Wednesday 1:00 – 4:30 | The Providence Art Club
From Best Fit Candidate to Your Biggest Advocate: How to Use Content Marketing to Convert Prospects, Energize your Core Families, Dominate Search Results, and Shift Your School’s Trajectory Forever.
Say goodbye to the “we’ve always done it this way” mentality and say hello to the future of independent school marketing.
During this interactive workshop we’ll take a deep dive into the fundamentals of inbound marketing, learn how to create awesome content that will fuel your website, and help Google see you as an authority.
You’ll walk away from this workshop with a solid understanding of how to create and leverage content to attract best fit families to your school’s website, and nurture them through the admissions process until they become your biggest advocates.
We’ll take you on a tour of effective content in action, share our own tips for uncovering hidden value and turning your school into a publishing powerhouse, explore marketing metrics that matter most for your organization, and help you discover ways to get strategic buy-in from leadership.
Thursday 9:00 am – 10:45 am | The Providence Art Club
Michelangelo was asked by the Pope about the secret of his genius, particularly in regards to the statue of David, widely considered to be the greatest sculpting masterpiece of all time. Michelangelo responded by saying, “It’s simple. I just remove everything that is not David.”
You are the Michelangelo of your school’s brand. And during this session you will gain the tools needed to boost your “creative confidence” and become the master influencer of your school. Your school is a block of marble and it is your job to chip away everything that is not your school’s brand to reveal the heart and soul underneath. 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. Let Jim help you to reveal your masterpiece!
Thursday 11:00 am – 12:00 pm | The Providence Art Club
Learn how the University of Rhode Island’s marketing, social media, and web teams developed a new high-energy creative strategy and integrated marketing plan for recruitment. From concept to delivery, the team will show you how they developed a fully integrated marketing campaign, with creative execution and media placement for multiple audiences. Learn how to stay on trend with Gen Z media consumption and build an engaging digital environment for this audience.
Thursday 1:15 pm – 2:15 pm | The Providence Art Club
You might have a great school, but if you are not blogging about it, nobody will know. It is essential to have an active online presence. Learn how to use blogging, a very exciting social media platform, to promote your school. Through this workshop participants will learn:
• How to pick the best topic(s)
• How to format your blog and understand all elements
• How to publish your blog on different platforms
• How to develop a publishing schedule that makes sense
• Highlighting your school’s greatness will yield positive results.
Thursday 2:30 pm – 3:30 pm | The Providence Art Club
Your school’s website is your greatest marketing asset. Your brand, content, design, and technology team have all worked tirelessly to build that asset for you – but some simple SEO pitfalls can be a barrier to exposure and positive user experience.
In this presentation, we will dive into the most common SEO hurdles schools face. We will demystify these issues, giving turnkey tips on how to break down these barriers and lift awareness of your website and institution. From metadata and structure, to 404s and page speed, you will gain knowledge that you’ll be able to share with everyone on your marketing team to ensure that your greatest marketing asset doesn’t fall short of meeting your audience.
Thursday 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm | Providence Art Club
Bring your marketing materials and pull out your conference worksheets. This is a great time to get the feedback and answers you are looking for. Apply what you have learned to your own marketing materials and ask the experts and your colleagues if you are on the correct path. Perfectly scheduled just before the round table discussions.
Friday 9:00 pm – 10:00 pm | Providence Art Club
Evan Kanouse knows that small schools can do more with fewer resources and less time. In this presentation he will share how one school of just 100 students built a branding powerhouse from scratch on a shoestring budget, and he’ll show how participants can do the same.
By the end of this interactive workshop, participants will:
• Review a model of effective branding for small schools
• Conduct a “SWOT” analysis of their school
• Design a “branding roadmap”
• Learn how to balance marketing, branding, and fundraising
• Discuss strategy and define actionable steps that can be taken tomorrow
At small schools administrators wear many hats. Regardless of your title, this session will be beneficial for you!
Friday 10:00 pm – 11:30 pm | Providence Art Club
Human beings make sense of the world through stories. But what actually constitutes a story? And how do we craft stories that truly engage our audience? Stories evoke a strong neurological response in all of us. That’s exactly what makes them such a powerful tool. A story can go where logic and facts fall short—directly to our hearts. In this session, we’ll help you harness the timeless power of stories, and how to use them to accomplish your strategic goals. You’ll learn the science behind why stories are the best way to motivate your audiences, the basics of storytelling, where to find stories on your campus, and how to write better stories. You’ll even practice writing a compelling story about your school!
Friday 11:30 am – 12:30 pm | The Providence Art Club
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.
Thursday 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm | Round Table Session | The Providence Art Club
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.