Name: David Robson
Job title: Marketing Officer
Current place of employment: De Aston School
Years’ experience in education marketing: 5 years
How did you get into school marketing?
I worked in marketing roles in Higher Education for a number of years and, having come to the end of a fixed-term contract, spotted the role at De Aston School and figured my experience could be transferable. I was keen to stay in the education sector and I think my experience, along with promising to deliver a new website build, helped me to secure the role!
What does a typical day look like for you?
Like many school marketers, I operate as a marketing team of one, so every day is busy! I juggle longer term projects such as designing the Sixth Form prospectus with day-to-day tasks like scheduling social media posts and updating the website. I have oversight for all of the school’s marketing activities, so writing and revising the school’s marketing plan and implementing a content calendar are projects that are always ongoing as well.
What do you feel has been the most significant change in your profession since you first started working as a school marketer?
Having only worked in a school for just over a year I guess the easy answer is the COVID-19 pandemic, which has had a profound impact on the way all schools operate and provided some unique marketing challenges. Away from the virus though, the very fact that my role didn’t even exist just over a year ago shows that marketing is starting to be taken by schools.
How do you measure the success of your marketing campaigns?
We monitor website views via Google Analytics, along with social media reach and engagement, and press coverage.
How do you ensure you’re keeping up to date with different methods of marketing?
The School Marketing Matters Facebook group which I’ve recently discovered is fantastic for ideas sharing, and to feel connected to a community of like-minded professionals. Similarly, LinkedIn is useful for following industry experts and reading blog posts to keep my knowledge fresh.
Which social media platform do you get the most from?
In my personal life, Instagram is definitely the one I use the most, but professionally they all have their uses. Instagram is great for engaging with both current and prospective students, Facebook and Twitter can be useful for targeting parents, while LinkedIn is good for networking and inspiration from peers.
What’s your favourite tool you use? Such as Asana, Hootsuite etc.
I use Hootsuite for scheduling Facebook posts and tweets and Later for scheduling Instagram posts, which are both useful, but Canva is definitely my favourite marketing tool. Not coming from a graphic design background Canva is a bit of a Godsend. It’s great to have tonnes of templates to play around with for inspiration and to create all manner of things including graphics for social media, posters, and header images for the website.
What’s your favourite date in the school calendar for marketing?
Results days are always great to see students celebrating their achievements after years of hard work. There’s a buzz online with local schools being featured in the various news outlets as well. In normal times there are usually lots of extra-curricular events and activities going on around school which are great for getting photos for social media too.
Moment(s) you have been most proud of in your current role?
Project managing the new website build was very rewarding. The website I inherited, while functional, was fairly outdated and not optimised for student recruitment. I worked with a local agency who designed a bespoke template, then worked with heads of department to write and edit the written content, before putting together each page of the website. It’s been great to see the project through from start to finish, and to deliver on the promise I made at the interview!
Elsewhere, I love any excuse to write, and I’ve had a couple of really great opportunities in this role. I conducted and wrote feature interviews with BAFTA-winning director Philippa Lowthorpe and Coronation Street star Harriet Bibby for our news blog. Both Philippa and Harriet are former De Aston students and were very generous with time so I’m really pleased with the finished articles.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
It sounds really simple but a previous line manager told me to just be myself and that’s enough, and that really stuck with me. It can be easy in such a busy role to feel overwhelmed and like you’re never doing enough, but as long as you’re trying your best that’s all you can really do.
What do you see as being the most significant change school marketers will face in the next 10 years?
An ever increasing shift towards a fully digital marketing plan and increasing expectations around personalised marketing.
What’s been the biggest challenge in your role?
With such a busy and varied role I often find that my days race by, so finding enough time to dedicate to each aspect of my role is a constant challenge! Having a content calendar of course helps to keep social media ticking over while I’m focusing on other things, while a weekly to-do list makes sure I stay on track.
The role of Marketing Officer was a new one in school when I took the position, so that has provided a positive challenge of being able to define the job role and try to add value to the school. I’ve had the chance to draw up a marketing plan for the school and implement lots of my own ideas.
How is your school dealing with marketing throughout the lockdown/COVID-19 situation?
With school now being fully open again things are largely back to normal from a marketing perspective. The one obvious exception being that open events are not taking place in the traditional way, so one of our IT technicians has made a virtual tour of the school, and we’re working on hosting a full virtual open event in the new year.
This year we’re also launching our first fully digital Sixth Form prospectus to avoid handing out paper copies to students and to provide external prospects with an easy way to browse our prospectus.
School website: https://www.deastonschool.co.uk/
School Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deastonschool
School Twitter: https://twitter.com/DeAstonSchool
School Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deastonschool/
School YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDAGq-gJD6mwvruC29G3hjw