Episode Summary

When people think of marketing they likely think of advertising or PR but over the past decade marketing has evolved to encompass many different things.

For school leaders, marketing will differ from the private sector; and it should. School marketing isn’t about reaching as many people as possible, rather specifically reaching those in your community.

But school marketing is not just about boosting enrollment numbers. It is also about building a strong community, enhancing your district’s reputation, and ensuring long-term sustainability.

In this episode, we explore the tools and strategies that are being used in the private sector and the actionable steps you can use to take your schools to the next level.

Episode Notes

What is marketing? How can you take the best marketing ideas from the private sector and implement them in your schools? Marketing has evolved over time to become more brand & identity focused. Having a strong set of values & consistent core messaging is the pathway to developing a strong marketing strategy.

In this episode, we’ll explore exactly how marketing has changed and what you can do to strengthen your school’s identity. Listen to hear from experts who provide insights into marketing, branding, positioning, and storytelling to shape a community's perceptions and expectations of a school.

Featured in this episode are Jack Trout, Dr. Carmen Simon, Dr. Jonah Berger, Neal Foard, and others.

Episode Transcript

Tyler Vawser (Host): When it comes to accomplishing the various goals and problems that we have for our schools and our districts, most of us have a tendency to see each goal or problem and even opportunities as independent of the others. We imagine that this one particular goal has a particular completion date or an objective. And, of course, in a way, that is true. But when we look closer, or in this case, if we zoom out, you can see that everything is closely and intricately connected. 

If you're new to marketing, or specifically school marketing, you might think of a specific ad like a billboard promoting student enrollment, or a social media post, or a campaign. Or you might think that marketing doesn't really matter. Shouldn't schools all be about learning and students and their achievement? 

When we think about marketing at SchoolCEO, we think about it at a higher level. Marketing is not a single social media post or a billboard and it definitely doesn't undermine student achievement. Marketing is a combination of all things, big or small, that you do to promote your district's reputation. It's the practice of changing how people think and feel about your schools.

Rory Sutherland: “Brands are basically the units of selection in the evolutionary marketplace, which is consumer capitalism. Okay? And a brand name allows you, collectively and individually, to reward a good experience with future business and to punish a bad experience with a future boycott.

That's Rory Sutherland, vice chairman of Ogilvy, the famous advertising firm, and also the author of Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life.

Rory Sutherland: “So anybody who's interested in the longevity of their business will try and live up to their promises if that promise is attached to a brand.”

Welcome to Season 3 Episode 2. In the previous episode, we talked about branding and how it is the expectations of your school community and audience. In this episode, we're gonna be talking about marketing, which is how you can change those expectations, which can ultimately change everything else in the school district, including student achievement. 

One of the most influential books of the last 2 decades was The World is Flat, which made the case that globalization has made the world so connected that it's actually quite small and it might as well be flat. Author Thomas Friedman explains, from the year 2000 everything changed.

Thomas Friedman: “Well, while you were sleeping, or at least while I was sleeping, we entered globalization 3.0 from the year 2000 to the present. And it's shrinking the world from a size small to a size tiny and leveling the global economic playing field at the same time. And what's really cool, really exciting, and really terrifying about this year of globalization is that it's not built around countries, although they're still important. And it's not built around companies, although they're still important. No. What's really new, really different, really exciting, and really terrifying about this year of globalization is that it's built around individuals. What is really new about this era is that we now have a world where individuals can compete, connect, and collaborate globally as individuals. So we've gone from a world where globalization was driven by countries to one driven by companies, to one now spearheaded by individuals. That's what characterizes this era. That's what's really new.”

If you've been in education in the last 20 years, you've seen this firsthand. Even in the last 5 years, things have changed dramatically. We've seen schools have to do something quite new: compete.

[Excerpt from SchoolCEO educational video]

Narrator: “Every time a student leaves their local school, funding goes with them, draining resources from public schools. Because of this, administrators end up spending precious time and resources competing with other schools. Resources which could be spent on curriculum, teachers, and facilities.”

Public schools are competing for students, they're competing for teachers and staff. And they're even competing for the attention and support of their communities. If this new era is about individuals, it's about competing for those individuals' opinions, attention, and their time.

Jack Trout: “There are so many choices out there. That's why mistakes are so costly.”

