Episode Summary

This season, we took a deep dive into school marketing, exploring everything from brand to digital experience and everything in between. We reminded you why brand is the destination—and we don’t mean colors and logos, we mean your reputation. We told you how communication and marketing differ.

Communication conveys information, marketing influences how people see your schools, from current families to prospective hires and so on. But here’s the thing: strategy is your best friend in both endeavors. Now, you might not think an episode on organizational culture fits into a school marketing guide, but we showed you why culture is the invisible force that shapes everything else. And can experiences—even everyday ones—be a form of marketing in themselves? Yes. We told you all about that in Season 3, too.

What else? You probably won’t be surprised to learn that for many people, the first interaction they have with your schools will be online. So we gave you the deets on creating the best digital experience for your community. We know social media has its pros and cons, so we suggested you use it selectively—It’s really best for letting outsiders see all the cool things going on inside your classrooms. We recommended focusing on other means of communication to keep your current school community engaged. Enrollment marketing is buzzy, but we think it’s best looked at through a private sector framework called the customer journey—which we outlined for you. Crisis communication is an unfortunate part of the comms business, but it can ultimately make your community stronger. We talked about why effective crisis comms starts before and lasts long after the crisis is over.

Finally, the goal of all school marketing ultimately comes down to creating advocates for your brand. We told you a personal story about an elementary school in Washington that turned one of our hosts into an advocate.

In this episode, we're connecting all these pieces and providing you with actionable steps to transform how your community thinks and feels about your schools.
And with that, Season 3 is a wrap!

Episode Notes

This season, we've taken a deep dive into school marketing, exploring everything from brand to digital experience. Today, we're connecting all the pieces and providing you with actionable steps to transform how your community thinks and feels about your schools.

Follow SchoolCEO on LinkedIn or X/Twitter @school_ceo. 

Subscribe to SchoolCEO at SchoolCEO.com for research, stories, and strategies for leading your schools. And if you have a story you’d like to share, email us at editor@schoolceo.com.

Learn more about SchoolCEO and all of our resources on our About page. SchoolCEO is powered by Apptegy, the maker of the leading K-12 communications and brand management platform.

Episode Transcript

Welcome to the Season Finale of SchoolCEO's podcast. This season, we've taken a deep dive into school marketing, exploring everything from brand to digital experience. Today, we're connecting all the pieces and providing you with actionable steps to transform how your community thinks and feels about your schools.

I’m Tyler Vawser, and I’ve been the SchoolCEO podcast host for the previous season and parts of Season . 

Episode 1: Brand as Foundation

In Episode 1, we told you why brand is the destination. I shared an old story that contains a fresh perspective. In the 1800s, William Underwood faced a challenge that many school leaders might recognize – a trust problem. His canned foods were competing with many similar products, and customers couldn't tell which ones were trustworthy. His solution? He created America's first brand, Underwood's Deviled Ham, complete with its distinctive devil logo. This brand became a mark of trust and quality that customers could rely on.

Your brand isn't just your logo or colors – it's every experience, every interaction, every moment that shapes the perception of your brand— a brand that can be trusted.

We learned a useful definition about brand from Marty Neumeier, "A brand is a result. It's a customer's gut feeling about a product, a service, or a company. It ends up in their heads, in their hearts."

A few takeaways from Episode 1 of Season 3:

1. Define your core message by identifying what families in your district want
2. Audit how your brand shows up in daily interactions
3. Ensure your values are reflected in every experience

As a school leader you’re communicating all the time, the question is, are you communicating in a way that builds trust?

Episode 2: Marketing That Matters

Onto episode two…where we answered the question What is school marketing? 

Now, you might think marketing doesn't belong in education, schools should just get better at communication, right? And communicating more might be enough if families have no choice but to send their children to your schools. 

Or it might be enough if you have all the best teachers and staff begging to work in your schools. 

Or, it might be enough if 100% of the families already attending your district are over the moon about your schools and sing your praises every chance they get. 

You must communicate, but do you need marketing?

