In episode 11 of The School Marketing Show Live, Mia Major and Kristen Doverspike discussed the findings of InspirED's 2020 Private School MarCom Report with InspirED's Rob Norman. InspirED School Marketers developed the Private School MarCom Survey to help private school marketing professionals benchmark your work against others, assess allocations of resources, highlight trends, and give you information to take to leadership to get more support for your office. (Grab your FREE copy of the report.)

Watch The School Marketing Show Live Episode 11 below:

Episode Takeaways:

• "Taglines are a crutch" — especially today. Schools and districts alike need a brand that runs deep.
• Schools should always be improving their website — and for the majority of schools who have a website that is 3-5 years old, now is the time to redesign.
• Schools weren't thinking about virtual tours and online experiences as a permanent fixture in their marketing when they responded to this survey, but now they are.
• MarCom teams are the most under-resourced and under-staffed teams at schools — but that needs to change.
• The number of Twitter accounts most schools have is out of control.

Read the full Transcript Below:

Kristen Doverspike:
Welcome everyone to the School Marketing Show Live. My name is Kristen, and as always, I'm joined by the brilliant Mia. And every week we get together at this time, just to talk through a specific topic that we hear among schools and districts on issues that they care about right now. Now, if you weren't with us last episode, we talked about Facebook for schools. Really interesting to talk about just how you can connect with your community through Facebook. And if you haven't seen it already, you can head over there, but hang on with us right now, because we actually have a very special episode today. We are joined today by Rob from Inspired School Marketers. They recently just released their 2020 private school MarCom report. And I there's just so many tidbits that I think are fantastic that we would love to talk through today. So hang out with us for the next 20 or so minutes. And I will just hand it over to Rob to give a quick introduction of who he is and Inspired School Marketers, just so we can really kick things off.

Rob Norman:
Hello, Rob Norman. I'm the best boy here at Inspired School Marketers. And Inspired as an online community and resource for anyone involved in any kind of marketing or communications at a private school. We have members who are community members who are directors of MarCom, admission development, heads of school, people in athletics, the bookstore, everyone. Inspired is all about trying to make your job easier. That's why we were started, to try to serve as a resource for people in MarCom. My background, we did marketing and communications for private schools for about 30 years, so that's how we got into this. And we started at about five or six years ago. We've got a growing community, probably upwards of 5,000 people that are part of the community in one way, shape or form. Looking part of our Facebook group, which is a very active conversation. I have a daily e-newsletter that I send out with one idea called The Daily Jolt. You can sign up for that on our website, inspiredsm.com. And we're all about trying to share information, which is what we're here about today.

Kristen Doverspike:
Awesome. Thanks so much for introducing yourself. And Mia is with us today as well if you haven't been with us before. I don't know Mia, if you would want to say some words and then we can dive into the report.

Mia Major:
Yeah. So I'm just really excited to be talking to Rob today about this report, because like you, we read through it and you kind of look through all of the data. And you're like, "Oh, that's really interesting." Right before we started, the call, I was thinking how my favorite part of the entire report is this area where people kind of rate themselves on an area of expertise. And it's kind of interesting to line up your own expertise. You're like, "Okay, that's kind of where I am like, Ooh, I'm doing better here. And maybe not so much in this category, I'm on average." So there's a lot of really cool tidbits throughout that entire report. And it looked like it was a ton of work for you guys. So Rob, why don't you just start off by telling us a little bit about the 2020 MarCom survey report for private schools.

Rob Norman:
This is the third year we've done the survey. The whole idea when we started was to try to help schools benchmark a whole range of facets of their job. Who they report to, how long they've been in the job, where they came from, what they get paid, how their office is structured, how other offices at the school are structured. We talk about brand and taglines. We talk about style guides. We look at enrollment marketing and development marketing, and social media, and we're trying to again, make your job easier. This information is information that anyone who does this kind of work at a school can use to inform themselves, but they can also use it if they want to go and talk to their head of school and say, "Hey, look, here's what other schools are doing. Or here are the resources that other schools have."

So that's the whole idea behind the report. Again, the third year, and this year we had 209 people take the survey. There are 81 questions. I've got to say right off the top, we thank those people, because it's a lot of work for them. And obviously if people don't take the report, there's no value to it. So we really appreciate it. And I think it is truly information that schools and people, our work at schools can do it, Kit can use. And we want to thank Finalsite for being this year's sponsor for the report. Greatly, greatly appreciated. Final site made it possible for this report so that you can have that information.

