What Are Private School Markets?

Obviously, private school markets include prospective families. Smart schools know that current families also matter, as do alums, past families, and current and past faculty. Especially in this time of teacher shortages, prospective faculty and staff also represent a critical market.

Most schools have expanded efforts to connect with local municipalities and organizations, and this, too, is marketing. It’s axiomatic that word of mouth is the centerpiece of school marketing, and the mention of a school’s name, whether in a professional or social context, should always evoke positive thoughts and associations—not of some aloof “School on the Hill” or a news story about bad behavior.

Noting Schools’ Strategic and Innovative Efforts

Over the years, great minds have proposed new ideas and ways of thinking about and doing education work. I made a mental roster of schools that were making strategic and often innovative efforts to enhance the experience of their students and staff.

This was exciting! I had been working at a school that was up to its eyeballs in modernizing its practice, and my own participation in a few online conversations had led to my consortium position. I knew and respected many, many colleagues engaging in this work at other schools, and I quickly learned the tremendous value of sharing questions and ideas.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that if I was noting the school names and email domains of people whose thoughts I was encountering, others were no doubt doing the same.

Conversations and Opportunities

Soon, meeting those people at conferences and elsewhere became a source of professional and personal pleasure. This often came with my being greeted not just because my nametag read “Peter Gow” but also because they noted the school name below it and wanted to express awareness of what we had been up to.

In doing all this, I recognized and participated in yet another key market: the community of other schools, and I learned that maintaining an active and positive presence in this community can matter a lot.

Consider an administrator on the West Coast who even casually mentions their positive impression of a school in the Midwest based on what they have read online or heard at a conference, which is building that midwestern school’s reputation and brand.

Multiplied by dozens or hundreds, this does great work for the school in the conversation, work that may even pay off with prospective families: placement consultants and agents are paying attention.

Getting into the Conversation

Achieving conversational presence is not a matter of some “campaign” or messaging barrage.

Participation must have substance, and this derives from a school’s sincere efforts to understand its own identity, mission, and values and to engage in the hard and never-ending project of being what it says and wants to believe it is. As schools carry out this work, internal leaders will emerge and often become designated agents of improvement.

Support and Share

Schools should be supporting these leaders and urging them to articulate and share what the school is doing, including how and why.

They should be encouraged to find avenues for sharing ideas and seeking perspectives within the community of schools. In time these leaders’ names and affiliations will stick in the minds of others, and their schools are likely to be noted, even in small ways, as places where interesting and worthy things are happening.

An active online conversation or a conference presentation about an intriguing new practice or successful change initiative is the next best thing to literal word of mouth, and who better than other educators to hear about it and pass the word?