Transcript
Andy Lynch: It's episode two of the Enrollment Marketing Geeks podcast for school leaders. I'm Andy Lynch, president and CEO of Tassel. So good to be with you all. And with me is Dr. Rick Newberry with Enrollment Catalyst. Say hello, Rick.
Rick Newberry: Hello, it's great to be here with you all.
Andy Lynch: Let's get down to business, episode two. In our first episode, we focused on the unique contributions from the head of school to healthy enrollment. And in this episode, we're going to focus on the director of marketing's unique contributions to healthy enrollment. And this is a fresh topic for us, Rick.
Andy Lynch: Just this past week, we held our second virtual conference, GeekCon, which focused on the admissions playbook. And this was a significant part of that conversation, wasn't it, Rick?
Rick Newberry: Yeah, very important to talk about all the different individuals and their roles in the enrollment marketing efforts. director of marketing was certainly one of the key positions that we talked about because it relates to admissions.
Rick Newberry: Even though we were focusing in on the admissions playbook workshop, marketing plays a key role in that aspect.
Andy Lynch: Yep.
Andy Lynch: Yeah. In order for admissions to have families to work with, the marketing function has to work. So let's jump in here. The director of marketing's unique contributions in independent and faith-based school world to healthy enrollment. and And we like to give each of these roles sort of ah a one line job profile. Like if all else fails, do this thing. Remember that this is your core focus as director of marketing. And and what is that one liner job profile for the director of marketing?
Rick Newberry: Derives interest from qualified families.
Andy Lynch: That's right. That's right. And Rick, I love how you approach this topic. You have this sort of quadrant of areas of responsibilities when it comes to the director of marketing.
Andy Lynch: Give us a high level overview of each of those four core functions for the director of marketing.
Rick Newberry: Yeah, that's a great question, Andy. You know, as I talk to school leaders and I frame the responsibilities for the director or coordinator of marketing, and in fact, if I was writing a job description, these are the four main responsibilities I would include in that. Number one is lead generation.
Rick Newberry: So how are we going to create interest for the school?
Andy Lynch: Thank
Rick Newberry: For the admissions pipeline, we want to keep the top of the funnel full. Secondly is storytelling. So how can we tell the story of our school 24-7?
Rick Newberry: Third is brand awareness. So how can we keep the school present in the community? How can we keep it top of mind? How can we network with community leaders and organizations?
Rick Newberry: And then fourth is communication. And that's more focused internally on communicating the school and the value of the experience on a day-to-day basis with the current families.
Andy Lynch: Yeah. so So starting with inquiry generation, um that that is a is a focused effort. And we can talk about um different ways that they go about doing that. But we think about ah driving inquiries from qualified, right fit families.
Andy Lynch: you there There is a distinction between that inquiry generation piece and just general brand awareness. And I think it might be helpful for a audience for you to to hear you just talk through that distinction. Like what is the difference between just raising brand awareness in general and then inquiry generation in particular?
Rick Newberry: Yeah, I mean, the main difference is that you know general awareness um is top of mind. you know Our parents thinking about the possibility of your school when they're considering school options You know, the next level is to actually have prospective families raise their hand and express interest in your school.
Rick Newberry: That's where that lead is generated, where you know that family and who they are, and you can begin the process of nurturing them throughout the admissions effort.
Andy Lynch: Yeah. but I think for the purpose of our conversation here, i'd like to start with brand awareness. When we think about the ah the other GeekCon, the other virtual conference that we've done this past summer, we focused on the phases the family journey. Of course, the first one is awareness.
Andy Lynch: They can't choose you if they're not aware of you. and we think about brand awareness, I was just visiting with a school this morning ah just outside of Charlotte, and one of their campuses is full.
Rick Newberry: Right.
Andy Lynch: And they're questioning, like, what do we need for marketing right now when our school is full and you and i say this all the time it's always a good time to tell your story to prospective right fit families and they they can't uh they can enroll with you they can't express interest if they're not aware of you so that that brand awareness um from my perspective one strategy there is having an always on ah digital campaign that just raises awareness of your school within the community. And even for schools that think we've been here for decades, everybody knows who we are.
Andy Lynch: i want to remind them that education is a river, not a pond. It's not a stagnant body of interest. You've got new people, new families that are aging in new families that are moving into the area, perhaps new new families that are transitioning in. They've been doing perhaps public schools they're thinking like, maybe we want to do an independent or faith-based school in this next age and stage. They're they're looking at doing something different. So that brand awareness is such an important area of focus for that organization.
