Five Marketing Ideas for Private Schools

This is the first in a series of five brief articles each with a piece of marketing counsel for clients in the private, independent education sector.Idea 1: Marketing is about transformation, not transaction.Most schools get this backward. Their approach to marketing is to use a features-and-benefits to sell parents on the value of buying an education at their school. Inevitably these pitches say, “In exchange for your tuition money, we promise to deliver something to your child.”Ok, in as far as it goes, but it loses the essential purpose of education—to transform individuals. A transactional approach to marketing your school is a sure-fire way to commodify what you offer. Transforming students into their best selves is the very essence of both value creation and education. Marketing schools is not about making sales; rather, it is about helping students transform into their best selves, maybe even selves that their parents didn’t think possible.Transaction or transformational? Your call.