School business management toolkit
The Key for School Leaders | NASBM
12 marketing tips
Link on our website
Sounding Board, a marketing and communications company
based in the United States, has published a list of 12 marketing
tips for schools. These include:
• Creating a parent advocacy group
Marketing your school, School Business Management
(PowerPoint ppt file)
Building a communications strategy
An article on school publicity from Teachernet looks at putting
together a communications strategy. It says that a strategy
should address questions such as:
• Engaging local media
• Co-operating with feeder schools to remind parents of open days
• Updating the school website
• Who are your target audiences? (For example, parents, prospective
parents, other schools, local businesses, the general public)
• Creating a marketing club organised by students
• What messages do you want to communicate?
The website makes references to the American school system
which will not be relevant here, but you may still find the tips
useful. You will find further information on each tip here:
• What means will you use to communicate them?
• Who is responsible for managing the school's communications?
Link on our website
12 inexpensive and easy ways to market your school,
Sounding Board
• How will you handle potential bad news stories?
• How will you respond to media requests for more information
about your school?
Building a marketing and
communications strategy
• How will you deal with inaccuracies and misrepresentations in
the media?
Developing a marketing strategy
Manchester Metropolitan University’s School Business
Management website has a presentation with tips on marketing
a school, created by the school business manager of Churchill
Community College in North Tyneside.
Slide 8 suggests the following process for schools to follow
when developing a marketing strategy:
• How will you monitor and evaluate your publicity?
The article is now hosted on the National Archives website.
Link on our website
Getting good publicity for your school, National Archives
Internet-based marketing
1. Agree a vision
Please note that mention of specific social media platforms
or commercial providers in this article does not constitute an
endorsement from The Key.
2. Identify your 'unique selling point'
3. Devise a mission statement
4. Audit your existing situation and find out the local community’s
perception of the school
5. Set up a marketing and/or publicity team
6. Agree actions to realise the school’s vision
7. Implement these actions
8. Monitor and evaluate the success of the actions
More details about each step can be found on slides 9-20 of the
presentation.
24
• What aspects of school life can you use to get good publicity?
Social media for schools
The Guardian has a brief guide to social media for schools
written by Matt Britland, who was head of the ICT department at
Kingston Grammar School in Kingston upon Thames when the
article was written.
His recommendations include using a ‘broadcast’ account on
Facebook as a means of one-way communication with parents.
He also says that schools can use an RSS feed to link website
updates to a Twitter account.
This will automatically add a tweet to the Twitter account when
new material is added to the website, thereby keeping parents
who use Twitter informed and up to date.
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