Marketing Proposal for MC2-APA

Running head: Marketing Proposal for MC2

Marketing Proposal for MC2

Skip Spoerke

15 OCT 2014

Southern New Hampshire University

Dr. Kavita Finn

ENG-120-06512: English Composition I

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Making Community Connections (MC2) is a year-round state authorized charter

school in Manchester struggling with the same problem every charter school experiences –

negative public stereotypes. Often regarded as second-chance schools for troubled students

and escape opportunities for low-income students in failing school districts, charter

schools have been forced to either accept these stereotypes or do something about them

(Ravitch, 2013; McShane, 2014).

Charter schools that decide to do something about the stereotypes must showcase

their strengths to attract positive attention from the public and define their reputation as

something other than a typical stereotype. It’s not as easy as stating a new direction for the

school though. It takes a lot of work to change public opinion, and that’s what MC2 wants to

do. The school needs to prove itself as an impressive contributor to community

improvement and influence, which can only be done through consistent marketing

strategies and community involvement.

Identifying the Problems for MC2

New Hampshire State authorized charter schools receive $5,498 per student and

locally authorized charter schools receive approximately 80% of the average cost per pupil

in their district. Traditional public schools in New Hampshire spend $11,000-$12,000 per

student on average (New Hampshire Center for Innovative Schools, 2014). This means a

state authorized charter school, like MC2, receives an average of 45.82%-49.98% of the

funds that a traditional public school will spend per student. That budget detracts from the

education quality MC2 can offer by lowering the amount of basic supplies, teachers,

textbooks, and other important resources the school can afford. Yes, increasing student

population will increase state funding for the school, but school financial requirements will

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also increase with each new student. The school, therefore, needs additional sources of

revenue.

Reversing negative public stereotypes requires a charter school to have social

connections within the community that demonstrate their value to that community. MC2

does not have these connections, and they don’t know how to build beneficial relationships.

This requires personnel and time - resources that the school has already stretched

incredibly thin.

MC2 also needs to learn how to use social media effectively to assist with marketing.

The benefit to social media marketing is that it doesn’t cost money, but it does require time

and strategic content. Using social media for marketing without a clear purpose, as the

school uses social media today, is a waste of the school’s few resources. MC2 needs to

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consolidate its social media marketing efforts and create a strategic approach for best

results.

MC2 is a nonprofit organization that cannot dedicate a lot of resources to marketing.

Most of its resources are dedicated to providing high-quality education to students, and

that should not change. However, strategic marketing that considers the limited resources

still needs to exist; without it, the school will likely be forced to close. Thankfully, students,

teachers, and staff are all ready to do whatever they can to prevent the school from closing.

Marketing challenges for MC2

1. Identify specific marketable strengths and opportunities for the school.

2. Create a flexible, simple, resource-conscious marketing plan demonstrating the

identified strengths and opportunities that will lead to improvements for the quality

of education provided at the school.

3. Educate the school’s teachers, staff, and students on social media campaigns,

forming community relationships, and measuring the effectiveness of various

marketing strategies.

4. Positively draw attention to the school through community involvement to improve

public awareness, student enrollment, and financial revenue.

Strategic Approaches to the Challenges

Each challenge must be met for MC2 to have marketing success. With the combined

efforts of students, teachers, and staff there is good news for the school – these challenges

can be shared between groups to accomplish higher results in less time. The bad news is

that it still takes time to become comfortable with marketing, and the leaders will need to

be highly organized because students, teachers, and staff will all be contributing.

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Furthermore, it might seem easy enough in the beginning to only do exactly what the

marketing plan specifies, but much of the success will come from the school’s ability to

modify marketing strategies for prime performance.

Identifying Marketable Strengths and Opportunities

Common strengths of charter schools

Charter schools have fewer students per teacher compared to a traditional public

school.

Parents are more involved with the education plan for their children at a charter

school.

Teachers and staff are more readily available to students and parents at a charter

school.

The individual strengths of MC2 need to be identified before writing a marketing

plan. To identify these strengths, the marketing team will conduct a SWOT analysis (Figure

2), which examines internal and external factors to identify the school’s strengths,

weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This analysis will establish what could be used to

help the school succeed in its marketing efforts.

