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Workshops and Sessions

EXTENSIVE WORKSHOP ON HOW TO ATTRACT, ENGAGE, AND CONVERT PARENTS ON YOUR WEBSITE

A website in an organization’s greatest marketing asset. But attracting people there, keeping them engaged, and getting them to take action can be tricky. We’ll dive into ways to generate more organic traffic, via Search Engine Optimization, so that you don’t lose prospective families when it matters most. 

Via interactive hands-on sessions, we’ll dive into keyword research techniques to generate share worthy content on your website, as well as explore common user experience barriers, in a peer to peer exercise. This workshop is for anyone in an admissions, marketing or communications role.

The session will end with must-have analytics reports for every school to be viewing, as well as a robust Q&A session with members of the Enroll Media Group team – bring your digital marketing questions!

 

 

Google analytics is changing! School marketers need to get ready now

Google Analytics is stopping Universal Analytics (the current analytics configuration as schools know it) for good in July 2023. We will break down what schools need to do to save their analytics data, and start tracking in the new version of Google Analytics 4. We will also review tips for enhancing the data you collect on prospective families in order to help improve your marketing and website decisions to drive enrollment while staying privacy-centric in an increasingly shifting landscape. Bring your laptops and Google Analytics log-ins and get ready to embrace this change with confidence! 

 

Angie Ward

Owner

Enroll Media Group

Bio

Neuroscience of MArketing: the new science to your prospective family’s decisions

 

There’s no question our brains are instinctively activated by certain types of stimulation. Our challenge is to harness and channel the right types of stimulation to create more effective marketing. Fortunately, neuroscience can be an important asset for us, teaching us how to use emotions to wake up our brain, how to feed our brain’s desire for familiarity and simplicity, and how to surprise our brain with word games and other unexpected language manipulations. In this workshop style session, you will see how you can apply neuroscience to improve your school’s marketing strategy.

 

 

branding your school with proven success

During this session you will gain the tools needed to boost your school’s brand and become the master influencer of your school. Reveal the heart and soul of your school. This fun, but practical session, will touch upon the length and breadth of branding–from the big-picture mission and beloved traditions to the micro-decisions of colors and fonts and style guides.

Jim Healey

Owner, Chief Brand Officer, and Photographer

Peapod Design

Bio

brand champions: harnessing the superpowers within your school

 

Target Audience: Enrollment Managers, Division Heads, Heads of School, MarComm Managers

 

Word-of-Mouth, or direct contact marketing is the most effective form of enrollment marketing, as reported by InspirEd School Marketers in their 2020 Private School MarCom Report. And each constituency at your school has a particular superpower when it comes to talking about the school. The challenge for the Admissions and MarCom offices is encouraging members of your school community to talk with other people about your school in ways that are in keeping with the brand messages and to unleash their superpower! Which community members should do the talking and champion your brand? How do we ensure they are communicating the actual brand messages? In this session you will identify brand champions in several constituencies.  You will learn strategies and tools to recruit, coach, and manage the champions while always being mindful of truthfulness and authenticity in each person’s experience.

Jill Goodman

Owner

Jill Goodman Consulting

Bio

Take the Stress out of Grant Writing for Your School

 

Grants? Who, me? Yes! Grants are great opportunities to build relationships and promote marketable partnerships within your independent school and community.  In this session you will learn how to bring innovative ideas or personal passions to life; how to plan for success; and how to identify funding sources as well as tips for writing and carrying out a successful proposal. Anything from diversity programs and trauma-informed education initiatives to parent and student mindfulness programs and even highly visible events like Star Wars Day/May the 4th, we have seen many seeds of ideas come to fruition. Your school’s communication and development teams can be key collaborators in crafting ideas into grants. 

Now is the time to be thinking about grants to support your school programs and activities.  Learn how to create productive endeavors within the faculty and administrative team that strengthen your school’s values and promote your brand while navigating new and unexpected enrollment challenges.

 

Valerie Bostick

Grant Writer

Bio

Shelley Roy

Grant Writer

Gulliver School

Bio

The 1,2,3’s of email marketing

 

Looking to take your email marketing plan to the next level or finally get started on building one? In this presentation, you’ll learn the importance of email marketing along with some key rules to live by and the key components of what makes a successful and sustainable email marketing plan for YOU!

