Understanding your customers & market
Understanding your customers is the bedrock of good marketing. It must be, after all, it's the first word in the definition of marketing - “understanding and delivering customers’ needs profitably”.
Before you can communicate well with your parents, or improve how satisfied they are, you’ll need to understand what they think and feel about your school. Unless you've got your own personal ‘pensieve’ like Dumbledore, you’ll need to ask people what they think, feel and remember about your school, rather than just be able to swirl a magic dish for the answers.
“Superbly efficient, thorough and highly professional, Louise’s handling of our research project was outstanding... she brought skill, experience and an understanding of the market which added considerable value to the research methodology and subsequent analysis.”
I can help you by:
designing the research
undertaking the research for you
helping analyse the answers
instigating change. Because research shouldn’t just be a stand alone task. It needs to be embedded in your marketing; informing what you are doing now and in the future - it isn’t something to just ‘do’ and ‘file’. Before you do any research you need to have a clear idea of why you are doing it, and - here's the important part - what you are going to do with it once you have it.
useful research for your school:
Parental satisfaction questionnaires to identify where your school needs to improve or is doing well
Telephone interviews with parents who choose not to join
Focus groups with pupil leavers
Feeder school head interviews to learn what they really think of your school
Competitor research to identify differences in approaches & opportunities
Open day visitor surveys
Newly joined parents - why they chose your school & what they think of your competitors
Demographic research - who your target parents are and how to get them