Today, our MD Barbara Pesel shared her insights on lifting the profile of principals and their schools at the Mornington Peninsula Schools Conference, presenting to 109 principals.
Here are her key takeaways…
Building a school’s profile goes beyond students achieving academic results. Reputation management in the modern era involves celebrating successes, proactively seeking opportunities, raising the profile of the school leadership team members and, increasingly, an active and credible online presence. For many schools, marketing and communications is not a priority, and they fail to see the benefits of a communications strategy.
Taking a proactive approach to marketing and communication will boost the overall success of the school.
A positive reputation helps attract quality staff, creates demand for enrolments and draws engagement from the local community. Also, a well-established and positive reputation can protect you if there is a negative incident.
As the saying goes, you need to begin with the end in mind, and that’s certainly true of communications.
It all starts with a school’s “DNA”.
Why do you exist? Where do you want to be as an organisation? What do you stand for? What makes you unique?
This DNA must be reflected in the language, visuals and brand, actions of principals and staff members, and how the community perceives the school.
Know what makes the school different, and embrace its strengths.
It’s a bit like asking why bother to have a map? If you don’t know where you’re going, how are you going to know if you’re there… or at least closer than you were before?
Key messages are a critical element in developing and promoting a brand.
These reflect what’s important to your stakeholders and what you want them to hear and remember about you.
A typical school’s stakeholders include students and their families, staff, regulatory bodies, feeder schools and local community groups. When you start to piece all of those people together, you want to make sure they’re all clear about who you are and what you stand for.
The other important point to be made is consistency.
If messaging isn’t consistent, you’re not going to get cut-through. Key messages should underpin all of the content developed for marketing-communications material, and everyone should be responsible for delivering them.
A principal is the ambassador that “lives and breathes” the DNA.
It’s important that they are proactive in supporting and advocating the school’s key messages and raising their own profiles, identify points of difference as opportunities, and most importantly remain consistent in their delivery of key messages.
We believe, every principal has a responsibility to be seen as the chief ambassador, internally and externally.
A full house at today’s Mornington Peninsula Schools Conference.
For support lifting your school’s profile, contact Pesel & Carr on (03) 9036 6900 or email info@peselandcarr.com.au