That's from Jack Trout, the author of Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, How to be Seen and Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace.

Jack Trout: “You might say, how come? Why why does why is what's behind choice? Well, marketing has some basic laws. It's not about a better product. It's about a better perception and positioning is really the tool. That's the essence of the strategy you have to employ to deal with competition. It's the starting point for your planning and your marketing.”

[Excerpt from SchoolCEO Conversations Season 2 episode - Greg Turchetta: Winning at School Communications]

Greg Turchetta: “What if you're already winning? You're just not telling people. There's no scorecard. There's no record to show you're actually winning.”

The point here isn't about if the world is too connected or not. My point is that every individual has access to far more information, choices, and options than ever before. While your schools are local, the information is global. The opinions that parents are exposed to, they're national.

Outside of schools, the objective of marketing is often to reach as many people as possible and to cast a very wide net. That's why a Super Bowl ad costs an average of $7,000,000 for 30 seconds of attention. You might think of marketing as advertising or a clever pun on a billboard, but it's so much more than all of that. Those are really just the details and not even the best details at that. 

It's a common misconception that marketing is another word for advertising. Branded t-shirts, billboards, pop up ads; you might also confuse marketing with public relations, getting your district into or out of the local press. But really, advertising, branding, and PR are just pieces of an overall strategy. Marketing is the practice as a whole. 

If you're a school leader, your marketing, school marketing, is going to look different, at times very different, from private sector marketing – and it should. School marketing isn't about reaching everyone possible. After all, a district in Texas doesn't really need to reach parents in New York. Instead, it's about connecting positive experiences and information with the right people at the right time. That starts with the families and community members within your district and those surrounding it. 

Successful school marketing creates intrigue and curiosity about what it's like to be a student or a staff member within your buildings. It brings people into the positive moments that are already happening within your schools and pulls their attention to you and helps you keep it. 

Marketing aims to build your brand to make your audience and community think about your schools the way you want them to. Marketing is the way to create moments and shape experiences within your district.

Layne Brownstein: “So there's a lot of talk all over advertising, that advertising is dead as we know it. And that's true. Dead advertising is dead, but live advertising is exploding. And it's called experiential.”

That's Layne Brownstein from his TEDTalk at TEDx Fulton Street.

Layne Brownstein: “What a brand's basically doing is telling you, I want you to feel a certain way and I want you to buy my product. And to me, that's a pretty passive unforgettable experience when advertising has the ability to change the world forever. First of all, you can't look at people as consumers or users, you have to look at them as humans. Experiential to me, and this is something that is a big mantra of mine, is environmental to human design. And what that means is you walk into a space, that space curates itself and there's a beautiful back and forth between you and it.”

The great news is that schools and educators are champions of seeing people as human and understanding how impactful any singular moment can be. In 2023, SchoolCEO Magazine researched the relationship between superintendents and school principals. Our objective was simple: to better understand how principals see their involvement, or lack of involvement, when it comes to school branding, communication, and marketing. The results were intriguing. 

We found that school principals often don't think of marketing as their responsibility and they don't feel like they have the time to think about strategic communications. However, we found something amazing. 

Principals, building leaders, are experienced marketers. Building leaders are constantly thinking about how to bring real world experiences to teachers, students, and families and to do it for a very specific reason. The reason? To market those experiences in a way that changes how the people in those experiences think and feel about the school and by extension, the district. Principals are crafting moments in real life all the time. 

Here's Matt Baker from a previous episode of the podcast in Season 1.

[Excerpt from SchoolCEO Conversations Season 1 episode - Matt Baker: Boosting Student Enrollment in Rural Schools]

Matt Baker: “It is important for students to feel a lot of things that even to deal I never had to deal with maybe yourself. You kind of feel the same way. And we want students to have that comfort level, that social-emotional comfort comfort level as soon as they walk in the door. And a lot of times, the tours that we give or the familiarity that they have with somebody that we can connect them with immediately, gives them that peace that they need because it's a new situation. So when you say man of many hats, absolutely.”

Now I wanna share a quick example from my own life. I have 4 kids, and for me, the experiential moment, the experiential marketing that is the very best throughout the year is the annual Daddy Daughter Dance each February or the Field Day in May or the Fall Festival. At each event, my kids' principal is changing my experience and the way that I think and feel about the district. Those experiences are often in person, but they can be digital as well. 