Marketing goes beyond communication. Communication conveys information, marketing seeks to change how people think and feel about your schools. 

Marketing in schools is really about: Sharing the amazing moments happening in your classrooms so that you…

• Build trust with your community
• Attract and retain great teachers and staff
• Create advocates for public education
• Empower those within your schools to show off your culture, strengths, and values

All so that you can create the best environment for your students and the broader community

In the second episode, we told you why school marketing isn't about billboards or advertisements – it's about changing hearts and minds. 

Here's how to make marketing work for your schools:

1. Focus on sharing authentic stories that showcase your values
2. Create experiences that reinforce your brand
3. Empower your staff to be brand ambassadors
4. Connect every marketing effort to your core message

Episode 3: Strategic Communications

In the next episode, we looked closer at school communication— and why effective school communications requires both speaking and listening. School communication is most often outbound, from one to many, and general. But great school communication listens and receives feedback, inbound communications that are personal and specific.

We turn to a quote from our conversation with Michael C. Bush, the CEO of Great Place to Work. 

Michael C. Bush: “It doesn't matter what industry you pick. They're all working with their leaders on the same things. Number one, improving the listening skills of their leaders. That's number one. Because without a good leader who's a good listener, then, you're not gonna do well in the other areas of leadership. Because the ultimate show of respect is listening. It's being engaged in a conversation with somebody where the other person gets the feeling that, wow, this person's really listening. You know, it's so rare to be in a conversation like that that it stands out for people. And what a great listener does is they ask questions. They're curious, which is a sign of humility. And by asking questions, they're demonstrating that they don't know everything. And they're seeking and searching, and they think you might help. Ultimate show of respect.

Take these steps to improve your communications:

1. Create a communications calendar that aligns with your brand
2. Establish feedback loops with all stakeholder groups
3. Ensure internal communication happens before external; in other words, a strong communication plan starts with your community—not your communication plans
4. Use multiple channels to reach different audiences

Episode 4: Organizational Culture

In our fourth episode, my personal favorite, we told you why culture is the invisible force that shapes everything else. The core concept: WHY YOU WORK DETERMINES HOW WELL YOU WORK. Through the Toyota story, we learned that the same people with a different culture can achieve dramatically different results.

In the early 1980s, GM gave Toyota their worst-performing factory, expecting them to fail. The factory was known for:

• High absenteeism (20-30% daily)
• Terrible quality control
• Widespread misconduct

But Toyota saw something different. Toyota didn’t replace the workers, change the location, or fire management. They understood that culture is the key to high-performance even in work as repetitive as an assembly line.Unlike GM, Toyota:

• Treated workers as professionals
• Encouraged continuous improvement
• Built cross-functional teams
• Empowered everyone to contribute ideas

The results were remarkable. Production time per car was cut in half, and quality improved dramatically too. The same workers, in the same factory, achieved completely different results because of a change in culture. 

The same truths absolutely apply to your schools. If your employees are treated with respect, are encouraged to improve, if you unite people across different teams and departments to achieve their goals, and you empower them to contribute ideas, they will have greater belief in themselves and your schools—AND ACHIEVE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT RESULTS.

To strengthen your culture:

1. Define clear expectations and values
2. Create systems for continuous improvement
3. Empower every employee to contribute ideas
4. Celebrate successes that align with your values
5. And finally make sure your district, schools, teams, and individuals know their WHY

Episode 5: Experiential Marketing

In episode 5, we told you why in-person experiences matter more than words. Experiential marketing means creating an experience for your audience that is so good it serves as its own form of marketing. When we use this term, we’re not specifically talking about events; we mean every experience your community has with a school, from registration to graduation.

Although they may not know it or describe it this way, the Principals in your schools are likely experience artists. 

Principals are responsible for crafting day-to-day experiences for students, families, and employees—ones that hopefully reinforce the district’s mission, vision, and brand. In my own life, the majority of in-person experiences with the district occur at the school level from back to school night to fall festival, or best of all—the daddy daughter dance. 

