The School Marketing Mindset

In our conversations with school leaders, we sometimes hear resistance to the idea of “marketing” your school district. After all, superintendents already have an overwhelming workload—from managing the budget to interfacing with the school board to conducting site visits and community listening sessions. School communications professionals are similarly swamped. If you’re already busy handling crisis PR, Freedom of Information Act requests and a slew of other responsibilities, you might be afraid to add marketing to the mix.

While we understand this apprehension, it’s actually indicative of a misconception. At Apptegy, we often say that marketing is the practice of influencing how people think and feel about your schools. That means school marketing isn’t one more task to add to your to-do list; it’s a lens through which you can view everything else you do. Even a snow day announcement can be an opportunity for marketing—if you think about it the right way.

Take it from Maryland’s Anne Arundel County Public Schools (AACPS), whose team faced a tough weather decision after a record-setting snowfall in January. “The first day, every school system in the state closed,” explains Bob Mosier, chief communications officer at AACPS. “But the next day, we really struggled with what to do.” In much of the county, roads and sidewalks were perfectly safe—but not everywhere. “So ultimately—after one of those long meetings you have when you’re making weather calls—we decided that there were just too many parts of the county where it wasn’t safe for kids to walk to bus stops,” Mosier says. 

At first, the district planned to simply send out their standard snow day alert. But AACPS Superintendent Dr. Mark Bedell wanted to go a step further. As with any decision, he knew segments of the community would be unhappy about the cancellation—but he wanted them to know it had been carefully considered. “He said, ‘I wish there was a way that people could understand what we’ve just talked about here,’” Mosier says. “And I said, ‘Let’s figure out a way to do that.’” 

So AACPS sent out their official announcement as a school alert and on social media. But they also used those messages to direct families to the district website. On the homepage, families found a transparent message from Dr. Bedell: 

The decision to close schools tomorrow, January 8, was not an easy one. I am deeply appreciative to our Operations team as well as county and state roads crews for the work they have done to clear school lots and roads around the county. However, despite these efforts, there remain pockets of our county where side streets are difficult to navigate and where students will need to walk in roadways to get to bus stops or schools. Our team simply was not comfortable with the situation as it stood when we had to make this decision. A two-hour delay was, in our mind, also not an option as temperatures are expected to remain below freezing throughout the day tomorrow. It is our hope to reopen schools fully on Thursday.

Of course, like anything else, this weather decision had its naysayers, and some of them made their feelings known on social media. But advocates also came to the district’s defense, praising leadership’s transparency. One even reposted Bedell’s message in the comments. “That’s really gratifying,” says Mosier. “It shows us we absolutely did the right thing.” 

Learn how to Create Brand Advocates

Of course, AACPS could have just stuck with their standard snow day alert. But instead, they looked at this necessary communication as a chance to influence how people thought and felt about their schools. Rather than sharing their decision without context, they took the opportunity to be transparent and reiterate their concern for kids’ safety—which, in turn, built their community’s trust. That’s more than just communicating; that’s school marketing in action.

Take a minute to think about the tasks on your current to-do list. How can you use those tasks, whatever they may be, to influence your community’s perception of your schools? How can you turn every action, every communication into a chance to build trust or prove your district’s values? Once you can answer those questions, you’re well on your way to marketing your schools effectively—not just in one-off moments, but in everything you do.