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Business View Oceania - October/November 2017
So where does this assortment of
interest come from? The school’s in-
roads have come from not only its
strategic marketing, but also the word
of mouth that happens when students
and their parents who feel they’ve been
well looked after, start to spread the
word. It’s word of mouth that Downey
has seen to be the most powerful mar-
keting force for Canberra Grammar
School:
“When a parent is considering send-
ing their child to boarding school, it’s
a pretty major decision. The school
they choose and the care and atten-
tion that’s given at the school. It’s a big
deal to send your child away like that,
and often, for many, thousands of kilo-
metres away.”
For these families, to put their kids
into someone else’s care, and then
those people to make decisions the
parents usually make, Downey has
found that word of mouth from trust-
ed family/friends/acquaintances, has
definitely been the strongest market-
ing driver.
Patterns emerge where a boarder
comes from an area new to Canber-
ra Grammar. Downey explains that the
school did a little bit of analysis on
where its boarders come from.
“For example, if we had never had
any boarding students enrolled from
a particular town in rural New South
Wales, and a student from that town
enrolled, we saw a sudden spike in en-
rolments from that same town. From
there, we get one student, then all of
a sudden we get three, four or five. It’s
all word of mouth, and parents sharing
their positive stories with their friends
and family.” For Downey, this kind of
success comes not solely from word of
mouth though. It’s the strategic stages
it takes from converting this interest
into actual pupils that want to attend.
He works with marketing to produce
promotions, goes through the usual
meet and greets on open days, sport-
ing expos and national and interna-
tional boarding expos.
“I guess that meeting them and talk-
ing to them and showing them around
is the best form of marketing,” says
Downey, adding “It’s the highest con-
version rate, whereas when you’re us-
ing above the line marketing strate-
gies, like ads, it’s very difficult to know
how successful it is.”
The school had a few success stories
from Hong Kong, then all of a sudden
it had students trickling in from there.
“You get this sort of an almost viral
thing happening where you can see
ground zero, this middle area where
we’ve been successful, and then it
spreads from there.”
Its success is in the numbers. Board-
ing is full, and it has waiting lists for
year groups that haven’t even yet start-
ed at the school. Being in this kind of
strong position opens the school up to
financial and academic planning.