Educational Pursuit

Every independent school’s enrollment story looks specific from the inside: its own history, its own competitors, its own community. But after working with enough schools, a pattern emerges that’s hard to dismiss…

Ask this question at your next board meeting: What evidence do we have about what our market actually thinks of us? If the room goes quiet, that silence is telling you something….

This is a conversation at every school we work with. We ask for a list of the five schools they most frequently lose students to, and public schools are always on it….

At the end of a full-day Storytelling Workshop with a school’s faculty and staff, a teacher came up to me. “We’ve gone through three rebrands in eight years,” she said. “I got…

Brand pillars. They’re a must-have — the specific, provable claims that tell a family why your school and not the one down the road. They’re essential for effective communication, and every team…

When you sign up for market research, ask first: Who, exactly, are we going to talk to? It’s not market research if you don’t talk to “the market” — the people off…

Prospective families arrive at your school — on your website, at your open house, on Niche, in your inbox — with hundreds of questions. Class sizes. Fees. Extracurriculars. Where students go next….

Good survey design is what separates data you can trust from data that just feels good. Whether you’re fielding a family satisfaction survey or laying the groundwork for a strategic messaging project,…

Quality > Quantity Clear brand strategy is about the quality, not quantity, of your messages. When I share market research with schools, someone in the room almost always says, “There are no…

It’s been a minute since I had the privilege of spending a few days with Heads of School from the Northwest Association of Independent Schools (NWAIS) at the Alderbrook Resort on the…

That’s the question that made me sit up a little straighter in a session at NAIS this year — because the speaker’s answer was no. And we know through extensive market research…

Do You See a Duck or a Rabbit? People bring confirmation bias to experiences, and language is no exception. Keep this in mind when shaping your messaging. Much of our work with…