Andy Lynch: director of marketing. Anything to add to that?
Rick Newberry: Yeah, I just wanted to go back to lead generation because that's one of the main goals of the marketing director or coordinator, you know, trying to convert that general awareness into specific leads for admissions. You know, we want the marketing and responsibility to fill the pipeline for admissions.
Rick Newberry: So to to be able to put strategies in place, and we talked all through these strategies at our various workshops, you know, you could... fall back to traditional marketing.
Rick Newberry: And you can think about some of the old time advertising strategies, which we never recommend. i mean, we typically don't recommend direct mail, print, billboards, radio, TV.
Andy Lynch: Mm-hmm.
Rick Newberry: That can create awareness, but it typically doesn't result in a lead coming into admissions. And then there's online marketing. And that's what you guys at TASL specialize in. and there's lots of ways to be able to generate leads through online marketing.
Rick Newberry: You want to give us a high level summary of online marketing?
Andy Lynch: Yeah, and yeah I think this is where understanding where you need to drive interest is so important. If there's a particular agent stage where your enrollment is soft, ah being able to target whether it's through paid social, paid search, ah the the AI SEO strategies, that's a combination of optimizing not just for traditional search engines, but also for AI platforms as well.
Andy Lynch: But from our perspective, you want to have some sort of always on inquiry campaign, just quick snapshot, ah paid social ads,
Andy Lynch: People go to their social media feed not to shop for schools, but they've got some discretionary time. And as they're scrolling through their feed, they come across your ad. if If they have an interest or perhaps they know someone ah who has kids in your school, they're they're curious, they're gonna click through.
Andy Lynch: And we're actually seeing right now paid social performing very well. The paid search is more intent based. Think Google ads, for example, people are typing in very specific search terms, which shows that they are interested in buying.
Andy Lynch: um the The key concept here to keep in mind of both of those strategies for directors of marketing, those are coin operated strategies. When you stop putting coins into the the advertising machine, your visibility will stop, which is why that AI SEO, that optimization for AI platforms and search engine platforms broadly is such an important strategy. So when you pull back on to some degree, you're you're your paid strategies, you still maintain a high level visibility. And of course, more and more families are doing extensive research
Andy Lynch: through AI platforms before they ever even get to your school's website. So it's important for directors of marketing to understand how do we, do we show up on these AI platforms?
Rick Newberry: That's right.
Andy Lynch: How do we show up? um I've been in conversations where people do this in real time for the first time, search for their school on AI platforms only to find that it's wildly ah inaccurate.
Andy Lynch: Like where's this information coming from? Director of marketing needs to be on top of that.
Andy Lynch: Word of mouth, I know that that's another key driver and this is an area of expertise for you, Rick. Talk to us about the significance of word of mouth and inquiry generation.
Rick Newberry: Yeah, it's very important for that marketing director to think about ways to inspire more word of mouth in the community. Because, you know, typically if I'm in a room and I'm giving a presentation at a conference and I was just recently at the Facts Elevate conference, I asked this question, how many of you would say that word of mouth is your main inquiry source?
Rick Newberry: Everyone raised their hand. And then the next question, how many of you have a plan in place to drive more word of mouth? No hands went up.
Andy Lynch: Mm-hmm.
Rick Newberry: And so that's the point is that a marketing director needs to consider word of mouth strategies to be able to drive those leads from other from families and within your school community out to the community, you know, their friends and contacts.
Rick Newberry: So the marketing director needs to think about all those different ways from online to word of mouth to primarily drive those leads into the admissions pipeline. And so we could go further in depth into all those strategies, but that's what a director of marketing should be doing, should be thinking about how to drive more interest through word of mouth, how to inspire that from the current parent population so that they would be advocates and share for the school to their friends in the community.
Andy Lynch: You know, I don't want to leave this particular area of focus until we touch on the significance of ah coordinating with the admissions team.
Rick Newberry: Right.
Andy Lynch: the It's stunning to me how many marketing teams, how many admissions teams that I talk to, and i know this resonates with you as well, um where I asked them about how they are syncing with either their admissions team or marketing team, vice versa.
Andy Lynch: And it's ah it's very informal. They don't have a structured weekly meeting. And we are huge advocates of a standing weekly meeting between marketing and admissions that includes the head of school.
Andy Lynch: And for the director of marketing, that's so important because you have to understand both quality and quantity of the inquiries that you're delivering into admissions and also understand the follow-up process.