Internal factors of a SWOT analysis are factors that the school has some control

over, such as education plans and student resources. External factors cannot be controlled

by the school but still may hold value for marketing, such as cost of living index for their

community and the need for charter schools in the area. The marketing focus will primarily

be on items categorized as the school’s strengths and opportunities. However, some of the

identified weaknesses and threats, such as low student population and multiple charter

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schools in Manchester, might be transformed to strengths and opportunities for certain

marketing strategies.

The Marketing Plan

Marketing plan: The written document that describes your advertising and marketing

efforts for the coming year; it includes a statement of the marketing situation, a discussion of

target markets and company positioning and a description of the marketing mix you intend to

use to reach your marketing goals.

(Entrepreneur, 2014)

Imagine planning a cross-country road trip like the one in Figure 3. You need to plan

for multiple stops for fuel, food, rest, and recreation. You need to know how many miles

you will drive each day and which roads you will take to arrive at each destination. You

Figure 2: SWOT Analysis (Raymond, 2012)

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might also benefit from accommodating for traffic patterns in major cities and optimizing

fuel stops for long stretches of highway through farming communities. You know it’s

important to plan before you start driving to make the most of this trip. A marketing plan is

just like that; it doesn’t do the driving for you, but it can help focus your attention on

smaller goals (stops) that lead to achieving the larger objectives (destinations).

Marketing plans are unfamiliar territory for MC2, just as planning a cross-country

road trip would be unfamiliar to an inexperienced driver. Simplifying the complex process

of developing measurable marketing goals is essential to the school’s success with this

plan. Therefore, the marketing plan for MC2 will focus on two important objectives:

improving community involvement and being consistent in marketing strategies.

Figure 3: Map of a cross-country road trip

The Marketing Plan Sections

1) Executive Summary

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To help executives quickly make an informed decision regarding the marketing plan,

the executive summary highlights strategies and expected results.

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2) The Business Challenge

The business challenge is a brief description of the school and goals of the marketing

plan.

3) The Market

This section defines who the target audience is and what they need, provides

detailed SWOT analysis, and describes the school’s collaborators, competitors, and

business climate.

4) The Strategy

This section fully explains the strategies, MC2 benefits, communication plan,

execution plan, and expected results for each strategy.

5) Budget

The budget explains investment needs, return expectations, and other resources.

6) Conclusion

The conclusion repeats the highlights and reminds the reader why the marketing

strategies detailed in the plan are the best options.

Discovering Strategies and Measuring Success

An essential element to marketing is the ability to analyze strategies and amend

them as necessary for the most impact and consistency. For MC2, this process is extremely

important because there currently aren’t any measurable marketing strategies in place.

This will likely contain a challenging learning curve, which will include some expected trial

and error. Teaching MC2 students, teachers, and staff how to discover and measure

marketing strategies is invaluable to the long-term success of the school.

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Involving the entire school in the development of their marketing plan is important

to MC2 and will help them grasp an understanding of the strategic planning process. They

will also be afforded the opportunity to start working on executing certain strategies

before the marketing plan is complete. This allows them opportunities to try a few things

while the marketing team is still in direct contact with them.

Social media campaign development, press release writing and distribution, and

forming relationships with community residents and businesses are other areas of interest

that will be covered.

Social Media Campaigns

As stated earlier, social media marketing does not cost money, but it does require

strategic content and time. MC2 is investing plenty of time in social media marketing right

now, but they are only spinning their tires in the mud because they are neither delivering

strategic content nor striving to achieve any goals.

Like traditional marketing, a social media campaign consists of establishing target

markets, setting goals, strategizing a plan, executing the plan, and measuring success

(Devitt, 2014). The marketing team will guide the school through the development of a

measurable social media campaign. The goal is to provide the school with hands-on

training of how to incorporate strategic planning into all future marketing efforts.

Press Releases

Every newsworthy story should be distributed to journalists through press releases.

MC2 is not using press releases today because they don’t know how to write one or have

any media connections to send it to once written. First, the school needs to learn the

format.

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1) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

“FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE” goes in the top left corner, identifying that this story

can be released today. If the release date is other than today, you can replace it with

"HOLD FOR RELEASE UNTIL (DATE)."

2) Headline

The headline tells the journalist what the story is about. It should be specific,

capitalized, memorable, short, and without exclamation points – shouting at

someone isn’t good marketing.

Example: MC2 Student to Paint Mural of Historic Manchester on the Old Merrimack

Restaurant Wall

3) Subheading

While this is often viewed as an optional element, it is encouraged because a

subheading allows expansion of the headline. The subheading should express a

complete thought; again though, it should not include exclamation points.

