With twenty-plus years in the nonprofit branding business, we’re brimming with proven advice and analysis–and we’re more than happy to share. Here are a few topics we’ve covered at events around the country.
2020 NAIS Annual Conference February 26-28, 2020 School leaders know that institutional history can serve as a powerful unifier. Legacy families, seasoned faculty and staff members, loyal donors, and alumni from all eras take pride in traditions and see them as continuing touch points with a school, despite its continuing growth and change. External audiences, […]
2019 SAIS Annual Conference October 27 – 29, 2019 Enrollment, retention, and fundraising are more complex and intertwined than ever before. As you move families from prospects to engaged community members, you’re not attracting buyers but cultivating believers—continually crafting your school’s culture and ensuring its long-term sustainability. How do you keep everyone pulling in the […]
2019 EMA Annual Conference September 10 – 14, 2019 It’s clear that demographic and psychographic market studies can help schools better identify, target, and persuade their best-fit families. Admissions professionals use these tools to learn the income levels, consumer behavior patterns, shared educational values, and other information about families within a given geographic region. Such […]
2019 ISACS Professional Development Series When Don’t You Want a Line Out the Door? Answer: When the line’s not full of right-fit families. As admissions and communications professionals, your jobs are more complex, subtle, and significant than simply bringing more people in. As you attract prospective families and choose to whom you say yes—and no—every […]
2019 NAIS Annual Conference February 27 – March 1, 2019 Today’s digital world encourages prospective families to demand access to all relevant information about your school – instantly. But millennial parents don’t want to be “sold to.” They seek to connect with your culture, so they can imagine how their children will feel as they […]
Association of Independent School Admission Professionals Annual Institute July 15-18, 2018 Learn how to create and deploy professional videos that attract best-fit prospects, with CRANE positioning strategist Christina Albetta and filmmaker and photographer Michael Branscom. Part One: Telling Your Story In this session, we’ll discuss when, how, and why to use professional video in your […]
Demographic and psychographic market studies offer schools crucial insights, from the number of households within a given geographic or economic threshold to common beliefs and consumer behavior patterns that distinguish a particular community. However, while admissions professionals have more analytical tools at their disposal than ever before, a pivotal question remains: How can schools forge […]
Keynote Presentation: When don’t you want a line out the door? Answer: When the line’s not full of right-fit families. As admissions director, your job is more complex, subtle, and significant than simply bringing more people in. In choosing to whom you say yes—and no—every season, you continually craft your school’s culture and ensure its […]
Smaller schools, newer schools, less top-of-mind schools all face uphill battles in crowded, highly competitive markets. But they also possess some clear advantages: the agility to make change happen fast, the freedom to not feel beholden to how things were always done, and the bravery to strike out against the status quo and harness the […]
On almost every campus, admissions teams wrestle with some variation on this theme: “Parents fall in love with our school the minute they step on campus.” “On paper, we look expensive. But in person, families see our real value.” “Once you’re here, you just get it.” But how can schools ensure that best-fit families hear […]
Do the math. Those vaunted-yet-maligned millennials (born 1981 and later) have hit their mid-thirties, and they parent the elementary and middle schoolers you need to recruit—especially the new families not already in your school’s traditional pipeline. In only a few more years, they become the gatekeepers for upper school selections as well. Are you ready? […]
Enrollment forms are submitted, tuition deposits paid, and now it’s time for The Hand-Off: when newly-enrolled families, initially shepherded with great care by the admissions team, move into the larger school community. But wait: Is there actually an exchange of custody? The admission and recruitment messages that drew them to you offered stories that resonated—about […]
As any school insider knows, the communications to-do list is filled with relentless internal and external demands. Add to that the carefully-detailed annual report. The proposed viewbook that requires new photography. What about leveraging Instagram and other online platforms—or investigating whether to move the magazine to an online format? And should a crisis ensue, are […]
Presenting the singular, compelling idea of your school to varied audiences and across media channels is difficult enough for the most-aligned of schools. Add complicated divisional structures, urgent financial realities, and evolving identities that many schools face, and it’s hard to figure out where to start. But there is a way to create a unifying […]
Of course you want every prospective family to fall in love with your school—and quickly. So it’s tempting to shower prospects with exhaustive lists of your school’s assets, from facilities to faculty, arts offerings to service learning opportunities. But fact-stacking can overwhelm already anxious parents—and obscure the value proposition that converts interest into applications. In […]
We all know the importance of our school’s Theory of the Case for recruitment. But have we applied the same rigor to the way we frame our advancement messages? Using vivid school examples, Patrick Kelly and Pam Mason-Norsworthy of Crane MetaMarketing share techniques and tools to identify and validate your school’s Theory of the Case, […]
Is your school the same institution it was a decade or two ago? More importantly, is your school getting credit—in the form of inquiries and applications—for the strides of the past ten, five, or even three years? Are you more intentionally living the mission? Expanding programmatically? Thoughtfully integrating new pedagogical approaches? Chances are your market’s […]
Stepping up your school’s communications game is essential, right now, to ensure that your school finds and persuades best-fit families today and for years to come. Just as important—and perhaps more surprising—rethinking what, why, and how your school communicates can re-energize and even transform all of your school’s “Five A’s”: admissions, advancement, administration, alumni relations, […]
Tired of doing the same-old, same-old? Want to flex your strategy muscles? Patti Crane of Crane MetaMarketing Ltd. teaches the strategic principles behind six different marketing game-changers—and shows how to help your campus commit to the long-haul work that such strategy change requires. presented at Southern Association of Independent Schools (SAIS) Annual Conference 2015
Every day, your school confronts a basic yet crucial challenge: reaching the parents you need to reach, in ways that resonate for THEM. That’s quite different than telling them all about your school and expecting them to engage. Each parent archetype carries with it different expectations, different ways of processing information, different ways of viewing […]
As a business officer, you control your bottom line every day. But what if your school’s most potent weapon didn’t lie in the moves you make, but in the very idea your institution embodies? Join Patti Crane, founder of Crane MetaMarketing, as she shares immediate and actionable tools and techniques to leverage your school’s one-of-a-kind […]
Though today’s spreadsheet parents assemble ever-expanding lists of “must-haves” as they school-shop—especially in over-schooled markets—it’s only a coherent Theory of the Case that captures the highest share of your best-fit families. See how two longstanding Boston schools—just six miles apart—let go of the lists to surge enrollment, tightening and focusing their value propositions using Theory […]