Kristen Doverspike:
Thanks, Rob. We're happy to. I think like Mia said, this report is so awesome, even for us. I think just taking a look at the data is so telling. And I did just want to ask, and I know you kind of talked about the respondents a little bit, but you started collecting data really right at the beginning of the pandemic and the lockdown. So how do you think that affected the responses if at all?

Rob Norman:
First of all, I would tell you that the fact that we got 209 people to take this thing, when we know how stressed they were, we opened it up in March and we closed it in July. The fact that people took the report, we really appreciate. I think there are certain areas. One of the questions that we asked was about virtual tours. And that's clearly something that would be effected by the response. I think I'd have to look it up. I think 40% of the people said they had virtual tours this year. I'm going to guess next year, it's going to be 80% or 90%. I'm not sure about the other areas, it's really hard to tell. I don't think it really would have affected a lot of it since so much of what we're talking about is longer term rather than shorter term.

Mia Major:
Speaking of longterm versus short term, this is the third time that you guys have done the report. So I think being able to cross reference that data over quite a few years is obviously extremely telling. So have there been any trends or any significant changes that you're like, "Oh, wow, this is clearly an indicator of changing times."

Rob Norman:
There are a couple, there are a lot of trends that you can see. And in the report we reference when it's notable, the responses from '17 and '18. The three areas that I had that I thought were interesting: schools continue to hire directors of MarCom from outside of the private school world. I think that is a trend that we've seen, it has continued. And I think it's a positive thing. Because that brings in different attitudes, different ideas, and it brings in talent from outside. So I thought that was a great one.

The one that really probably got me the most, we asked if you still produce a printed view book. In 2017, 72% of respondents said they had a printed view book. In '18, it was 63, this year, only 51% of the respondents had a printed view book. That really surprised me because view books for the longest time were it, when it came to ... I mean, websites too, but they were the big marketing piece. The last one, and this I've seen a trend and I'm surprised it took this long is how many schools produce a printed report of gifts on the development side.

Rob Norman:
In 2017 and '18, it was exactly the same. 63% were still producing a printed report this year, 43%. I'm surprised it took that long. The big surprise is isn't that it's down, it's that I've been hearing directors of development, wanting to dump the report of gifts for years. It's a tremendous amount of work. It's a tremendous amount of pressure to get it right. And nobody cares. Nobody looks at it. So now only 43% did it. So those are the three trends that I really see, the ones that really surprised me.

Mia Major:
If you don't mind, I have one follow up question to that, because it seems like we're clearly on a downward trend for print materials, but I feel, and I know Rob, you guys have so much experience in the marketing and branding agency or industry. I feel like it's weird that we're kind of seeing print on such decline, because I also feel like, especially with Gen Z and how everything's virtual a lot more people want things in their hands and now, so do you think that maybe if there's a 2021 report, we're going to see that number go back up?

Rob Norman:
I think it's possible in certain areas. Printed magazines have not dropped as much as the other two that I mentioned, which were view books and report of gifts. In the report, I was really surprised at the decline in the percentage of schools that produce printed annual fund appeals. So everybody's been saying Prince dead for 20 years. And until the last couple of years, we haven't really seen big declines in the report, in the survey. It'll be interesting to see how this trend continues. That's a good question, Mia.

Kristen Doverspike:
That's super interesting. And I think a lot of what you were talking there too, is just kind of a testament to how much schools are doing and putting out and collecting, even despite maybe that print piece going down. I did have one question because I feel like this is something we often see a lot, even here at Finalsite, and it was just reinforced with the report. Despite it being 2020, a lot of schools are still operating with just a team of one across marketing, admissions and development, just one person team or very small teams. Do you think that these schools who really have so much to do, why they have such a limited resource in terms of their teams? Do you have any tips for staying sane maybe? Any thoughts on that end?

