Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

Derek,

Don't waste time trying to convince your headmaster that marketing is important. Spend your time educating him/her on what marketing IS. He/She doesn't know what it is or he'd be pouring money into it.

Explain word of mouth marketing first and move from there. You can do it.

Michael

Michael is right. When someone resists marketing they are thinking large print ads in newspapers and yellow pages. They have tried something expensive and largely don't rget the eturn of the funds invested. You need to educate him and get past that.

Marketing is everything you do to reach out to the community. Its the sign on the building-- and more traditional methods as well.

I'd suggest coming up with a plan of low or no cost marketing methods. Referral programs, open houses, etc are all part of a markering plan. How do you currently get new students?

Sell Well and Prosper tm

Hi Derek,

How long have you worked under chinese management? If there are two things that I have learnt working in China are: a)marketing is misunderstood in its conception, form and importance; b)the management rarely understand the concept of spending resources(investing in my vocabulary), before making a buck.

There is not much, in my opinion, that you can do to convince your boss to give you a budget, unless you bring in business without spending a kuai. And even if you do, there is a 50+% chance that even then your boss will still say that business came in because of the quality of teaching. I dn't want to discourage you, but these are the realities in China, both with employeers and clients.

As Carol suggested you, come up with low cost, or rather null cost approaches to gain new students, as well as retain the presents. You can for example target companies for which might be interesting dealing with a foreign clientele(note: target the SMEs, the MNCs tend to send their staff to big, established schools), reach out to forums online if you can write chinese... Anything that does not cost you more than a phone line, a cmputer and an internet plug.

JIA YOU!!!

Davide

To answer Davide's question, I've been working in China for 3 years. You are right that Chinese business thinking is very short term. However, I'm not asking them to put up a large investment for a long term. I'm asking for simple elementary things to be done such as putting a name plaque on the door with our opening times and an out of hours phone number. Or for the number of telephone calls from new customer enquiries to be logged to track sales performance.

We have had some successful initiatives but the staff failed to capitalise on them. During the summer I did a number of free classes at a community centre which got the attention, for two consecutive days, of the local papers and TV station news program. However, the assistant with me briefing the reporters forgot to mention the name of the school.

Prior to that, we trained a select group of students for a English Speaking competition. Our students took 1st place in the city competition and most of the other top ten places. At the provincial competition we took 2nd. As a result, a small advert was placed for one day in the local paper congratulating the student and little else was said about it.

It's not a problem of understanding what marketing is, but rather a lack of seriousness. Marketing is not treated as important. Rather it is only a game to be played when the sun shines and there's nothing more interesting to do. I need a way to demonstrate how important this marketing is to our business.

Maybe rather that trying to completing win your battle, you can break it down in "phases" and piecemeal integrate it ... before your headmaster knows what has happened you'll have increased your student body AND have a marketing plan in place!

Try a "test" and track and log results. Could you reach out to the current student body/families and offer them an incentive to bring another student?

For example, a discount off next semester ... something that has a high perceived value and no out of pocket cost to you is best; but it could be simple like a school sweatshirt, too.)

Or take that list you started to compile of inquiries and do your own phone/email follow up survey to determine what happened to those people ... then formulate those results and see how that info can help you further develop whatever your next plan of action might be ...

just some thoughts. GOOD LUCK!

I can report back today on some success.

After several days of persuasion by email, last night I set up a meeting with the headmaster for this afternoon. In the morning I prepared a short MP3 clip that explains in simple terms how to make a marketing plan. I also created a customer satisfaction questionnaire and a plan for a competitive analysis of the other schools in the neighbourhood.

First I presented the competitive analysis research forms and a highly productive meeting grew out of this, including the other staff members, on how to implement the research task. Then the second part, I played the MP3 clip, just 6 minutes long. This caught my bosses interest, it was taken from a conference seminar so it's more lively than tuition tapes might be. At exactly the point where I intended the clip to end, my boss excitedly asked me to stop it so as we could do the exercise that had been suggested. We then proceeded to write a basic outline of a business and marketing plan. When finished, I showed the headmaster an outline for a more in depth plan marketing plan. This will be due to be complete by the end of the week.

I'm going to give the points to Jay. It seems that the head responded favourably to short but authoritative articles on the subject, especially when tailored to the education market. Seeing that my plans had a source in a book gave the head confidence in them.

The other responses didn't quite get at the root. It's not a problem of persuading the head to do promotions or even spend money. It's a matter of connecting the promotion activities with the rest of the business activities and taking care over how they are organised. It's a matter of planning and taking care over how things are done rather than hap hazardly and half heartedly.

Do you have a business plan? Does you boss believe in business plans? All business plans include marketing together with finance, human resources, production, etc. Take him from there so that he can take a different look to what marketing is as part of the whole business strategy. Have you done a competitive analysis to show him the environment in which your school is living? show him what his competition is doing and the results; how they approach new users and how they keep current ones, their pricing policy, satisfaction of their students. Try to find your strong and weak areas and make him a presentation and how some marketing can be useful. Try to invite a marketing friend at no cost (if possible) to have a meeting with your boss. Sometimes a third person is more successful. If your boss at the end does not accept any of the above then rethink if you are in a 21 century company and consider your options.

Thanks juan.m. You're spot on the money there and I'd be giving you the points if the hadn't already been allocated.

My boss has no training in how to run a business and over the last 5 years, instead of learning how to do it, she has given the management task over to other people to do.

The competitive analysis is under way. It's already thrown up some surprises. My boss has been trying to shift focus onto spoken English and away from grammar while in her own classes focusing on exam results. The initial survey is showing we have a reputation for teaching grammar well and a poor reputation on exam results. I think the phrase is, "throwing the baby out with the bath water."