smj podcast

What is a ‘Manager of Experience Design’ and what does it have to do with your school? Is it possible to reduce costs, increase conversion rates and improve parent satisfaction? Dr David Willows is the Director of Advancement at the International School of Brussels. In this interview with Brad, he discusses how he led his team in challenging the status quo to create a more productive, efficient and impactful model.

In our work with school marketers, we get to see and hear what they wish their school Head knew about communication and marketing at their school. In this episode, we discuss their top ten questions to help you understand where your team is looking to you for marketing leadership.

What exactly is content marketing and why does it matter to school Heads? Brendan Schneider, Director of Advancement at Pittsburgh’s Sewickley Academy, digital marketing specialist and founder of SchneiderB Media, breaks it down, discussing the strategies you need and what you should be doing next.

“Do not build your digital house on rented land.” So says Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute. When Facebook blocked Au stralian news sites, a lesson in school marketing strategy was played out on a grand scale. With some independent schools nearly becoming roadkill, we take a look at the social media landscape and what you can do to manage your digital currency.

It’s important for leaders to have foresight and be able to see things not just as they are, but as they will be. With an eye on some of the societal impacts of the pandemic, Ashley Fell, Director of Advisory at McCrindle, discusses the top ten trends for 2021 that independent school Heads should be aware of.

A common problem imageseven encounters is that of schools’ regular communication channels becoming ineffectual, off brand and off message. How does that happen and what can you do about it? In this episode, we help you diagnose the problem and prescribe a solution, looking at what editorial mission statements are, why they matter and how you can use them to increase engagement, trust and loyalty.

As Executive Director of CASE Asia-Pacific (the Council for Advancement and Support of Education), Heather Hamilton has a wealth of knowledge about the operation of school advancement teams. In this interview, she and Brad discuss the difference between fundraising and advancement, how to make a meaningful start to the year in building engagement with alumni, and what the transforming trends might be for school advancement teams in 2021.

A question that haunts many Heads is how to fairly judge the performance of their school communication and marketing teams when they themselves do not have any domain expertise in marketing. In this episode, we discuss how you can lead your school marketers to a path of accountability for the important, as well as the urgent, tasks.

In every study imageseven has undertaken and every other study we’ve researched, word-of-mouth is shown to be the primary influence for parents when choosing a school for their child. But very few schools have a strategy for generating word-of-mouth enrolment referrals. In this episode, we talk about why that is and what you can do about it.

All schools will at some time experience ‘the enrolment problem’, and many new Heads are hired to solve it. Tom Olverson, a veteran independent school Head of 27 years in the US and now mentor of other school Heads, discusses with Brad a better way to tackle enrolment challenges than trotting out the usual suspects.