Rob Norman:
First thing I would say is while it seems like a lot of them have only one person in the department. Clearly, as you add numbers to the department, MarCom is the lowest by far. They have, if you look, 34% of the respondents had one person in MarCom, 40% had one in development, 29% had one in admissions. But as it goes up, MarCom doesn't add a lot. And when you get to having five or more in the department, only 8% of respondents had five or more people in the MarCom department. 29% had five or more in development, and 24% had five or more in admissions. So that's three times the number of MarCom. So I think MarCom still lags. I think school's still, what do I say?

Rob Norman:
They don't bring the resources to MarCom that they do to admissions and development, which is really crazy because MarCom supports admissions development and every other department at the school. And this is kind of one of the things that we hope people will look at and show it to their head of school and say, "Look, other schools, aren't bringing the resources for MarCom. We need those resources."

Rob Norman:
It's always seemed to been that trend. I forget exactly what the exact percentage is. I think 33% of the schools who responded didn't even have a MarCom department. So what's that tell you about where people are bringing resources? So I'm hoping that as you bring in people from the outside with more capabilities and schools begin to see those capabilities play out, that they will then bring more resources for MarCom. Because as we talked, the reason Mark on people are so busy is you used to be print, and then it was print and website and then print and website and social media. And now they're 19 social media channels and they're adding them all the time, and how do you do all that?

Mia Major:
Yeah, actually, I'm in like a couple of different Facebook groups. One of them being Inspired School Marketers, and one of them being School Marketing Community, and I'm in another one called Communication Professionals or something like that. And someone posted this morning in a couple of them, I just inherited 30 Twitter accounts. A bunch of them don't have passwords, this that and the other thing? I'm a one person shop. How do I manage all this? And I just like wanted to comment and be like, "Turn off all the accounts. You do not need them." No stress, just delete, delete, delete, delete.

Rob Norman:
One of the interesting things. If you look at the accounts that they have, in the survey report, we ask everybody, "Okay, what do you have, Twitter and Facebook?" And across the thing, alumni and the different ... basically it's all school accounts. Maybe alumni my accounts for Facebook. Nobody really cares about the having 19 different Twitter accounts. It's crazy.

Mia Major:
We've always recommended one social media account per platform. Maybe you have a few extra on Twitter or maybe if you have like a really strong presence on Instagram and you want to split it. Anytime you're splitting your traffic anyway, you're just letting your traffic

Rob Norman:
Well. And you're also creating work, because having a channel without filling that channel on a regular basis is terrible. It's just a shame.

Mia Major:
Well, I hope that we see some MarCom teams getting the resources and people that they need, especially after everything they've been through this year. I feel like that's what everyone should just get.

Rob Norman:
One of the things I've said a couple of times is if the school and the leadership of the school, that is the head and the board don't see the value of communications now, they never will. Because if you didn't have a robust communications department and you tried to go through what we just went through, you're done. There's no way you can get that communication consistent and accurate on a regular basis, and everybody was dying for info. So this was a real wake up call, I'm sure for some schools that didn't have the infrastructure for communications.

Mia Major:
Yeah. And I think what's funny about that statement actually kind of brings me to one of the statistics I found to be super interesting in the report, was that 64% of schools don't have a formal retention program in place. So right, now many independent schools, especially in states where the public schools are not as great and they're all hybrid or remote and the parents want their child to go to school. Those private schools are seeing a huge surge. They have long waiting lists. They don't even know what to do. But are those families actually going to stay at the school? Is it kind of just a one year thing? And I don't think kind of the way that schools might not think ahead about the MarCom, team clearly with 64% of them having no formal plan in place, are maybe not thinking about how to retain all of these new families to keep full enrollment. And it seems like they should. Where would a school even start with that when they're already having a small team and where should they start?

Rob Norman:
I think focusing on retention is a relatively new focus for schools. I think there's a very simple place to start, and you start with customer service. Now, we don't like to consider our families at schools customers, but they are. And you need to be focused on service. I did a podcast, which you can get on our website with a woman named Michelle Gantz, who was at the Watershed School of Boulder, Colorado. Her title was the chief experience officer. And she was functioning, not just for existing families, not just for prospective families, but for anyone involved in the community, including faculty.

Rob Norman:
If you start with the experience of being a member of your community and do everything you can to make that experience positive, I think it's a great way to start. Most of the schools that we've spoken to have a committee, they put together. In the report we ask, and it's typically led by someone in admissions and they should focus on everything. Not just retaining existing families, focus on the experience of being a member of that community. One piece of which will affect retention of families. But if you take care of the experience, the retention, a lot of it takes care of itself.