These in person moments are the most real and impactful moments—far more than any communication I receive throughout the course of the year.

Neal Foard explained: "If you can give somebody a sense of participation in something big and important that they can be proud of participating in, you will have given them a gift larger than the functional attributes."

Action steps for experiential marketing:

1. See the events and experiences you are already hosting for what they are: experiential marketing
2. Acknowledge and empower principals and others that create these moments
3. Turn everyday moments, from the car line to a parent-teacher conference, into memorable experiences

We’re halfway through our recap of Season 3. Before we continue with Episodes 6 through 10, I want to tell you about SchoolCEO Conference. Attend Our SIXTH conference on September 24th and 25th, 2025. You’ll learn how to position your district and your schools to win families, how to truly understand how the parents in your community make decisions, and ultimately how to win the trust of all community members. Our conference is unlike others—with back to back keynote speakers—and a dialogue between private sector leaders and some of the best K-12 leaders in the country. Learn more at apptegy.com/conference or search for SchoolCEO Conference. 

Episode 6: Digital Experience

In the second half of the season, we looked closer at digital experiences in episode 6 and at social media in episode 7.  We told you why your digital presence is often the first impression people have of your schools. As Molly McGowan Gorsuch pointed out: "Digital marketing and creating those spaces is actually one of the more cost-effective ways to reach your target audiences."

To improve your digital experience:

1. Audit all your digital touchpoints
2. Ensure consistency across platforms
3. Make information easily accessible—especially on mobile devices

Episode 7: Social Media Reality

When we looked at social media, we challenged you to re-think what your purpose and goal is with social media. Unlike private sector companies who used social media to build an audience, districts already have an audience. Your objective then is not to grow an audience but to creatively engage the parents, teachers, staff, and community members you already have within your reach - be it through social media or voicemails, newsletters, or beyond.

Use social media selectively and strategically, use it to reach newer audiences and to inspire creative communications and great storytelling in your already well-established communication channels with your primary audiences.

Episode 8: Enrollment Marketing

In this episode, we told you why enrollment marketing isn't just about getting families to enroll – it's about marketing your schools at every phase of the customer journey. 

To strengthen enrollment marketing:

1. Map your family journey from awareness to advocacy
2. Be visible in the community so families know you exist before they ever shop for schools.
3. Make unique, personal connections when they’re actively shopping around for schools. 
4. Once they’ve made a decision, make registration  as easy as possible for them.
5. Deepen your relationships with your families during the retention phase by making them feel like they belong. 
6. Finally, encourage your families to become advocates and amplify their messages to hopefully start the customer journey all over again for a new family. 

Episode 9: Public Relations & Crisis Management

In this episode, we told you how to handle crisis communications before, during and after a crisis occurs. 

The most important aspect of crisis communications is being prepared. You can do that by creating a strategic plan, running drills to test that plan and building positive relationships with community partners and journalists.

 Once a crisis comes knocking, your primary goal is maintaining the trust and confidence of your stakeholders by selecting and training a single spokesperson, keeping communication consistent, and being brutally honest. 

Finally, in the aftermath of a crisis you have to give your community something to do, giving them a hand in the healing process. You also have to take care of yourself, because you experienced a crisis, too. Finally, you have to reflect and learn from a crisis so your community will be even stronger than before. 

Episode 10: Building Advocates

In terms of customer satisfaction, there are three main groups of people: advocates, or people who believe in your schools and speak positively about them, detractors, or people who are unhappy and are often vocal about their dissatisfaction, and neutrals, by far the largest group of people who neither speak up  for nor against you. School leaders often think they need to focus on turning detractors into advocates, but frankly, neutrals are a far larger and more suggestible crowd. It only takes a little thoughtful, focused  attention to turn them into advocates.

In this episode, our host Brittany shared her personal journey to becoming an advocate for her daughter’s new elementary school. Parents and families are often the most important advocates for schools, and like Brittany, many start their journey feeling anxious and unsure about their children’s education. How do you reassure them? By using the same customer service  tactics as the private sector. 

