Rethinking Marketing
I was just with another school board of trustees--this time an international school in Europe--where I heard the lament that "we are the best kept secret in town." This was said to tee up an argument for more aggressive marketing by the school's advancement and admissions personnel. I hear a version of this lament almost weekly at one or another independent or international school. The problem is that these same schools are already doing a ton of terrific conventional marketing: print and electronic ads, open houses, meetings with referral sources, direct mail pieces, e-mail broadcasts, etc.The more I hear the complaint, the more I am convinced that the solution isn't about doing more aggressive marketing; rather, it is about doing marketing differently. Brian Halligan at HubSpot coined the term "inbound marketing" to describe what Seth Godin calls "permission marketing," meaning marketing that "earns its way in" around all the defenses most of us erect to shield ourselves from conventional approaches. It is about the customer being attracted to us for something other than the pitch, rather than us using the pitch to grab the customer (outbound marketing).
I am not sure that inbound marketing with its extensive use of social media and content will work in this sector, but I know that taking the same old approach only harder and faster won't do the job. [Click here for a terrific infographic on inbound marketing from Voltier Digital.]