Kristen Doverspike:
Great point. I think it's such a good point to talk about experience. And I feel like it was a really good segue into a question that I had. I know, just thinking about experience and on the marketing side of things, I think one statistic that kind of really blew our minds was that less than half of schools have a tagline. And I feel like that's almost a piece of marketing 101, it's kind of one of the first things that many families see when they visit a school's website. So just curious why do you think some schools haven't developed one yet? Do you even think they should have a tagline of any sort, just kind of like bouncing off of that?

Rob Norman:
Well, that's kind of a spot for me. I wrote a blog that's on our website, you don't need a tagline, you need a brand. Personally, I think for a lot of schools, taglines are crutches, it's a crutch. Instead of having a brand where they can describe clearly and consistently what makes their school unique, the value to the families, that bigger picture of why people choose that school, they use their tagline. Now in the report, 83 people shared their taglines with us. What I would tell you to do is go read those taglines and I defy you to match them with a school. That's why taglines aren't so important. Because to try to sum up a school in three or five or eight words, they are more meaningful to the internal community than they are to the external community. So if you have a tagline that really grabs your internal community and speaks to them, that's great, use it. Use it sparingly, use it in the right place, don't think it's a brand. If you don't have one, I personally don't think you're missing anything, if you have a solid brand.

Mia Major:
No, it's fine. I think Kristen and I both have our topics that if you ask us a question about it, we could go on for days. Mine is forms.

Rob Norman:
Well, taglines is one for me. And honestly, in all our work for, we had written taglines. But we never set out to write a tagline. We would do research for a school and try to develop the brand. And if a tagline jumped out, we used it. One school we did work for, one of the brand messages created a tagline that the school themselves chose to use. But they'll be the first to tell you, the tagline is about the internal community. The external community doesn't really get it.

Mia Major:
Well, I think Kristen, our first episode on the School Marketing Show is about value propositions. And we talked about how having a value proposition is so much more important than having a tagline, because it really speaks to the overall value that you're bringing your community. And it transcends enrollment and retention and fundraising. And I feel like it's a couple notches above a tagline in terms of its importance and its prominence on a website. And it's funny, because I was quickly scrolling through the list of taglines here and there was one that kind of hovered on that value proposition line.

Mia Major:
Because in my head I was like, "Oh, I read in the report, 37% of these schools are final state schools. I bet I'll recognize some of these." And I don't, I cannot stick them to a school at all. But there was one of them and it says Amarillo's only college prep for grades six through 12. There's something about that, that I really, really like, especially on a website because when I think of SEO and I think of ranking organically in search and just what people are searching for. If I'm in Amarillo, Texas, and I'm searching for college prep grade six through 12 or college prep high school or middle school, that school is just going to dominate search organically. So it might not be the catchiest thing, but it probably has a really ... I would be willing to bet that if we Googled that, that school would pop up.

Rob Norman:
I would call that more of a descriptor than a tagline.

Kristen Doverspike:
Yeah. On those taglines of the past, it was more on old school advertising. You needed a tagline that was short and catchy that people remembered when they saw in print. And now we are more in a digital age. So everything you were saying, Rob, I think I agree with and Mia that one, I feel like that's total what we were talking about in our first episode with value physicians. It's way more valuable than the taglines of the past. So I could talk about this for a long time too.

Rob Norman:
I encourage you to go look at the 83 taglines we have in the report. Some of them, you have to laugh.

Mia Major:
It would be a fun game. You guys should've added that, a matching component. Whoever can match the most to the school without looking gets prize.

Rob Norman:
That would be free. I don't think you're going to get any.

Mia Major:
It's also interesting to see how many used similar words, similar phrases and anyone can say that they inspire young minds. I inspire young minds. I have a toddler, he's very inspired, all day. But I say that because in a world where we're all saying the same thing and there's so much noise, clearly standing out online should be top of mind. Your top priority should be your website. We always say here, it's like, if you're investing in SEO, PPC, paid ads, social, if you're investing anywhere outside of that central marketing communication hub, but your marketing and communication hub isn't up to par. A lot of those external efforts are not going to pay off in the long run.