Andy Lynch: And we've worked with some teams where ah the marketing director is pulling her hair out because the leads, that's the increase she's generating, the admissions team is not following up with them effectively or they find out like, your our I know you've done a lot lot of work with inquiry processes um and they're just all over the place. And and without that standing weekly check-in,
Andy Lynch: it's difficult for the director of marketing to know what's working, to really be in touch with the numbers, to understand where and how to optimize. And for the, for those teams to understand each other, and because, because they have common goals.
Rick Newberry: Right.
Andy Lynch: whether they know it or not, they have common goals and it's just, it baffles, it's baffling even among large schools with multiple people ah in these offices. It's like the the level of confusion can only go up in some cases. So any any thoughts on that before we move on to the next area of focus here, just the significance of marketing and admissions team collaboration?
Rick Newberry: I think the key is alignment and that requires regular meetings, that requires communication. So, you know, marketing is working toward the same goal as admissions, but they have different responsibilities.
Rick Newberry: But it's all towards the same effort of driving enrollment within the school. So that's why you and i often talk about this and we teach it in our workshops, you know, where the marketing and admissions team have to meet on a regular basis.
Rick Newberry: And we'll talk about that in the next episode as we look at, you know, the admissions director. But the admissions director, the marketing director and the head of school, which we talked about in episode number one, have to be aligned.
Andy Lynch: Right.
Rick Newberry: where they're coming together and they're sharing, you know, exactly what they're doing. they're They're working and focusing on the plan and moving the entire effort forward. So everyone has a key role in that.
Rick Newberry: And that's why alignment, I think, is key across the board.
Andy Lynch: two Two resources that will drop into the show notes here. As I mentioned, Rick's done a lot of work in the word of mouth space, his nine drivers of word of mouth. We'll put a link to that on the Enrollment Catalyst blog. And then, um yeah ah I get questions. Okay, we should be meeting every week. What should we talk about? Tassel has produced a meeting agenda template that you can download and make your own. It just outlines here. Here's the recurring meeting agenda for marketing and admissions ah and bringing in that head of school. So you have a framework to to run that that playbook on every week.
Rick Newberry: That is such a helpful resource because a lot of times when I'm working with school teams, it's like, what are we going to talk about? You know, what is our agenda? We need to be able to focus in on, you know, the results. We need to look at the initiatives, the priorities and see how that alignment's taking place.
Andy Lynch: That's right. All right. After the break, we'll pick it up with storytelling.
Andy Lynch: All right. The third area of focus, storytelling. ah So Rick, storytelling, there's a lot that passes for storytelling that I think is wide of the mark. So when we think about dialing it in for School World, put a finer point on that for us. What what do you mean when you say storytelling?
Rick Newberry: Yeah, I think in its simplest form is being able to communicate in a compelling way what is actually taking place day to day at your school.
Rick Newberry: So it could be from the parent's perspective, the student's perspective, be an alumni story, ah could be a faculty member sharing, you know, what they're doing in a classroom, but it's it's bringing to life what's actually taking place in the everyday experiences at your school through the power of a story.
Rick Newberry: And so you can do that in multiple ways. ah You think about all the online channels where you can share through a website, um through a storytelling section, through social media channels.
Rick Newberry: I mean, that gives us a great outlet to be able to showcase the stories about our schools.
Andy Lynch: Yeah. And just to recap there, those four areas of focus, those four categories of stories, students, parents, faculty, staff, and alumni, those are the four different types of stories. And one a framework that we've used successfully on school websites is you have those four categories available right on the homepage. You immediately start telling those stories. And for for some folks in that director of marketing seat, they're probably hearing this hearing this thinking,
Andy Lynch: Rick, Andy, I hear you, that sounds like a great strategy, but it also sounds like a ton of work. i mean, how am going to line up these interviews and hosts? It's never going to be a 20 minute conversation. It's going to turn into 45 minutes or an hour every time. And now I've got to synthesize these notes and write this long story and check with, but it doesn't have to be that way. I mean, think think about the repeatable process, Rick. I mean, what what are what are so what are some approaches where they can turn this into a repeatable process?
Rick Newberry: Yeah, I think about my coaching and my work with schools, and I'm always recommending that they start with five or six core questions. They drop those questions into an online form. I i mean, it could be a Google form.
Andy Lynch: Yep.
Rick Newberry: And they're essentially sending that or sharing it to their target audience, a specific parent, for example, maybe at the start of the school year is a great time to do this with all your faculty and staff.
