Understanding your customers is the bedrock of good marketing. It must be, after all, it's the first word in the definition of marketing - “understanding and delivering customers’ needs profitably”.

Before you can communicate well with your parents, or improve how satisfied they are, you’ll need to understand what they think and feel about your school. Unless you've got your own personal ‘pensieve’ like Dumbledore, you’ll need to ask people what they think, feel and remember about your school, rather than just be able to swirl a magic dish for the answers.  

I can help you by: 

• designing the research
• undertaking the research for you
• helping analyse the answers
• instigating change. Because research shouldn’t just be a stand alone task.  It needs to be embedded in your marketing; informing what you are doing now and in the future - it isn’t something to just ‘do’ and ‘file’.  Before you do any research you need to have a clear idea of why you are doing it, and - here's the important part - what you are going to do with it once you have it. 

useful research for your school:

• Parental satisfaction questionnaires to identify where your school needs to improve or is doing well
• Telephone interviews with parents who choose not to join
• Focus groups with pupil leavers
• Feeder school head interviews to learn what they really think of your school
• Competitor research to identify differences in approaches & opportunities
• Open day visitor surveys
• Newly joined parents - why they chose your school & what they think of your competitors
• Demographic research - who your target parents are and how to get them