Mia Major:
Because you're sending them somewhere that isn't a fantastic experience. And Kristen, you actually pulled this stat out of the report that it seemed that a lot of schools are kind of hovering in that about three to five year mark is how old their website is. And that's kind of at the point where they should start thinking about a redesign if they haven't already, especially in this time where everything is virtual, everyone's kind of saying the same thing and everything looks the same. So I mean, Rob, at what point should schools be considering a redesign? You've done this report a few years now, I don't know if you've seen any trends with that in relation to-

Rob Norman:
Or has remained pretty steady. I think that it was 50% of the respondents, their website was two years old or less. And then another 43%, three to five years. So 93% have a website which is younger than five years old. What I think is important is for schools to continually look at their website, refresh it, update it. You don't have to do a total redesign to have fresh content. But what's important, and this is along the lines of the customer experience. You need to put it in your mind. When you go to look at your website once a month, use an unindoctrinated thinking and say, "Okay, I've never been to my school before. What am I going to see? Can I find what I'm looking for? And is the information interesting? Is it well presented? Is it fresh? Does it inspire? Is it compelling?" That's what you really need to do. Continually update your site and then yeah, every two or three years, get ready to do the whole thing over. The technology changes so much that you want to be technologically up to date. I think that's a big part of it.

Mia Major:
I think one of the biggest changes we've seen at least here at Finalsite is kind of the language of responsive versus mobile first. So back I think 2012, we launched our first responsive website and it was like, "Oh my gosh, it works on mobile." And now it's like, that's not necessarily enough because everything works on mobile, but it has to be designed for mobile and designed for that mobile experience. And understanding that, let's say you have a page on your website, that's two columns and you have a ton of content on your left and a ton of content on the right. But you structured it thinking, "Okay, they're they're reading left to right. I want all this to be next to each other." It's not going to be. And then all of a sudden that image that you wanted them to see first and foremost is all the way at the bottom of that scroll.

Mia Major:
I think that's like the biggest shift because it's, I mean, at least in terms of web design is not just thinking, "Oh, it works on mobile." Okay, of course it's going to. It's 2020, and if it doesn't call us. But thinking about that mobile first approach, both from the design perspective, working with your website company, but also just as you're building your website, thinking like, "Okay, if I build my page this way, what are they going to see first?" Because a lot of that is in the hands of the unfortunately understaffed MarCom team.

Rob Norman:
Yeah. And that's actually the customer experience piece that I'm talking about. Look at it with fresh eyes, look at it and say, "Will someone who does not know all about this school, be inspired, be enthusiastic, be able to find where they want to go on both desktop and mobile?"

Mia Major:
Kristen, I know we have a couple of questions left here, but I know that we actually, you use a really cool tool for the Finalsite website to actually get an understanding of how people are engaging with content, which has actually helped us guide a lot of our changes to make our website better. So, Kristen, I don't know if you want to share a little tidbit about that. Because I think many of our schools listening might actually find accessing that resource helpful.

Kristen Doverspike:
CrazyEgg I assume we're talking about? Yeah. So if you are just kind of interested in how families are interacting with your website here at final state, we'll use this tool called CrazyEgg. It's all one word. And it just kind of runs some tests that you can see, you know, where are people stopping, scrolling on your page. So are they actually seeing content at the bottom of your page?

Kristen Doverspike:
Are they actually clicking those elements that you think are super out in the open to you, but no one else is maybe finding? You can run these tests on any of your pages. It is a paid service, so there is a cost behind it. But the value you get from it, I feel is kind of priceless just because you can't possibly know otherwise if the work you're putting in is actually working and actually resonating. So I personally love it. I know there are some other tools Hotjar and things like that. I personally like CrazyEgg, I think it has the most tools so far that I've seen out there for it. It's fantastic. It's really interesting. So I'd recommend checking that out.

Rob Norman:
Yeah, that's fascinating.

Mia Major:
Yeah. I think especially for schools in that three to five year mark, that maybe don't have the finances or the resources to do a redesign, maybe investing in a tool like that, to be able to say like, "Okay, people clearly are not doing well on this page. On this page, we need to restructure it." But it also could give a school the tools they need to go to their head of school or go to their board and say, "We need a budget for a new website because literally no one can find anything and we have video and proof right here."

Rob Norman:
Yeah, there you go.

