-pay families, because the
public schools have all the same ingredients too, perhaps not as good as
yours, but close enough and the big difference is that they free.
Let’s go to another bakery. You are still looking for a special birthday cake. You see beautifully designed cakes once again.
You ask, “What kind of cakes are these?”
The
salesperson responds, “This one is a Raspberry Almond, this one is
Chocolate Mousse, this one is Passion Coconut, this one is Lemon Velvet
Bundt, this one is All-American Chocolate* and then we have the
chocolate common cakes. The common cakes are all the same inside.”
The
sales person continues by telling you the unique ingredients used in
the special cakes, plus telling you about the quality level of the
sugar, milk, butter, flour. The specialty cakes are more expensive. He
states, “The common cakes have varying quality and some of them are the
best tasting cakes that you can buy among the “common cake “ category;
others I don’t always recommend. The specialty cakes have their own
unique flavors.”
You choose the Raspberry Almond, because you
think it will fit the taste interest of the birthday girl. The others
just won’t be the same. Which cake will you buy next year for the
birthday girl? Assuming she loved it as expected, you will buy the
Raspberry Almond again.
If the branding and marketing campaign
misses identifying the unique ingredients, then you will need to develop
this concept or the campaign won’t produce the level of results you are
seeking. Remember these thoughts:
- The customers will seek
the best of the common qualities – quality of faculty, quality of
students, breadth and depth of program, college placement, etc. Why
wouldn’t they, if there is no differentiation?
- The customers only give up the best in the common categories when the one that is different uniquely serves their needs.
- When the school solves the needs of the customer and it is worth the cost, they will pay the higher tuition.
Get
the beautiful design website or viewbook, but without giving the
consumer the differentiating ingredients, your branding campaign will
not have enough teeth and will be short lived.
*Names taken from pastichefinedesserts.com.