Spread the word
How does your marketing budget compare with other schools like yours? Are you spending an excessive amount on advertising? How much should a prospectus cost? Russell Speirs reveals the results of a new study
RSBenchmarking 2007 is a new study of marketing and admissions practice and performance in independent schools, which will be published this term (to order the full copy see details at the end of the article).
The study draws on data provided by over 300 independent schools about their marketing activity and admissions performance for the academic year 2005/6.
As with the original study published in 2001, the spectrum of topics covered by the report is extensive, ranging from the attitude of headteachers towards marketing and the involvement of governors, through to hard data, such as enquiries to joiner conversion ratios in different types of schools.
Here are some of the financial benchmarks which might help to answer the questions in the introduction.
Marketing budgets
The average independent school marketing spend, excluding salaries, during the academic year 2005/6 was £46,614. Of course, this varied between different types of schools, as shown in the table below.
Association Average marketing spend
HMC £69,384
GSA £42,335
ISA + SHMIS £24,480
IAPS £22,204
If we compare these findings with 2001 data (only HMC and GSA data is available for both periods), we find that HMC and GSA schools increased their marketing spend by 75 per cent over the period.
Of course, there was a wide range of budgetary expenditure. Among the 71 schools in HMC that provided comprehensive data, for example, the amount of money spent in 2005/6 varied from £16,200 to over £200,000.
Within the GSA, the range was from £7,470 to £120,000. Among IAPS member schools, the largest marketing spend was almost £150,000, although the next highest, and a much more representative figure for the higher spenders, was £56,000.
Advertising expenditure
Advertising, not surprisingly, accounted for the lion’s share of the budget: on average, 44 per cent or just short of £21,000.
By far the majority of this advertising spend was directed at local and regional newspapers, with regional magazines a close second. The main aim of the advertising was to recruit people to open days: 90 per cent of the respondent schools used adverts for this purpose. Those schools that did spend significant amounts on national media, not surprisingly, tended to be boarding schools, but several day schools also advertised in national newspapers.
Direct mail campaigns to purchased address lists were conducted by 11 per cent of schools and the average response rate to those campaigns was 0.4 per cent.
Almost 19 per cent of schools undertook other forms of mailing, as well as or instead of the direct mailing, but the response rate was less than 0.1 per cent with these other forms of mailing.
Given that these responses represent enquiries, not new pupils, it would appear that this approach to marketing is not a cost-effective one. This might explain the low proportion of schools that have undertaken this type of campaign, despite the recent emphasis on postcode analysis within the sector.
Of course, it is notoriously difficult to measure the effectiveness of advertising. Lord Leverhulme, founder of Unilever, famously said: “I know half my advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don’t know which half”.
It is still disappointing to learn that only 60 per cent of schools attempted to monitor the effectiveness of their adverts: the same proportion as in 2001, despite the fact that advertising expenditure has more than doubled since then.
A new prospectus
All but two schools in the survey said they had a school prospectus (compared with 20 per cent using a DVD and 4 per cent a school video).
Among the schools whose prospectus had been created most recently, the average cost to design and print the prospectus was just over £15,000, with no noticeable difference between different types of schools. The average price to produce each copy was £5.57.
School magazines tend to be even more expensive since they cost, on average, just over £7,000 to design and print and are reproduced each year. Despite this large investment (not to mention the demands on staff time which this takes), only 16 per cent of schools with an annual magazine had carried out any research among readers during the two-year period September 2004 to August 2006. If you were investing so much time and money into your annual magazine, would you not want to be sure of its purpose and whether it is achieving it?
Marketing salaries
The average salary of the “person responsible for marketing” is £34,154. Once again, it is at HMC schools where this figure is highest, at £38,000, and at IAPS and GSA schools where it is lowest, at £30,500 and £31,000 respectively. There are also regional differences: schools in London and the South-East pay their marketing people just over £35,400, while schools in the North of England average just under £29,000. Of course, in a great many schools (about three-quarters) the person responsible for marketing is also responsible for a good deal else, including teaching and often with some management responsibility as well, so it is hard to draw conclusions from this data. At IAPS schools, in particular, there is a greater tendency for marketing to be the responsibility of the headteacher or another member of the senior management team, which skews the average salary within IAPS upwards. In fact, at IAPS, a quarter of all the people responsible for marketing are paid £20,000 or less, compared with 16 per cent at GSA schools, 8 per cent at HMC schools and almost 40 per cent at ISA and SHMIS.
It is possible, however, for us to identify the “dedicated” marketing staff and analyse their salaries separately from the teachers who have part-time responsibility for marketing. The average salary of the dedicated marketeers is only marginally less than the average, at £32,650, and that almost a third of these people are earning more than £40,000.
The figures here represent a small selection of the data contained in the RSBenchmarking report, but they should help you to put your marketing expenditure in context.
If you are spending noticeably more than other schools, this does not mean that you need to reduce your budget. It should simply encourage you to examine whether you are obtaining good value for money. Conversely, if you are spending less than others, this might mean that you are extremely efficient or, in some cases, it might explain your lack of recruitment success.
Whatever the outcome of your analysis, though, it is worth reflecting on the fact that, on average, schools are spending 1.1 per cent of their fee income on marketing, compared with 15-30 per cent in blue chip companies, whose goods and services are bought by the public.
We are still, thank goodness, a long way from treating our schools like tubes of toothpaste or packets of cornflakes.
Russell Speirs is the founder of RSAcademics Ltd. Russell can be contacted on 01572 821306. For details of how to order a copy of RSBenchmarking 2007, contact alison@rsacademics.co.uk or call Alison Pinnock on 01572 821306.
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