Mia Major:
Yeah. So I guess speaking of data and reports and all of that, Rob we've had such an amazing conversation today, so many good tidbits. Where can listeners or viewers, wherever they're coming from access this report and download it for themselves?

Rob Norman:
The report is free. That's one of the beauties of having a sponsor like Finalsite. We can provide the report to you for free. You go to inspiredsm.com and right on the home page, you can go and download the report. I would love if anyone wants to email me, I would love to hear from you if you've had an opportunity to look at it. I want to hear people's reactions and what you learned, surprises. That always helps us in interpreting the report. So you go to inspiredsm.com, download it for free. Just that easy. And share it with your friends.

Kristen Doverspike:
I highly recommend it. Yes, that's awesome.

Rob Norman:
Tell your friends and colleagues at other schools, they can download it too.

Kristen Doverspike:
Awesome. So I think it probably last then too, if you wanted to just talk to us quickly about the Brilliance Awards.

Rob Norman:
Ah, the Brilliance Awards, it's a great time of year. We love this time of year. First of all, I get to see hundreds and hundreds of samples from schools, which is always fun. The Brilliance Awards were started to try to bring recognition to the work that's being done by schools in the area of marketing and communications. There are 30 categories. Interestingly, this year we have five categories in the COVID-19 category. Different communications driven by COVID. This is our fifth year for the Brilliance Awards. And it's sponsored by Mixed Digital, which is a great group, and we really appreciate that. It's open to schools and agencies worldwide. We opened it up internationally a couple of years ago and have had winners and fabulous entries from Europe and Australia and the far East. And anything created at any time, as long as it has never won a Brilliance Award is eligible to be entered.

Rob Norman:
So please again, you go to inspiredsm.com, look for the Brilliance Awards and look through the categories. There are 30 categories. We tell schools, don't prejudge your own stuff. We've had nursery schools win awards. We've had lots of K to eights. We've had schools with very small budgets who create really compelling pieces, win awards. So we really encourage you to do it. It's great for you personally, as a director of MarCom or director of admissions or development, it's great for the school. It brings lots of recognition. I think there's a certain pride in winning an award that we know happens because people have told us how great they feel and how they get a little bit of swagger on campus. So we just love doing the awards. It's just a great time of year and it makes us feel so good, the quality of the entries. It just blows you away how great this stuff is.

Mia Major:
Well, thank you so much, Rob. We always love having you on any of our shows, any of our events here at Finalsite. Speaking of events, if you have not heard our next School Marketing Day is on October 29th. You can register at schoolmarketingday.com. We are so, so excited about this 15 hour global event. No, you are not required to attend all 15 hours, although you're more than welcome to. But we're spanning ... when we hosted School Marketing Day back in April, we had more than 4,000 registrants from over 100 countries join us for three separate events. So we were like, "Okay, let's bring everyone together for one huge epic event." Because we all have the same struggles, no matter whether you're a small private school, a large school district and international school. We all need more time in the day, more resources. We need tips, we want to improve our strategy. So School Marketing Day is all about getting you inspired and motivated for what's next. And we're really excited, registration is totally free. So we're really excited.

Rob Norman:
Sounds like an incredible day.

Mia Major:
It's going to be a really good day. Again, registration is free and it's at schoolmarketingday.com. In the meantime, we will be back next week with episode 12 of the School Marketing Show. And we look forward to seeing you right here on our Facebook page at 1:30 Eastern then. Have a good week everyone. Good luck and stay inspired. All right. Stop recording. Oh, I always stop recording before we end our livestream.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

As Finalsite's director of demand generation, Mia plans and executes a variety of inbound marketing and digital content strategies. As a former TV and news reporter, freelance cinematographer and certified inbound marketer, Mia specializes in helping schools find new ways to share their stories online through web design, social media, copywriting, photography and videography. She is the author of numerous blogs, eBooks, and reports, including Finalsite's Inbound Marketing Benchmark Report.

In her position as Inbound Marketing Manager, Kristen provides the strategy and creation of content across email, website and social media communications at Finalsite. With over five years of experience in content strategy and digital marketing, Kristen has worked with clients around the country to develop their branding, SEM, SEO, social media, and inbound efforts. She holds and maintains a number of certifications from Google, Hubspot, and Hootsuite.