A new report from mtmconsulting’s educational research team has highlighted schools’ marketing strategies, priorities and commitments, providing an extremely useful profiling and benchmarking document to inform schools’ and colleges’ planning.
The online survey of 200 headteachers and marketing staff in independent schools across Britain was conducted during March and April. The results have been published in a report available to all schools marketing and SMT staff.
The education research report’s headline results include:
- Half of the schools surveyed spend 1% or less of annual fee turnover on educational marketing activities (excluding school marketing staff costs). Overall the estimated average school’s marketing spend was about 1.1% of turnover.
- Larger schools appear to spend proportionally less of their turnover on marketing.
- Even in the face of increasingly competitive pupil recruitment, one in ten respondents does not have a member of staff responsible for school marketing.
- Four schools out of ten (39%) have a full-time member of staff responsible for school marketing.
- Four out of five respondents (79%) have a school marketing plan; 21% did not have a marketing strategy of this type
- More than a third of schools (36%) reported that they now received half or more of their enquiries from prospective parents and pupils through the school website
- 18% of respondents said their school had used mtmconsulting’s Mandarin catchment area market research product – this was by far the most popular educational market analysis product in the schools survey
- A quarter of respondents did not know what proportion of enquiries came from the school website, accentuating the need for strong school website design
- Asked to identify the three greatest educational marketing challenges over the next 12 months, more than half of respondents identified maintaining school pupil numbers at their present levels
mtmconsulting’s Educational Researcher James Leggett said, “This report is a great tool for schools to gauge their marketing strategy and provision in relation to the wider sector. It is a strong testament to the value of mtmconsulting’s research for schools and colleges. It also highlights to schools the effectiveness of our online surveys for parents and pupils.”
The 2009 School Marketing Survey Report is available from mtmconsulting.
Please contact office@mtmconsulting.co.uk or call us on 01502 722787 for details.