A frustrating experience on a website can change how someone thinks about the district. A mobile app that merely redirects them to a PDF or website that doesn't really tell them what your district is about is a lost opportunity. 

When you look at the district with the eyes of a marketer, you will see that opportunities are everywhere to influence your school community for the better. It's not enough just to have great moments and experiences. Great marketing is about creating experiences that are rooted in your values.

Steve Jobs: “To me, marketing is about values. This is a very complicated world. It's a very noisy world. And we're not gonna get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. And so we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us.”

That's Steve Jobs, which you heard in the previous episode about brand. The most successful organizations and businesses have one thing in common: they decided who they are and what they stand for. Their values shaped and continue to shape the purpose of their communications, the purpose of their experience that they offer. And ultimately, their values allow them to decide in advance what they want their audience to think and feel about their brand. The previous episode goes much deeper into this. If you haven't listened to it yet, go back to Episode 1 of Season 3 and listen to that. 

Now organizations that are struggling are often leaving it up to chance. They're sharing a story here, or a story there. Sometimes they're telling great stories, but those stories don't really deliver the same take home over and over again. Great organizations don't leave it up to chance and they're not just content to tell one story. Instead, they're telling stories over and over and over again that bring home the point that they want to make. 

[Excerpt from SchoolCEO Conversations Season 2 episode - Jonah Berger: Increasing our Influence]

Dr. Jonah Berger: “Yeah, I mean, I would say it's not just about telling a great story because you can tell a great story that doesn't lead to the take home point you care about.”

That's Jonah Berger, author of Magic Words, The Catalyst, Contagious, and Invisible Influence, and a frequent speaker at SchoolCEO.

Dr. Jonah Berger: “Right. If we're script writers or we're television writers or we're singers, you know, well, then, you know, our business is telling great stories. If we're schools, if we're leaders, if we're employees, we don't just care about great stories being told. We care about the take home of that story being the right take home. And often I do workshops around storytelling. You know? Someone will come up to me with the most amazing story. It's a really engaging, exciting, powerful story. And then at the end, I say, okay. Well, what's the takeaway of that story? And they go, oh, it's, you know, x or something. And I'll and I'll say, okay. Well, is x the takeaway you want people to know about you or your business, your organization? And they'll often go, well, not exactly. You know? We really want people to take away why. And then I'm like, well, okay. Well, x might be the story you just told me might be a great story that shows x, but in some sense, it doesn't matter. Right? Because you're not just looking for great stories that show anything.” 

Dr. Jonah Berger:“You're looking for a great story, a great Trojan horse story that the takeaway, the take home, the moral, right, is the exact thing you want people to take away. And so I actually would suggest don't start with the story, start with the takeaway. Start by figuring out what you want people to learn from the story and then figure out what stories do a good job of showing that, of making that the moral, rather than just saying, well, tell me some great stories because you'll get some great stories, but many of them will have nothing to do with the take home you you might care”

Now we're talking about marketing. We're talking about how to use marketing to change how people think and feel about your schools. But we need to start talking about what do you actually do. How do we take this from an idea and put it into practice? Before you do anything else, you need something that ties every story and each experience and moment together. In short, you need to define the identity of your school district. And to do that, you need a core message. 

Core message can be a short statement that indicates a problem and provides your solution. Core message ties your brand to your marketing. It puts your organizational identity into words. A great core message will highlight a need in your community. It will argue how your district uniquely meets that need and define your school's identity. A core message doesn't have to be a mission statement or a list of values, although it could be. It needs to be something that's clear and can help you make decisions based on your values. 

To start building your core message, we want to answer 3 key questions. The first: what do families in your district desperately want from a school? You know what your parents in your community value. Maybe they appreciate a small town feel or world class football coaches or an innovative arts program, or all of the above. But go beyond these concrete concerns to imagine something a bit more abstract, let’s think about wants and needs at a deeper level.

For most parents and students, that starts with safety, or diversity, or simply a sense that their child belongs and can create close friendships. You can start by listing everything a parent's ideal school would offer. And usually, it's not an art program. It's something deeper than that.