Example: Jack Brown, a student at MC2 can be seen painting the old Merrimack

Restaurant wall between October 20, 2014 and November 1, 2014.

4) Date and Location

Below the subheading should be the city and state where the story takes place. This

is not necessarily the school’s physical address, but where the reporter will find the

story. Next to the city and state should be today’s date—including the day, month,

and year.

Example: Manchester, NH October 12, 2014

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5) Press Release Content

The content is arguably the most important element to the press release, but it is not

written as a story. Journalists write the story using the information shared within

the content of the press release. The important details should be in the first

paragraph; paragraphs and sentences should be short; it should be written in third

person; it should incorporate quotes; exclamation points should be avoided; and it

needs to be less than one page.

6) Business and Contact Information

This section includes basic information about the business and direct contact

information pertinent to this story for journalists. Contact information should

include a person’s name, phone number(s), email address, and the business’s

website address and physical address.

7) END and ###

Centered below the business and contact information should be the word “END.”

Below that, also centered, should be “###.” This signifies the end of the press

release.

Example:

END

###

Once the press release has been written, the next step is distributing it to

journalists. The school will want to target the journalists who will be the most likely choice

for writing the type of story the press release is about. For instance, if it’s a general news

story that directly impacts the local community, the school will want to submit the press

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release to journalists that only cover general news for the local community; if it’s an

inspiring story for the local community, the school will want to distribute it to journalists

that cover inspirational stories for the local community. Finding the right journalists

requires researching the newspapers and other sources of news, like radio and TV. Some

media sources could offer multiple journalists that MC2 could target, while other sources

will only have one.

Over time, MC2 will learn to style their press releases in a manner that attracts the

most attention from journalists. They will also form relationships with various journalists

who consistently write stories on MC2 press releases, improving the chances of a story

getting published. It takes time, practice, determination, and patience to be successful with

press releases.

As forewarning, however, distributing press releases is not a numbers game and

playing as such will lead to the school getting blacklisted by journalists. Focusing on quality

newsworthy content in every distributed press release is the only way the school will form

mutually beneficial relationships with individual journalists.

Focusing on Community Involvement

Since MC2 wants to be viewed as a school that doesn’t fit a common stereotype for

charter schools, it will need to invest in making a powerful impact within the community.

This will not come easily or quickly and the public opinion will not change for the long-

term without consistency. Money, time, and personnel are going to be required to pull this

off—none of which MC2 has sitting in a stockroom waiting to be used. Simply stated, either

marketing has to be effective, low cost, and easy so the school can afford to dedicate some

resources to community involvement, or effective marketing strategies have to be

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seamlessly incorporated in the school’s community involvement. MC2 has chosen to

incorporate effective marketing strategies into its community involvement, allowing

frequent opportunities for community impact.

There are some additional fundraising opportunities available to MC2 that are

unavailable to traditional public schools, such as private and corporate contributions and

numerous charter school grants (grants.gov, n.d.). If effective, grant writing is a specialty

skill that can prove extremely beneficial each year for the school, and MC2 has had some

success with grant writing in the past. There will be some time designated for grant writing

in the marketing plan, but that’s not going to be the primary focus for fundraising.

The new direction dictates consolidating the school’s resources to get more involved

in the community. Because of that, efficiently using the designated time for grant writing

will be extremely important – targeting specific grants that will benefit the school’s

programs the most. MC2 will primarily concentrate on gaining private and corporate

contributions, which tend to have greater long-term benefits than grants, to include repeat

donations, volunteer recruitment, and relationships with community businesses and

residents. Based on the approved 2015 budget, the school will establish a financial

fundraising goal of $25,000 over the next twelve months, to include corporate

sponsorships valued at $5,000 or better from at least three local businesses.

There are some relatively easy and low cost opportunities to make an impact and

gain financial support. A couple of these include school participation at community events

and small projects led by students that positively affect the community. This type of

community involvement will help MC2 become recognizable in the community, but will not

necessarily help the school stand out as an impressive contributor in the community.

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Focusing only on this level of impact will need to include a high frequency of community

involvement activities for the school to be memorable.

There are also more challenging and costly ways to make an impact. These include

things like hosting community events and spearheading collaborations with other local

schools to improve the quality of life for community residents. This level of involvement

would greatly help MC2 in the future, but the first marketing plan will not include

marketing strategies like this due to the high demand on school resources.