Rick Newberry: and have them complete this form. They're providing you with the content. you're not actually having to sit down with that individual and interview them. and They're answering the questions. They're giving you the content.
Rick Newberry: Now you can choose what to do with it. it could be as as simple as adding that to your website in more of a Q&A format, or you could use Claude or ChatGPT and drop it in and be able to take it and the Q&A format and turn it into an article.
Rick Newberry: And so that's a great way to be able to harness the power of storytelling. So then you have this section on your website that becomes your archive of all your stories.
Andy Lynch: Thank you.
Rick Newberry: um Again, stories of your people. In fact, think about it now, you know in a few weeks, a number of schools will be starting and others will be launching in early September. And you have all these new families that have just chosen your school.
Rick Newberry: So why not target them through a form like this and have them complete questions about why they chose your school? Those new testimonials are powerful and you could use that on your website. You can share it in social media.
Rick Newberry: In fact, if I was looking at a school social media channel and I do this often, i don't want to see announcements. I want to see stories about your people and stories about your programs.
Rick Newberry: So that's a great way to be able to consider a main part of this fourfold job description for a marketing director is the power of stories.
Andy Lynch: And this can live in a tagged section of your blog, which, by the way, if your school does not have a blog, you really need to have that in place, not just for this, but to increase your visibility and leverage with AI platforms.
Andy Lynch: You could also have a dedicated stories module, a bespoke module that works well. on your on your website just to serve these up. and And just think about the significance of building a library these over time.
Andy Lynch: I'm thinking about Westminster Catawba Christian School in Rock Hill, South Carolina. mean, Rick, you made that recommendation to them, what, back in 2019? Was that what it was?
Rick Newberry: I think so, yeah.
Andy Lynch: And they have taken it to heart and have built a huge library. And when, when admissions is having a conversation with a family, they can say, Oh, we, there's a, there was a kid with similar interests. We actually tell her story. I'm going to send you that link as part of the followup process, or your, your child has an alumni or has an interest in this. We have an alumni.
Andy Lynch: we have alumni who who have that interest as well. i'm going to send you that story of success. So ah Just ah ah a phenomenal area of opportunity. and it's you know it's it's ah it's fairly low cost. It's just the time that it takes to do it.
Rick Newberry: Yeah, one of the things that I see is that the power of story resonates with prospective families because they're looking for a school community where they're going to find other people that are like them.
Rick Newberry: or that they can connect with. And so they want to imagine themselves in the story that you're telling. And so that's the power of your storytelling and why it should be a continual focus.
Rick Newberry: And think about that questionnaire that we just highlighted for you. You know, you could then take some of those Q&A responses and turn it into video stories.
Rick Newberry: You know, you could have video shorts on YouTube, um certainly use it in Reels on Instagram and Instagram. but you have the the power of telling the story in a variety of ways.
Rick Newberry: um So this is, I think, one of the core responsibilities and and that marketing position, and that's going to help drive that interest. I mean, I always have prospective parents tell me that whenever they discover a school and they want to find out more, they'll go to their social media channels and they'll peer into Facebook and Instagram.
Rick Newberry: And they'll see what life is like. And they'll make the judgment call as to whether or not this is the place where they want to be a part of. Do they want to align their family's story with a school story that's being told?
Andy Lynch: Yeah. And that's so important. And I think, again, if you're not leveraging AI effectively, this does not have to be a super heavy lift. If you have your form dialed in and you're getting what you need in that form and you have a framework built out in your AI platform that understands what to do with that raw data,
Andy Lynch: you can get a really powerful first draft in like less than 30 seconds. So it's important process. And I'm going to go back to the significance of having that standing weekly meeting, because in that standing weekly meeting, that's where you get the accountability. Because if you don't have accountability in place for this seasonal priority and and start small, you don't have to do all four categories of stories at once. I think so focusing first on stories of student success is then then stories of parent success, because that gets into, what Rick, what you werere talking about earlier, that the marketing term is the theory of social proof. If it works for for them, it could probably it could probably work for me too.
Andy Lynch: um So build out that framework and then hold yourself accountable through that standing weekly meeting. All right, let's move on to the fourth area, comms, communications, internal comms, by whatever term you all refer to that at your school.
Andy Lynch: managing those internal communications. And, you know, this can be a black hole. It's an important area because this is a major driver for parent satisfaction. You know that from your parent surveys that you do, Rick.
Andy Lynch: families want to be communicated with ah and and communicated with sufficiently, not too much, not too little, ah through the right channels. um But this can be a bit of a black hole for a director of marketing who can suddenly find him or herself just drowning in internal requests.
