"We're going to the moon boys" Marketing a school

September 12th 1961 in a sports stadium on a sunny Houston day, U.S. President John F Kennedy delivers a stirring speech that will task a country to land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth. No small feat by any measure.

Okay, so I may have become obsessed with learning everything about the Apollo moon landings in the last 12 months. The 1 metre high Lego model of a Saturn V rocket taking up space in my dining room is testimony to that. And you might be thinking what has this got to do with marketing a school? Drawing a comparison between the two might be shooting for the stars, every pun intended. But there is a lesson in it all, a lesson that teaches us something important that applies to my job as a school’s communications manager: when there is strong leadership, with a clear goal, that is willing to allow the right people with the right skills to do their job with upmost faith and confidence then the impossible mission can become possible.

For anyone who works in marketing and admissions in an independent school, travelling to the moon and back seems like an easy task when compared to recruiting pupils, especially boarders. It is almost a guarantee that a headmaster’s goal for their marketing and admissions team is simply to recruit more pupils, and we probably sit there just like the NASA engineers in 1961 did mumbling “oh sure it’s that easy, what does he know he only gets paid to make speeches and shake hands”. But that is how it should be, the leaders set a clear goal and know why and it is up to us, the engineers, the technicians to work out how. This is where the challenge to headmasters lies, trust your experts, don’t be afraid to set the big goals then walk away. Take faith that you have the right people with the right skills working on the right goal. Sure JFK could make a speech but could he design the propulsion system for a Lunar Lander, absolutely not, but he didn’t need to because his job was to inspire and challenge and set to task the experts and the specialists. 

Too often do headmasters feel they need to be involved in marketing on a daily basis, dictating what they believe should be done - “I think we need to do this” “I’ve seen an advert for another school here, we need to be there” everyone is a marketing expert right? I have experienced this first hand, it’s micromanagement that held me back and blunted my instinct and professional knowledge. It doesn’t serve any purpose other than to hold a team back from reaching its goal. We’re very fortunate at St David’s College to have a JFK character as a headmaster, Mr Andrew Russell, who recognises people have skills in areas he doesn’t and he has faith that we will do our job right to reach his lofty goals. Of course, he also makes a good speech, shakes hands like a pro and has a charisma that makes my job a whole lot easier (I hope he doesn’t read this). Headmasters, have faith and leave the experts to do their job because they know it inside and out. 

Design, build, test, improve over and over.

Now to the marketing teams (Yes even just one person working in marketing in a school apparently makes a team, believe me I know). Imagine yourself as NASA engineers, something I often do because I refuse to grow up, you have your task and you have the skills to achieve it. Just like engineers we have firm science on our side, we have numbers to back up our skills and instincts. I approach every new marketing activity or campaign like an experiment. I implement using my existing knowledge and marketing instinct then I check the numbers and get to understand them – what do my analytics say about the website traffic, did my google AdWords campaign work in that area, did people click on one Facebook ad more than another. That’s why digital marketing, the absolute centre of our marketing universe at St David’s, is so powerful because it can tell us so much about what we do and where we need to tweak and tinker and refine. But numbers and statistics don’t tell the whole story, we need to be open to the anecdotal stuff and listen to lots of different people and channels. After the tragedy of the Apollo 1 fire which saw the death of 3 astronauts, NASA engineers realised they hadn’t listened to the concerns of the people actually flying the ship. The numbers looked good on paper but the reality of being sat in a poorly built command module said something totally different. I try and listen to parents, to staff and to other industry professionals, I have to rely on my gut instinct to filter out the useless or the misleading but it all helps me design where I’m going next and the statistics help add to that picture. Design, build, test, improve over and over.

I know this makes it all sound easy, especially considering we work in the independent education industry with its unique challenges and slightly odd ways of doing things. But to quote John F Kennedy himself in 1961 “we choose to do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard” work would be boring otherwise.