When MC2 becomes capable of contributing in this capacity, the school will take

larger and bolder steps toward gaining the long-term support of the community. This type

of community involvement will have a lasting impact, reducing the need for frequency. For

the greatest impact, however, the school will include both levels of community involvement

in future marketing plans. With consistent goal-driven marketing MC2 could be capable of

supporting both levels within two years.

The goal for this next year is for MC2 to get involved with at least three community

events and one community-improving student project per quarter. This gives the school a

minimum of sixteen opportunities to form community relationships, write and distribute

press releases to journalists, and convince residents that MC2 is an impressive contributor

to community improvement and influence. That’s sixteen opportunities that were not

pursued last year.

Through social media campaigns and direct communication, MC2 will target local

businesses for sponsorships with various student-led community projects and student

resources, such as textbooks and computer components. Specific campaigns will be

established from highest to lowest need. Some campaigns will be for specific durations of

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time and others will be for specific financial amounts. All campaigns will have goals that are

challenging to achieve, but not impossible.

Benefits of Consistently Marketing Through Community Involvement

By focusing the marketing plan heavily on community involvement, MC2 will form

lasting relationships with community residents and businesses. Marketing in this capacity

will require school resources, but the improved community relationships will lead to

numerous long-term benefits.

Through student, teacher, and staff collaboration it’s expected that MC2 will see

these significant benefits within the first year of consistent marketing.

Heightened awareness of the school within the community.

Higher student/parent interest for enrollment.

New opportunities for private/corporate donations through community

relationships and sponsorships.

Self-knowledge building of beneficial marketing strategies for future marketing.

Improved quality of education through purchasing student resources from

community contributions, through the encouragement of community improvement

projects, and hands on training of real world value to help them prepare for

adulthood.

Consistent Planning and Execution

MC2 faces the common dilemma of negative public stereotypes among charter

schools. Creating a marketing plan that concentrates on conserving resources with a

simplistic approach to marketing consistency and community involvement will greatly

improve the community’s response to MC2. But, it can’t be forgotten that the purpose of a

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marketing plan is similar to that of a road trip itinerary – it will not drive the car for you. It

will, however, allow the school to focus on smaller measurable goals leading to larger

objectives.

There will be some expected trial and error associated with marketing strategies

since MC2 does not have much experience with marketing; however, the marketing plan

will define the expected outcomes for each strategy to help the school easily identify what

is and is not working as expected. Modifying each strategy further for prime performance is

what will lead MC2 to success for years to come.

Through hands-on training for strategic marketing development and measurement,

the school’s students, teachers, and staff will be capable of challenging themselves and each

other with new goals in the future. They will form many mutually beneficial community

relationships, and become well versed in social media marketing strategies and the writing

and distribution of press releases. All of these skills, combined with their ability to work in

collaborated teams for most marketing projects, will establish MC2 not only as a

contributor to community improvement, but as one of the most impressive contributors

the community has to offer.

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References

Devitt, N. (2014, March 10). The 10 Steps In Developing A Strategic Social Media Plan For

Your Business. Retrieved October12, 2014, from LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140310102733-23033608-the-10-

steps-in-developing-a-strategic-social-media-plan-for-your-business

Entrepreneur. (2014, October 05). Marketing Plan Definition. Retrieved October 05, 2014,

from Entrepreneur: Small Business Encyclopedia:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/encyclopedia/marketing-plan

grants.gov. (n.d.). Search Grants: Charter School. Retrieved October 05, 2014, from

grants.gov: http://www.grants.gov/web/grants/search-grants.html?

keywords=charter%20school

McShane, F. M. (2014, May 13). Loving charter schools to death: Column. Retrieved October

05, 2014, from USA Today:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/05/09/education-reform-charter-

schools-week-column/8868043/

New Hampshire Center for Innovative Schools. (2014, February 18). Charter School FAQ.

Retrieved October 02, 2014, from New Hampshire Center for Innovative Schools:

https://nhcharterschools.org/home/index.php/19-for-parents/2-charter-school-

faq

Ravitch, D. (2013, October 03). The charter school mistake. Retrieved October 05, 2014,

from Los Angeles Times: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/01/opinion/la-oe-

ravitch-charters-school-reform-20131001

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Raymond, J. F. (2012). Principles of Marketing, v. 2.0. Irvington, NY: Flat World

Knowledge, Inc.

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