“It could be very difficult to have an external person walk into your school and start to tell you what you could do better. However, Louise Hitchen exudes enthusiasm and you immediately recognise that she has the best interests of your school at heart. It is impossible not to warm to her and listen to her advice. She has a wealth of experience and expertise and is able to quickly assess the needs of a school and match what would be possible with the budget. ”
If you want to improve your marketing, admissions, or customer journey - then an Audit is a great starting point.
One click into the website and this is already sounding a little officious (dare I say, scary?) Yes, there’s a fair bit of number crunching and information collection, but I certainly don’t go into schools wielding a clipboard and demanding data like some kind of marketing ‘inspector’.
In talks and presentations, I’ve often described the Marketing Audit as a chance to help schools to ‘get their ducks in a row’.
Simplistic, perhaps, but I’ve found that schools often want to rush to the ‘exciting’ marketing activities – rebranding or redesigning websites and prospectuses, ‘doing’ more social media, or hosting different types of admissions events. New Heads want to make their mark, as do new marketing Directors or Managers.
Of course there are many things that schools can do differently to improve their marketing and admissions activity. However, before ‘jumping in’, I’d suggest an Audit – of what ever scale and size – is the place to start. How else can you know exactly what needs changing, what needs tweaking and what needs to stay the same?
Sometimes you just need a few nudges in the right direction to get your ducks to line up. And small changes can sometimes have incredibly effective results.
Other times you may need to shake things up quite a lot – if that’s the case, you need good data and evidence to work with – which an Audit will give you.
In both cases, an outsider with fresh perspective and a little distance can help a lot!
There are several steps during the Marketing, Admissions & Customer Journey Audit:
- We’ll discuss what you want to achieve - what you want to get out of the process. Often this is a great starting point for schools who want to improve their marketing and admissions but don’t know how.
- We’ll agree what format of review you’d like or would be most beneficial for you - if you want verbal feedback, a list of practical action points or a full report. This will determine how long we’ll need to be at your school (usually one or two days) and how much it would cost.
- Before I arrive I’ll provide you with a list of areas I’ll want to get to know better and highlight some things that I’ll need to see (such as asking to see copies of all printed materials you send out to parents, your last five years of admissions data). I’ll also outline who I’d like to speak to during our visit and what I’d like to see; providing a guideline for our time and providing a structure that you can follow easily.
- I’ll spend time at your school and really get to know what you are doing and how successful these activities are. I know that staff can sometimes feel threatened by someone coming in from outside and that some people are resistant to change. I have a very ‘light’ touch and a sensitive approach; I’ve done it many times before and can guarantee that I’ll get all the information I need to help you move forward, but I won’t ruffle any feathers in the process.
- I’ll feed back the findings and provide practical advice on how best to move forward; to ensure this isn’t just a paper exercise. There’s nothing worse than a report gathering dust – it’s a waste of your budget and my time! I genuinely want to see things changed and improved, so you can see the benefit (instantly or over the terms/years to follow).