School Choice and School Marketing
Last Friday (July 1st) the Miami Herald carried a story about Governor Rick Scott signing five new bills addressing school choice in Florida. The article quoted the governor, saying his goal was to make sure ‘everyone has an opportunity for a great education’. Representatives from the Broward County Teachers Union, complained that the laws were ‘shameful’ and the state’s resources should be focused on helping traditional public schools. The effects of the new laws will make it easier for parents to choose K-12 educational options, other than public schools, and raises the bar for public schools to meet acceptable performance standards.
Regardless of which side of the argument about school choice you come down on, the nature of K-12 education in this country is changing, and will continue to change for the foreseeable future. Whether you feel those changes should be focused on adjusting the existing public education framework or providing alternatives to force reform across the entire industry, educational organizations are facing greater challenges to attract and retain students.
This brings up the issue of marketing your school or district to a new class of consumer – the educational services buyer. We are used to this idea in higher education, but many education administrators remain uncomfortable with market-oriented concepts applied to K-12. Historically, K-12 education has been classed as a public good – meaning it should be available to all (non excludeable) and have little (approximately zero) cost to add one more student.
As a consequence of an extended economic downturn; increases in non-documented immigration into the US; increasing requirements for re-training or re-teaching in the post-secondary environment, and many other factors, educational change (reform for the activist-minded) has finally reached a tipping point. We will not put the genie back in the bottle and we will not completely reverse the trend toward more choice (read competition) in the provision of educational services.
Many school PR professionals still look at the issue of communications (and hence marketing) as a matter of media relations, choosing to believe that the local news outlets are the most influential in forming community opinions. However, recent studies from the Pew Research Center and others show a growing trend in Internet users who seek news and information through other means.
As of 2010, eighty-four percent (84%) of 30 to 49 year-olds were online and over two-thirds of households had broadband connectivity. There is also an increase in usage of the Internet for news and information, with 92% of adult Internet users reading e-mail and 78% getting news or information on a ‘product or service they are thinking of buying’.
All this adds up to the conclusion many in school communications already know. Whether you are a public school PR professional or a private, charter, or virtual school administrator you need to be more effective in marketing your services. Audience segmentation is one of the crucial concepts behind effective marketing so you can target the message and method(s) of delivery. If you segment your audience by the relationships types they have with your school you will likely develop categories similar to the following.
1. Frequent Relationship – These are the parents, staff, volunteers and others in your community that interact with your school(s) on a regular basis. They are looking for day-to-day operational information ranging from events or alerts at school to major successes or policy decisions being made.
2. Occasional Relationship – This includes voters, special interest groups, the media and those who are interested in one or a few specific topics or only ‘high level’ information about your school.
3. Potential Relationship – These are the parents, staff or community members who are considering your city to relocate and may wish to establish one of the above relationships with your school or organization. These users need to be cultivated so if or when they are ready to ‘make a move’ your school system is at the top their list.
There are multiple ways in which you can segment the different online users that makeup your school’s potential audience. While the methods and tools that you choose to communicate and engage your audience are important, they are secondary to a commitment to reach out to these different audiences with targeted information they want and to engage them in your schools both with their feedback and their resources.
