Why Your School Needs to Practice Authentic Marketing Now

Hey friend, 

I'm excited to talk with you about a topic that's really come up a lot now. It's authentic marketing. 

What's authentic marketing? It's basically being yourself online and in your communications. It's representing what you're actually doing and who you actually are. 

Let me give examples of schools not using authentic marketing.

Let's say your website says your community is like a family and that your faculty and staff love working there. Yet when I do a quick assessment of your online presence I find several reviews on Glassdoor from former faculty and staff that say your school has a toxic community. 

Or, let's say you're talking on your social media how you support diversity, inclusion, and equity yet you haven't instituted programming and hiring practices around this. That's inauthentic marketing. And then you're in a messy situation because you've misrepresented yourself and now you have alumni, parents, and faculty saying, "you just said we do x but that's not true. That's not our experience."

That's why authentic marketing is so important. Because if you're not truly representing who you are and what you do online, you're going to have parents who sign up for one thing (what you sold them online), and then their experience is another (what you actually offer). 

Schools that are not practicing authentic marketing will feel the effects now more than ever. This is a hot topic right now because parents are talking on forums, alumni and staff are anonymously posting on review sites. Your online presence hinges on you authentically marketing yourself. 

So ask your faculty, staff, and parents:

• Is what we say on our website and social media actually what we're doing?
• What is it that we do that is not featured on those channels?
• Where is the disconnect between marketing representation and experience? 

I hope you found this helpful. Watch the video for more tips and to dive deeper!

If you need anything, reach out to me. I'm here to support you.

I look forward to chatting soon!

Aubrey 

 Aubrey Bursch, Founder, Easy School Marketing

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