Name: Remco Weeda
Job title: Director of Marketing and Admissions
Current place of employment: Scarborough College
Years’ experience in education marketing: 16 years
How did you get into school marketing?
Better put the kettle on. I actually started as a teacher in my native Netherlands, even though I didn’t want to be a teacher (I started that as a supply teacher, which I also did not want). To make sure I didn’t die of boredom, I decided to teach at a summer school in England. One day I got approached by this random person who asked me lots of random questions but since it was over a free pub meal, I decided to go along with it. This turned out to be a consultant who was testing the waters for a new addition to Head Office of said summer school. This got me back to the UK, where I accompanied my then boss, the Commercial Manager, to ICEF Berlin. Upon coming back, and several hours of therapy, which people in the industry will understand; I went on one more sales trip. Then one more and the rest is history.
Describe your typical day
I treasure the first hour of the day, as the phone doesn’t ring, no one sets foot in my office and I can actually see something through from beginning to (almost) end. Beyond that, all bets and structure to the day are off. As I am sure so many people you ask will say: there is no typical day. This is why we like it but I suppose this is also the typical of our day. I do try to hold on to structure because it is absolutely essential I see projects through until the end. I also want to keep in touch with the team and the Headmaster on a daily basis.
Tell us what is the most significant change in your profession since you first started working as a school marketer?
It’s a really good question because I think part of the changes have been external and part of them have been my own. I reminisce and think about how easy everything was when I started. The competition was friendlier, recruiting students was easier; that sort of thing. Bearing in mind I started pre-2008, so worked through that and then the global pandemic right now. 2008 was a huge game-changer but, as I said, I think I also grew up and become more mature, more aware of the industry. When I started, I remember quite literally rocking up to a sales event, sitting behind a desk and watching enrolments flood in. We can all agree those times have changed. Nevertheless, a lot of good has come from these changes as well. One of these, I think, is that there’s been far more commitment to placing students at appropriate schools. That can only be a good thing. The importance of digital marketing has changed, though I still feel that we’re playing lots of catch-up in terms of how we apply digital marketing. So the volume has changed but perhaps not the application, if that makes sense.
How do you measure the success of your marketing campaigns?
Like many people in marketing, I absolutely love data. I love Excel and I believe that the more I understand it, the more Excel reciprocates my love. However, we sit on absolute mountains of data and I fear we’ve come to this point where we have so much data, we can pretty much make it say whatever we want it to say. Rather strangely perhaps, I also measure the success by the way it looks and feels and whether I am proud of my work or not. I get happy when I see our bus rears going through the town simply because I love the artwork and I love how it fits in the overall message and brand that the school wants to convey.
What is the best way to you ensure you’re keeping up to date with different methods of marketing?
Training for myself and my team. This is beneficial from a point of view of the training itself but also the networking opportunities, which is especially important since we hardly network in a traditional sense nowadays. I try to listen to people. There’s so much ‘free’ knowledge out there. I find that whenever I help someone with some free advice, they tend to reciprocate. I love talking to people who are in completely different industries as well. Some of these people show genuine bravery, commitment to change and innovation and there’s a lot to be learnt there. Then there’s the internet – the knowledge jungle. If you have the skills to wade through the nonsense, then there are lots to be gained. Lots of free content.
Which social media platform do you get the most from?
That depends on the audience and the way you define ‘getting the most from’. We’re still getting Instagram wrong, I find. It’s still just a picture service. The same goes for YouTube but then in terms of moving images. Facebook is still the best tool to reach out to parents and prospective parents. I am actually very critical and concerned that we, also as an industry, are not using social media to its full advantage. Some of this is down to the nature of our business and the strange way we consider what our audience is but some of this is also down to our refusal to consider social media marketing as valuable as more traditional channels.
Tell us about your favourite tool you use?
Probably Hootsuite.
Moment(s) you have been most proud of in your current role?
If I look back at the last year, then it’s being able to help steady the ship. I am probably not alone here. Back in March, many of us felt we were staring into the abyss, fearing for our jobs and those of our colleagues. I am not saying this is over but at least we’ve provided ourselves, our colleagues and our schools a fighting chance. The moment we quite literally saved our last colleague from redundancy, somewhere back in June, was a very proud one.
Describe the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
Spend less time on the diving board and jump. I guess that needs a little bit of context. A couple of jobs ago, I did this test to see how people make decisions. It basically says there are three stages and uses a diving board as an example. We spend time under it, climbing up; we spend time on it and we jump. I was told I spend a lot of time under it, gathering facts and data but I also spend a lot of time on it. So I was told to have faith in my own strengths in fact and data-gathering. I think it was a nice, and rather roundabout, way of saying I procrastinated.
What do you see as being the most significant change school marketers will face in the next 10 years?
The knowledge that we live in times of uncertainty. I don’t think we knew that up to one year ago. When they locked down the country for two weeks, everyone went, ‘Whoa! Is that even sustainable?!’ Well, here we are, weeks of lockdowns and furlough later. We should now know we live in times of uncertainty and our getting on board with this is the change that’s required. I asked a bunch of pupils about whether the school should adopt a TikTok channel and they told me no. ‘TikTok isn’t ready for that yet.’ But who makes TikTok ready for schools, if not schools? I see Ryanair has got speaking aeroplanes on there and I am thinking that the day my school has a talking owl is the day I quit. And then I saw a dancing Headmaster.
Tell us about the biggest challenge in your role?
Managing people. Always. I sometimes feel that a manager’s (leader’s) aim isn’t even to get the best out of people. It’s just about damage control. It’s such a negative mindset but perhaps we cannot help ourselves. And it’s managing the people above you as well. I am pretty lucky with my Head but I haven’t always and many governors/shareholders/board members still actually think that all my department does is open tins of ‘marketing’ to get people to sign up. If I was that guy, I’d be getting calls from Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
How did your school deal with marketing throughout the lockdown/COVID-19?
In many ways, it got easier. For one, people started reaching out to us, rather than the other way around. Traffic increased, social media engagement sky-rocketed and so on. Sure, we couldn’t travel anywhere but neither could anyone else, so that levelled the playing field right there. So we didn’t furlough every man and his dog and we went old school. We still had a message, so we looked at how we could get that message out there. In the beginning, I just started calling lots and lots of people, just to ask how they were doing. We just reached out. Also, we had a licence to get it wrong. When I look back at our first virtual open day, I just cringe. It’s so bad, it’s got almost nothing good about it except the most important redeeming factor of that day. It was made by people who cared. Everyone loved it and we got so much positive feedback that for a moment, I thought I was Sergei Eisenstein himself. Now I’d rather watch old video footage of my first secondary school prom. No, I think the difficulty is right now (we always do though, don’t we?). The virtual stuff now has to be spot-on. The social media now has to be engaging because people won’t just engage the way they did twelve months ago. We may now feel that the need to innovate is not as imperative but I beg to differ and I don’t think that this feeling is going to go away soon.
Links to Scarborough College’s social media channels:
School website: https://scarboroughcollege.co.uk/
School Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ScarboroughCol1/
School Twitter: https://twitter.com/ScarboroughCol1
School Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scarboroughcollege/
School YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3gApAQl2ZWzXpQTDUn50Vg
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