The second question you can ask is this. What does your competition offer? What's pulling students away from your district? And what do other districts claim to offer? Take note of every asset your competition has, whether or not your schools can match them. And this may not just be other schools. Students are being pulled away by all kinds of things. Being pulled away by screens. They're being pulled away by, maybe, sports that are outside of the school. And so the question is, how do we get the attention and really win the mindshare of the students and the parents and the school community that surrounds us? 

The third question, and the best question to sit on for a while, is what makes you proud of your schools? What are the things you love telling people about your district? Some districts talk about their stem programs or maybe their personalization or their exceptional teachers. List every positive aspect of your district from excellent resources to strong values to a growth mindset that really takes students from disadvantage to being ahead of the pack. 

Here's a clip from Greg Turchetta from Season 2.

[Excerpt from SchoolCEO Conversations Season 2 episode - Greg Turchetta: Winning at School Communications]

Greg Turchetta: “Urgency and quality. You have to use urgency to prove the quality of your district. You don't have time anymore. School districts cannot keep surviving the turbulence that's going on. Right? So brand and quality are the pathway back. Let the community know that this isn't a failure factory, that this isn't a place to where things constantly keep going wrong, and we just need to keep changing coaches like NFL teams to come through and try to win. What if you're already winning? You're just not telling people. There's no scorecard. There's no record to show you're actually winning, and that's what we do best. We have to prove we're winning.”

Your core message reinforces the way you want people to think and feel about your school, and it informs your messaging from your school website to the way the front office welcomes someone. Now marketing doesn't have to be expensive or time consuming. It can be simple. It can be quick. And at times, it can be completely free. You're looking for the everyday moments that exemplify your school's identity and you wanna share those with the community. You want those messages to be about the things that your families desperately want from your school. You want to think about what you can uniquely offer and those things that make you most proud of your schools.

Jack Trout: “It's how you differentiate your product, your service in the mind of your prospect. That is what it is all And repositioning, the other end of the spectrum, is how do you adjust perceptions in the mind of a prospect if you have to? How do you make adjustments? So, but again, what are we dealing with? Perceptions. Now how does the mind work? First and foremost, minds are limited. People can't take in all the information that's out there, so you have to be careful with the fact that there's only a limited number of space in people's minds. Minds hate confusion. If your concept is somewhat confusing, forget it. You're doomed.”

[Excerpt from SchoolCEO Conversations Season 2 episode - Dr. Carmen Simon: Impossible to Ignore - Capturing Attention]

Dr. Carmen Simon: “And the question is, is it at least the percentage that you wanted them to take away? Because otherwise, what happens is you intend for people to remember something, but you're not very deliberate around that. So then if you're talking to a 100 people, let's just say, a 1000 people, or maybe even just ten, you'll notice that one person took something away from your message, another person took something else away, yet another person took something else away.”

That's Doctor Carmen Simon, a cognitive neuroscientist and the author and founder of MEMZY, a company that uses brain science to help companies create memorable messages.

Dr. Carmen Simon: “And as we're talking about these public schools, now you're talking about the teachers and the administrators and the communities being the audiences of those messages and the decision makers know that decision making is hardly ever an individual process. It's usually a social process. Decisions are social decisions in these contexts that we're talking about. And in order for a group to make a decision, it's a lot more beneficial when that group walks away with a unified memory versus a random memory.”

In schools, we can see how a simple encouraging message from a teacher to a single mother can change a student's trajectory and a family's legacy. Or that moment when a teacher hears through the grapevine that she's really exceeding expectations and that the feedback from her high school students and around the building is that she's a truly fantastic teacher. Later this season, we'll talk about organizational culture and how it is ultimately the most important and influential factor in your schools.

[Excerpt from SchoolCEO Conversations Season 2 episode - Dr. Joe Sanfelippo: Changing the Narrative]

Dr. Joe Sanfellipo: “The whole thing that it comes down to for me is what do you do to recognize the greatness of colleagues, acknowledge the greatness of colleagues, and extend the greatness of colleagues?"

That's Dr. Joe Sanfellipo, the author, speaker, and former superintendent at Fall Creek school district in Wisconsin.

