Description:
This role is a vital leadership role within the business and will drive performance, pupil roll and the reputation of the school. The role requires a high degree of strategic insight of catchment/demographic analysis, brand evaluation, and the identification opportunities to improve the product offer and pupil roll. The role holder will be required to create strong, working relationships with the ability to implement change at our schools and in partnership with European colleagues.
This is a role with a high level of accountability and the key measures of success will be as follows: -
- Delivery of the marketing strategy aligned to the school strategic plan.
- Enquiry volumes
- Pupil growth
- Brand awareness (web visits and social media followers)
Key Responsibilities will include, (but not limited to):
- Design and implementation of marketing strategic plans
- Develop the school proposition where necessary in collaboration with the Head and the SLT.
- Work collaboratively with the Marketing & Admissions teams and the Head to ensure that the marketing strategy is understood and supported within the school.
- Guide and support the development of the school’s strategic plan.
- Review competitor offer and recommend what the core USPs are for the school.
- Understand the dynamics within the catchment area. Commissioning new research where necessary and identifying opportunities for growth.
- Understand the dynamics of the independent school market and resultant impact on schools within the catchment area e.g. fee increases, business growth within the local area etc.
- Identify the key target audiences and understand their needs within the market. Challenge the product offer where insight would support doing something different.
- Work with schools to identify creative and innovative marketing initiatives that will support pupil growth including sharing of best practice marketing plans between schools and identifying best practice from within the wider industry.
- Ensure that each school develops and executes the school marketing plans to a high standard.
- Define the required annual marketing expenditure for each school and ensure that schools implement activities in line with the budget. Monitor monthly expenditure to ensure that the budget is on track and highlight issues where appropriate.
- Drive the creative development of the proposition and for each campaign to ensure that the final execution meets the brief and delivers to the objectives.
- Brief and plan the media spend for the whole school cluster in order to drive efficiencies.
- Understand performance against objectives on a weekly basis and together with the MCM develop plans to ensure appropriate actions are taken to maximise enquiry generation and conversion.
The ideal candidate will have excellent commercial awareness and good command of digital marketing. A proven strategic thinker who can brief, interpret and analyse data and insight with good analytical and numerical skills. Have the ability to establish and maintain good professional relationships with all stakeholders. Can make sound judgements on creative work and can take both a strategic overview and hands-on approach. A manager who can motivate others and clearly impart information to others to support training and development.
Previous Experience Must Include:
- Strategic and tactical marketing experience
- Experience within a customer service industry where delivery of the experience is paramount to success.
- Experience of a sales led environment.
- Experience of developing local marketing campaigns, planning and booking media.
- Excellent IT skills across the Office suite i.e. PowerPoint, Excel.