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Know Your Customers. Serve Their Needs.

Writer's picture: Scott AllenbyScott Allenby

In independent schools, admissions offices claim to generally know who prospective families are. The downhill skiing family. The family in need of academic support. The family interested in our study abroad program. In an ever competitive marketplace, maybe customers are simply families who can afford your school’s tuition bill. But do you really know who they are and not just what interests they check off on their inquiry form? Do you know when and how they like to digest information? Do you know how they access information? Do you know what a day in their life looks like? Do you know who the decision maker is? Most importantly, do you know their pain points preventing them from engaging with our organization? The answers to these questions are critical not just to attracting new customers, but to understanding how to interact and manage current constituents when an organizational road gets bumpy.



Developing personas for our constituents is an invaluable practice for all of us for one simple reason: The better you know your customer, the more effective your messaging can be. We all know one message does not fit all. And while we may try to have a message that is general enough to fit most, segmenting your message is critical to an efficient, high-yield marketing plan.


Here's your challenge: Identify three reasons/programs that drive direct engagement for your organization, and for each ask the questions below to further explore who your customers really are. You must decide these ‘buckets’ or personas first, however, or else your efforts will be in vain. 


What are their pain points?

This may be the single most important question to ask yourself. By identifying each persona’s pain points, you are better able to develop content to proactively address those objections to our organization. Pain points may be programmatic, or cultural. They may be entirely out of your control as a marketer, but if you can understand the issues your customer has with your product before they are ever able to articulate their issue, the pain points will fade into the distance. 


What is the job and demographic information for this persona? 

Ask this question for each of your personas individually. The answer for each will likely be different, but it is important to know where your constituents reside, their typical socio-economic status, and most popular jobs. The more information you know, the better you can target your communications. For example, do you have an inordinate number of people from one geographic location and could you create content specific to those families? Do you have one profession/industry in which a majority of your parents work that would afford new marketing opportunities within that industry? 


Where do they go for information?

This is a critical question for your team to answer because you want to be sure information on your organization is located in the places people are looking. Are there associations or collectives in a specific industry in which you should be engaging? Are you present on social media? Which channels? Do you have good videos, images, and content linked to those profiles? Know where your constituents are spending their time so you can make sure your organization is well represented.  


What does a day in their life look like?

This may seem like an odd question to ask yourself, but it is an important one. Obviously, you will need to make generalizations in how you answer this, but think critically about your different personas. When do these individuals have time to research your organization? When do they spend time online? If you can deliver content when it will be most ‘digestible’ by your prospective families, you have become a more efficient marketer. 


The more you know about your customer, the more effectively you can market to them. This is not new information - it is perhaps one of the most basic principles to marketing. But how well does your organization really know its customers?

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