Dr. Joe Sanfellipo: "Okay? Recognize it, acknowledge it, extend it. Right? Simple, unique, repeatable, Tyler. Right? We keep coming back to it. So for me, in my building, it looks like this. If I'm walking down a hallway and I see a 2nd grade teacher doing great things, I walk into that 2nd grade teacher's room to tell that 2nd grade teacher that she's doing great things. I've recognized it, and I've acknowledged it. And a lot of people do that. But when you do the third thing, when you extend the conversation to the 8th grade science teacher who has no business of being in the 2nd grade hallway, and you tell the 8th grade science teacher about the great things happening in 2nd grade, what inevitably happens is the 8th grade science teacher walks to the 2nd grade classroom to tell the 2nd grade teacher that she's doing great things. And the reason that he does it is because at some point somebody did it for him. And it felt good. And that's all we want to do is live and work in a place that feels good.”

When we can see these moments as part of something bigger, we can start to understand why school marketing matters in something as small as a parent teacher chat or the flier that's sent home in the backpack of an elementary school student. Each moment and interaction has the potential to change the way that someone thinks about your schools. 

Now, let's get more hands on. Marketing is more than a concept. It can be a specific campaign that is designed to change how a certain group of people are thinking about your district, brand as a whole, or a specific part of that brand.

[Excerpt from SchoolCEO Conversations Season 2 episode - Neal Foard: Storytelling from the Heart]]

Neal Foard: “People are willing to pay a premium for their product because they want you to win. And the great brands will give people a sufficient, love and affection, attention, and trust. They will earn their customer's trust in such a way that by buying the object, they ingest and or wear that same potency and power.”

That's Neal Foard. Neal is an award winning marketing and creative professional and he creates these incredible stories on videos on YouTube and Instagram about the lighter side, the more human side of marketing. He's also a speaker at SchoolCEO's conference this fall.

Neal Foard: “Nike, had the women's apparel division, you know, footwear and apparel, and they had a fitness division. But the woman who ran that, I had a chance to meet with her about 2 months ago. She said that they labored for a long time finally arriving at Nike with the idea that there must be a distinction for the women's line. There must be a distinction between fitness and training and that all Nike apparel must be specifically for training. They didn't want you to go out and get fit so that you would be superficially attractive. Nike wanted to stand for going out and achieving something you can be proud of. It gives you bragging rights. It makes you feel like you belong to something. So that's one thing that we learned about value is 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 of the the clothes, the shoes. You'll give them something much, much bigger, and you should be proud of that, of delivering that value.”

Marketing as a concept is the practice of improving the district's brand at a high level. A marketing campaign is constructed in order to attain a specific goal. It's more in the weeds. Each marketing campaign has 4 main components. The audience, the messaging, the communication, and the conversion. So as we think through these steps, we're going from the high level, what is your core message and brand identity, down to what can we actually do now to change how someone thinks and feels about your district? 

So first: audience. Who do you want to influence? Often a mistake that marketers make, and anyone, is they have a goal that's too broad. They wanna reach everyone. They wanna reach them right away. But you want your goal to be specific. You'll want to focus on a specific audience. And, for example, you might be trying to boost attendance at parent teacher conferences. You're going to target not just every parent, but you're going to look at the people who don't usually come. And as you'll see, this affects the way you frame your messaging. In the private sector, a shoe company trying to boost their sales among businessmen won't market their loafers as having the best style and comfort. Instead, they'll choose a slogan more relevant to their target audience, like make an impression in your next meeting. In defining your target audience, you'll learn their unique needs, which is key in crafting your messaging. 

 So we start with our audience and second, messaging. Why should they listen to you? If you've defined your audience, next you're gonna wanna build your message and you do that in a similar way to how you crafted your core message. You ask what are the specific needs of your target audience and how does your district meet them?

[Excerpt from SchoolCEO Conversations Season 1 episode - Lesley Bruinton, APR: Directing Strategic Communications]

Lesley Bruinton: “I like looking at challenges that our school system are trying to tackle and figuring out what tools do I have at my disposal in my toolbox that maybe they haven't considered.”

That’s Lesley Bruinton who is the former Director of Public Relations at Tuscaloosa City Schools and now the CEO of School Spirit PR. 

Lesley Bruinton: “So usually when a school system has a challenge, they bring the best and the brightest educators around the table, former principals, some teachers, the curriculum specialists, and they figure out how they can solve the problem. And I'm usually sitting in the corner listening to this conversation thinking, ‘well, did they know that we paid for this tool? Did they know that we have this tool? What if we use that tool?’”

