Publish at April 21 2015 Updated June 14 2023
The relationship between marketing and schools is a perilous terrain that we tend to explore with caution.
On the school side there is obviously the fear of commodification of a common good like education.
On the marketing side (of public services) we rarely venture into the world of education, preferring to draw examples from other sectors, such as transport, the post office, healthcare. But what exactly are we talking about?
Marketing may involve very different actions, but its central idea is user satisfaction. While the 4P model is relatively well-known (product, price, place and promotion), numerous " P " have been added over time (people, processes etc), as have alternative models: the 4Es(Emotion, experience, exclusivity, commitment), SAVE (Solution, Access, Value, Education) and many more!
Finally, it's not so much these definitions that are important, but the questions that revolve around them: passion, personalization, periphery (the boundaries of a sector are constantly being redefined), partnership and parity... Gender is on the agenda in marketing too !
A number of research studies have adapted the marketing mix to education: we find classic concepts such as programs, people, school equipment and infrastructure... But also more specific factors, such as the prestige of a school, teaching methods, the degree of communication between parents and teachers, etc. All levers for action to improve quality (and satisfaction) in educational services.
These applications are often confined to private education, or to higher education, in which we'll find, for example, "creative" advice for recruiting students. MOOCs, too, are shaking up the rules "place" is replaced by access to the four corners of the world, users search for a brand first and foremost, and courses become promotional tools for an institution.
The common thread in these examples is the sine qua non condition of any marketing action : choice. User satisfaction becomes a sore point when they can choose between different alternatives.
The organization of an education system, its degree of autonomy, its sectorization will limit the real application of marketing in education. And yet, there's a lot of talk today about personalized learning, fun at school... more "P "s crossing our path !
We've already mentioned on Thot the prospects offered by companies like Knewton. However, machine learning analysis doesn't sum up the possibilities for personalized education. We can go much further.
A foresight article by Copenhagen's Institute for Future Studies , in 2006, projected personalized learning to 2025, beyond the classroom, organized around communities.
One scenario advocated abandoning rigidity in terms of "time". Education is very much organized by temporal units: classes by year of birth, fixed timetables, organizations in terms of trimesters. In 2015 we're talking about school rhythms, but in terms of personalizing the day, and the horizon of 2025 still seems a long way off... as for personalizing content.
The article points out, however, that "there is a latent conflict between a personalized education system and a society's desire to preserve its culture": personalization of form (timetables, methodologies) will thus be easier to implement than personalization of the subjects taught.
Several years ago we studied the case of a secondary school, in England, which counted many fairground families in its environment. Faced with a high rate of absenteeism, the school had developed distance learning kits and proposed a laptop loan system to enable its students to maintain continuity in their learning. Technologies change, and so do the expectations of families and students, but this very simple example alone sums up the richness of marketing thinking within a school: deciphering needs, modulating offers and knowing how to adapt.
In school marketing, the school's marketing strategy is based on a number of principles.
In marketing public services we often remind ourselves that the most important term is service.
Two key ideas lie behind this word: the immateriality of the service, which implies the need to make something intangible tangible; and the fact that every service is a co-production, a collaboration between those who provide it and those who receive it. All the more reason to seek the satisfaction of those we teach.
Illustration: emojoez, Shutterstock
1. E. Métayer. How LEGO reinvented the 4Ps of marketing (December 2014)
2. C.A. Bulley. Strategic marketing in education services. The case of a private tertiary institution in Ghana in International Journal of Economics, Commerce and Management, vol II issue 6 (2014)
3. M. Alipour, A.Aghamohammadi et al. A New Educational Marketing Mix: The 6ps for Private School Marketing in Iran in Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology 4(21) (2012)
4. OECD (Centre for Educational Research and Innovation). The school of tomorrow. Personalizing education (2006); in particular, J.P. Paludan. Personalized learning by 2025.
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