Chewy, an online pet store, exemplifies this by sending pet portraits to unsuspecting owners and mailing birthday cards on pet birthdays—creating small, but meaningful moments customers will never forget. The new elementary school that won Brittany over engineered similarly positive experiences—making multiple phone calls to see if Brittany’s family needed help with enrollment and sending personal recommendations for restaurants and hikes that would be appropriate for her five year old. Those  small gestures led her to trust the school before her daughter even started. Once she saw the personal care the school’s principal took to make her daughter feel comfortable on the first day of class, she was totally converted from a neutral customer to a new advocate. 

Our takeaway is this: To create more advocates for your schools, focus your time and energy on impressing your neutral stakeholders, not converting a small minority of naysayers. You can do that by reaching out to them by phone and or meeting them in person—in other words, being available and helpful. And make those touchpoints as meaningful as possible with personal touches. 

Bringing It All Together

Throughout this season, we've seen how brand, marketing, communications, and culture work together to shape how people think and feel about your schools. Remember:

• Your brand is the foundation
• Marketing makes it visible
• Communications make it meaningful
• Culture makes it authentic
• Experience makes it memorable

The most successful districts aren't just managing these elements – they're integrating them into a cohesive strategy that supports their mission and values.

Thank you for joining us this season. Each season we change our podcast format. In Season 1 we exclusively interviewed K-12 leaders, in Season 2 we interviewed private sector leaders and K-12 leaders on topics ranging from culture to storytelling, and in Season 3 we brought used a documentary style format to provide you with a comprehensive guide to school marketing. 

[recorded conversation]

Tyler Vawser: And in season four, we have Eileen Beard. Eileen has been on the SchoolCEO team for a year and she's going to be taking over season four in a different kind of format and wanted to introduce you to her. Eileen, do you wanna talk about how season four is going to differ from the past seasons?

Eileen Beard: Hey, Tyler. Yeah. So I think you mentioned this, but, we change up the format every season here at SchoolCEO. This season, we wanna give you some of that same great content, but in little bite sized episodes, because we know you guys are busy.

Tyler Vawser: So what I love about Season Four and this idea that Eileen's brought forward is that there's so much content out there. There's lots of great podcasts. There's great magazines like SchoolCEO, but a lot of that requires time. And we know that school leaders are busy. You've got a lot going on. You don't always have thirty minutes to sit through a podcast. You don't always have time to finish a full article. And so season four is going to bring you very short episodes that get you thinking that you can talk about in your next meeting, but you don't have to sit down and have your full focus for a half hour. So the way you might think about this is just kinda bite size ideas and concepts and a little bit of inspiration too that you can sit down for five minutes or while you're taking a sip of coffee or on your commute into the office.

Eileen Beard: Yeah. Absolutely. A little bit of inspiration, little snapshots of our best material. We have so much we have so much great content, so I just wanna pull from that.

Tyler Vawser: Yeah. We wanna help inspire you throughout the week to get through it, but also to do great work every single day. 

[end of conversation]

Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear feedback about what you got from this. We've heard stories from superintendents that have used these episodes in their dissertations. We've talked to communications directors that play this back to their teams to help their whole team understand what it is they're trying to accomplish, and many other stories. We'd love to hear from you. You can write to us at editor@schoolceo.com, or go to schoolceo.com to find other episodes, read our original research, and subscribe to the magazine. Thank you again, and we look forward to introducing season four soon.

The SchoolCEO podcast is brought to you by Apptegy. You can find a transcript for this episode and full issues of our magazine at SchoolCEO.com. If you like what you hear, subscribe to our newsletter and get bite sized tips on school marketing sent straight to your inbox. If you follow us on social media, we'll let you know when new episodes drop. 

Season 3 of the SchoolCEO podcast is produced by Tyler Vawser, Britney Keil, Tanner Cox, and Ryan McDonald, with Eileen Beard as contributing editor. Thank you for listening.