Knowing how to write a school marketing plan will lead to better opportunities to increase enrolments. It will assist your school in becoming more widely known for what it offers the community, along with its successes, etc, which should lead to better enrolments.

Each School Marketing Plan should be based on 7 Key Strategies:

1. Define what you have to offer
2. Define your target group
3. Budget
4. Personnel and Talents
5. Develop Marketing Aims and Objectives
6. Marketing Strategies
7. Evaluation

Sample School Marketing Plan

1. Define what you have to offer
• vision and mission, personnel, basic underlying content and structures within the school, curriculum offered, pastoral and welfare support programs, facilities, extra curricula activities, etc
• specific demographics targeted e.g. ages and groups catered for - coeducational or single gender, etc, and their particular niche market
• future plans - programs, staffing, facilities, etc

2. Define your target group
• through various data, including surveys, observations, experience, gifts and talents available / needed
• proximity to / involvement with similar and / or churches and parishes
• any expansion - programs, facilities, staffing

3. Budget
• realistically support this marketing plan
• be flexible and open to growth and change as the needs arise
• continually develop over time through needs and experiences

4. Personnel and Talents available - including School Marketing Manager

5. Develop Marketing Aims and Objectives - from previous information

6. Marketing Strategies
• Marketing Relationships
• Marketing Resources (including branding, advertising)
• Media Use
- Internet and other Contemporary methods
- Both for Free (Media Releases / Editorial, etc) and for
- Fee (Advertising)

7. Evaluation
• The plan should be evaluated at least yearly and appropriate adjustments made for the following year.
• Changes may need to be made throughout the year depending on changing circumstances.

The 'How to Write a School Marketing Plan' blog post was written by Bryan Foster, author of School Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (3rd ed), (2011) - the paperback and ebook manual for school communications and marketing personnel - 340 pages of easy to read and implement summarized points - allowing for a considerably large number of quality strategies and examples to be detailed - with copyright remaining GDPL. Book available from Amazon.com and Createspace.com

An example School Marketing Plan is best considered primarily through an OVERVIEW and secondly through an ANALYSIS - each being a foundation for success in marketing your school. When each of these aspects is considered in detail, the effective planning may begin.


School Marketing Plan Overview

1. Define what you have to offer
2. Define your target group
3. Budget
4. Personnel and Talents available - including School Marketing Manager
5. Develop School Marketing Aims and Objectives – from previous information
6. Select Marketing Strategies
7. Evaluation

Analysis of the School Marketing Plan

•   The School Principal is ultimately responsible for the Plan.

The Plan:

1. is based on the School’s Vision and Mission Statement.
2. is used to market the school to the community. The community includes all people who know, or those who you want to know, about the school. These include the general public in your catchment region, parents, potential families, school staff, parish  staff, other schools’ staff especially from feeder schools, present and past students, parents, etc.
3. includes the strategies used within a defined budget.
4. is used to inform all stakeholders, and other targeted groups, of the benefits and successes of the school.
5. informs about aspects which may be of interest.
6. needs to plan for issues which may arise of a controversial nature.
7. should inform and emphasize the real nature of the school and the direction the school is planning or presently implementing.
8. should include a realistic budget.
9. can benefit from the combination of views of staff and others associated with the school community.

•   Marketing is relatively inexpensive when viewed in the terms of the potential gains made – reputation, new parents, supportive present parents, enrolments, etc.

•   In the initial stages of developing the school’s first real plan it is often best to include a variety of interest groups for gaining ideas and suggestions about how best to market your school. These thoughts may then be used as felt necessary.

•   The School Principal needs input and has the overall responsibility to implement the plan.

Other sections covered in the 'School Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (3rd ed), 2010, by Bryan Foster are:

• SMP Evaluation
• SMP is Not ...
• Be Ethical
• Who Needs a SMP?

The 'How to Write a School Marketing Plan - Overview and Analysis' blog post was written by Bryan Foster, author of School Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (3rd ed), (2011) - the paperback and ebook manual for school communications and marketing personnel - 340 pages of easy to read and implement summarized points - allowing for a considerably large number of quality strategies and examples to be detailed - with copyright remaining GDPL. Book available from Amazon.com and Createspace.com