 

Why Email Marketing:

  • With so many means of communication and parents’ inboxes already being flooded with emails – why does email marketing matter for schools?

 

Rules to Live By:

  • Picking the right email provider
  • Consent
  • Quality over Quantity
  • Segmenting Matters
  • Testing
  • Using analytics for content and growth
  • Audience-centric content
  • Consistent + Useful = Success!

 

Rebecca Bernardo-Hartley

Marketing & Communications Manager

The Wolf School

Bio

The New(ish) Role of School Marketers: Influencing Parent Retention through Internal Marketing

Enrollment is up, but how do marketers help their schools retain current families? Retention reflects the vibrancy of the school body and how connected and informed the families are.  We are still about helping schools attract new families, but retention of present families is equally important.

 

In this workshop, we’ll explore the power of marketing internally.  We will examine the Pillars to Effective Internal Marketing and how to apply them. Participants will assess what they are doing now to enable schools to support optimum retention and discover new strategies that will build on what is already in place.

Aubrey Bursch

Founder & CEO

Easy School Marketing

Bio

FINDING WAYS TO STAY CREATIVELY HEALTHY OVER THE COURSE OF YOUR CAREER

As a school branding professional, marketer, designer, or content creator, being and staying creative is essential to your success. In the best of times keeping the creative fire burning takes focus and hard work. Add to that the stress and isolation of the past couple of years and it is no wonder maintaining a sharp creative edge can be a real struggle.

 

In this session we’ll look at the importance of establishing some self-care habits for creatives as well as some practical creative exercises and initiatives you can add to your practice to revive, inspire, and maintain your creative health.

 

Robert Kirk

Director of Marketing and Design

St. Johnsbury Academy

Bio

Managing Communication During a public health crisis

Back by popular demand! Brand Together has been fortunate to have O’Neill and Associate’s team of experts give a session at every conference we’ve held. Come to this presentation and you will see why. Whether it is a public health crisis, natural disaster, a legal difficulty, or a human tragedy, a crisis is like an octopus with lots of tentacles: How do you keep your brand intact in the face of the unexpected? How do you communicate with different constituencies? How can you be responsive to a developing situation? How will the crisis affect admissions, development, and alumni relations, and what can you do about it? The team has expert knowledge and wide experience with the kinds of challenges schools face. The resolution to your future crisis begins now–with educating yourself on how to prepare! Come for the session, and stay for the roundtable discussion to follow during lunch.

 

O’Neill and Associates offers comprehensive public affairs services including communications strategy, messaging and public relations, as well as government relations, community relations and relationship marketing. O’Neill and Associates helps companies build brands, communicate with government officials, find new business opportunities and survive crisis situations.
 
In today’s crowded marketplace, O’Neill and Associates helps companies stand out by communicating their unique strengths to the audiences they care about most. We solve business challenges through superior communication. Whether it’s creating grassroots support for an issue, influencing industry opinion leaders, communicating to the press and the digital and social media universe, or marketing a product or service to potential customers, O’Neill and Associates’ full range of public affairs services help clients reach their goals.
 
We help our clients be prepared for crisis situations,and we help guide them through serious challenges with expert communications counsel. O’Neill and Associates’ crisis and business continuity plans ensure that every angle of a potential crisis is addressed and that everyone on your team – from the receptionist to the CEO – is prepared to respond effectively.

Jeremy J. Crockford

Associate

Bio

Cosmo Macero Jr.

Associate

Bio

Laura Wareck

Vice President, Communications Division

Bio

Shakeir Gregory

Director of Digital Strategy and Content

Bio

How to tell your school’s story in video

Essentia Communications is a strategic communications company offering a suite of services, tailored to the specific needs of our clients.

With a specific focus on videography and photography, Essentia also offers strategic planning and web design. Essentia provides targeted and effective communication support for any sized project.

Our creative, forward thinking, professional team of experts is dedicated to delivering every project on time and within budget. We partner with our clients to achieve optimal results.

Essentia is based in Boston but works with clients all over the country.

Dave Casanave

Owner

Essentia Communications

Bio