Your audience might want something concrete like new sports facilities or something more abstract like peace of mind following a teacher strike. In either case, you want to outline how you'll provide for those needs. You want to speak to what's on their mind. 

Third: communication. How do you get your message to your audience? You have to decide what communication channels will best reach your target audience. For example, say you're trying to market your district's after school programs to single parents. Since single parents typically have a harder time making it to school events, you might not want to use a parent teacher conference to convey this information. You might choose an email or a phone call instead. 

Last is conversion – or action step. Conversion is really about asking what specific action do you want your audience to take next. What's the purpose of all this other activity? You have the audience. You're answering why they should listen to you. You know how to get the message to them, but then what? Campaigns focus on a single goal, and in your district, this might look like you want your audience to fill out a form online, show up for an important meeting, or vote yes on a bond measure. Good marketers figure out ways to make it easy for their audience to say yes or convert to meet the campaign's goal. For example, if you want your parents to fill out a form online, you might include a button linking to the form at the end of your weekly newsletter. Whatever your end goal, building the campaign around a single target action helps you focus your efforts.

[Excerpt from SchoolCEO Conversations Season 2 episode - Dr. Carmen Simon: Impossible to Ignore - Capturing Attention]

Dr. Carmen Simon: “At some point it has to feel authentic enough, ethical enough, and rewarding enough where people are willing to go along with you. Remember, you're still asking from somebody's brain to give you energy, which often is in very limited resources. So make sure that as you're thinking let's summarize for a bit. As you're thinking of an essential message that you repeat, you're now creating that message in different media types so that not everything is also intense or not everything is also weak at times. Step back and say, ‘is this a message that I would be willing to be influenced by myself? Is this something that as I'm influenced by it, I can live with that for a year or two, maybe a lifetime?’ And when the answer feels good and you're at peace, then go out and share it with the world.”

As we wrap up this episode about school marketing, there's one big question to answer. Who is responsible for school marketing? On the one hand, it's the School CEO, the superintendent. And on the other hand, it might be someone who is the head of communications or someone who has marketing in their title. We would argue, though, that it's much bigger than one or two roles. 

While you might be the most responsible as a superintendent or chief communications officer, there are countless others that are marketing your district each and every day. Everyone from teachers and bus drivers, to room rep parents that are communicating to other parents. There are so many people that are sharing who and what your district is about. 

By getting clear about your brand and communicating those values, you help all the other stakeholders know what the district brand is really about. It gives them the words to use when talking about your schools and creates consistent messaging. It's critical to be clear about your brand and to help administrators, principals, teachers, classified staff, board members, parents and guardians, coaches, and the community know what your brand is and why it matters.

Dr. Jeffrey Collier: “And the one thing that I'm encouraging everybody to do is to keep this simple, Just to be able to encourage everyone to post one positive gold nugget, one win of the day. One thing that as people put their pants on, they're incredibly trained certified professionals impacting the lives of our community's babies on a daily basis. Is there one positive win that you can celebrate to be able to expound upon a resonating voice throughout our community?”

That's Dr. Jeffrey Collier, a superintendent in Michigan who has championed an initiative called Our Story at Saginaw ISD.

Dr. Jeffrey Collier: “And by keeping it simple and just having that one golden nugget a day, heck, one golden nugget a week to be able to say, we've worked, we've studied, we've trained, we've had all these amazing light bulbs that have gone off, we had these magic moments that have happened thousands and thousands of times upon themselves throughout a school day. That's what I'm looking to do.”

We started this episode by talking about what is new. That individuals have a choice and a lot of it. The world is smaller than it's ever been and that means it's never been more important to show off and market the strengths of your schools. In the next episode, we're gonna focus on effective school communications. Not just marketing, but that specific area of communicating with the stakeholders within your schools about what's happening and about where they should spend their time and attention within your school

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. Our magazine's most avid readers attend our annual SchoolCEO Conference. It's a great way to meet communications professionals and superintendents from across the country while exchanging ideas in a dedicated learning environment. Visit schoolceo.com/conference to see this year's lineup of keynote speakers and reserve your seat today. 

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.

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