Andy Lynch: um can you help me get this out? Can you help me write this speech? Can you rewrite this blog post? Can you ah get into the desktop publishing game? Can you design this thing for me? I need this poster. I need these t-shirts, et cetera, et cetera.
Andy Lynch: And before you know it, 50, 60, 70% of your time can be eaten up with internal comms. And what goes suffering is the brand awareness, the inquiry generation, and the storytelling, which you need to continue to drive interest from prospective right fit family. So first, Rick, I want to talk, I want to get your thoughts on on how to maintain a balance here to where comms is getting what it needs and the the the inquiry generation function is getting what it needs.
Rick Newberry: I think one way to look at it is how much of a slice of your time should you spend in this area? And so let's just say roughly 25% because this is the value of internal marketing.
Rick Newberry: i mean, you think about your current parent population. You want to reinforce the value why they should continue to be enrolled in your school. So it has everything to do with retention. And so certainly the other categories like storytelling is going to overlap to communication because what you're doing on social media is not only going to have the impact in the community at large, but actually a ah big part of is going to be back to your internal communication, internal community and resulting in that continued communication. so
Rick Newberry: When you think about communication, it's it's also what you would do to intentionally be able to communicate to your core constituency groups.
Rick Newberry: So like thinking about your parent communication, that regular email newsletter that goes out on a weekly basis. What are you saying? How are you communicating about your different ages and stages within your school community?
Rick Newberry: Is information easy to find? Is that available on the website? Is a calendar there? So all those details go into that, but also your external stakeholders too.
Rick Newberry: Think about your alumni, think about your donors. So there needs to be an active role in communicating to those core groups.
Andy Lynch: Yeah. And I see this defined differently based on team size, but I think it should ah it should send up a flare if the director of marketing is spending more time in support of development, the fundraising effort,
Andy Lynch: um sending out internal communications to the point where the inquiry generation piece, the storytelling piece goes wanting, it's time to consider perhaps even a fractional hire to come in and a support role to make sure that ah the school doesn't take its eye off the ball in storytelling and inquiry generation.
Andy Lynch: Okay.
Rick Newberry: Yeah, it it goes back to that main point we started with. You know, what is the role of the director of marketing? It's to drive interest from qualified families. You know, it's not about trying to drive more interest from donors to get, you know, more money coming into the school, although that's a part of it, but it's not the driving focus of what the marketing director should be doing.
Andy Lynch: Yeah.
Andy Lynch: Yeah. You know, it's interesting. um I can think about a workshop I led a couple years ago where the director of marketing had a window in which to share what was happening in marketing and spent the majority of his time talking about ah T-shirt requests and desktop publishing requests. Please use the form if you need something from us. And I get that that's a pain point.
Andy Lynch: But there's an opportunity to talk about to your faculty and staff, this is how we're drumming up interest and this is your role in helping us drive more inquiries and and foster positive word of mouth. if If so much of your time is taken up with requests to get things out the door internally, you need to look at, just do a time study and say, what percentage of my time is is eaten up with just internal requests and if it's crowding out?
Andy Lynch: those other important areas, then you may need to look at either rewriting a job profile or making room on the bench for some additional help to focus on those internal functions. Very important, but all all four of these areas need the focus that they need in order to pursue healthy enrollment. So Rick, just quick recap for us those four areas, and then we'll wrap up today's episode.
Rick Newberry: Yeah, the four areas are lead generation, storytelling, brand awareness, and communication. That should guide the framework for what your job responsibilities should do should be in the marketing role.
Andy Lynch: Yeah, and and I'll just put a bow on that. ah Held accountable and made visible through that standing weekly meeting with between marketing and missions involving the head of school. So great conversation, Rick. In the next episode, we'll go ah go take a look at the director of admissions role and those unique contributions to healthy enrollment. ah As we wrap up today, just want to mention We love getting together with all of our enrollment marketing geeks, as many as can join us in person. we would love to have you join us this November, November 11 12, 2026.
Andy Lynch: at the First Academy in Orlando for the Enrollment Marketing AI Summit. ah This is going to be a day and a half of hands-on ah exercises with AI.
Andy Lynch: And if your team is looking to go deeper into AI and how you're leveraging that to help your teams go further faster, we would love to have you join us. You can learn more at enrollmentmarketinggeeks.com.
Andy Lynch: Rick, this has been great. Thank you.
Rick Newberry: Thank
