Marketing for schools

Why does it work?

Because we have something schools want! English lessons for their students with native English or international teachers (or even students from other countries).

Schools in cities and towns mostly haven't even heard about this option and are happy to internationalize their students and show them that English is really needed for communication with the rest of the world.

Schools in small villages many times do not even have extra English language courses simply because they do not have any proactive English teachers in their village. Some demanding parents have to travel to take their children to language courses in nearby towns which is money and time-consuming. We are heaven-send for them.

More and more people understand the need for English for success in nowadays world and going international from the beginning is becoming very popular. Parents love the fact that they can get full control of their child's learning by access to our online materials about lessons and students and lesson recordings.

Benefits for partner language schools

  • They can offer their students more opportunities for quality education
  • Worry-free extra income source
  • They don't need to find and hire online teachers, train the teachers, do online support for teachers, look for a sub teacher when the teacher becomes sick or is out of power
  • They get ready-made teaching materials tailor-made for online lessons
  • They get their own online classroom
  • They don't need to look for online recordings and place to store them
  • They don't have to deal with paper work connected with international agreements, payments, labor office, tax office, Ministry of foreign affairs and other government offices
  • They don't need to communicate with teachers on daily basis and work out hundreds of minor issues that come up in real life.
  • New competitive service can lead to new customers and retention of regular customers
  • Better company image

What do they do then? They only need to arrange a room, a responsible person and technology for online lessons. They also communicate with their students and their parents.

Possible cooperation with schools:

We came up with some ideas for cooperation with schools which work for other language schools in different countries. The best way is to have all kinds of cooperation with the schools that are interested, but even e-mail to parents is better than nothing.

We need to know if we are marketing English lessons that will be happening at a school building, or only lessons that children will have from their homes. So we first need to find out if the school is interested in our lessons at their premises. There are these possible answers:

  • The school has no English lessons at their school yet - this can happen in villages - we can open our classes. We need a room with technology and one on-site teacher or guardian who will be physically with children in the classroom. We do marketing for these lessons and also make parents notice that they can have such classes from their home, too (individual or group classes from home).
  • The school already has extra English lessons at their school - good for them. We ask for the contact for that language school or the person and offer cooperation - our online teacher will make their classes much more interesting. We still do marketing for our home-based individual and group classes for children.
  • The school can have our online lessons in their basic curriculum during normal English lesson for all their students: for private schools mostly, we can offer our online lessons during their normal English lessons - for example, once a week students would have a 25-minute lesson with a native or international teacher in their classroom. For these lessons, we would prepare special teaching materials to fit their English materials and schedule.
  • The school is not interested at all: if our online courses at the school premises is not an option, we can still do marketing for our home-based English courses.

Arranging a free open lesson at all schools is a must and the best option that we can do in all cases. Open lessons also get the most results in students' assignments for our courses. We can support open lesson by other marketing options:

1. E-mail to parents
They can re-send our promo email to parents. According to EU laws, we can not ask for parents' emails. But most schools have them and they can send our promo email.

2. Info to their school webpage, facebook page, any page
They can put our online ads to their school online sites.

3. Poster display at their school notice board
We will bring personally or post them our poster for students which they will put on their notice board/front door / on corridors. 

4. Leaflets for parents

For leaflets, we can arrange that every teacher will give our leaflet to the children to take home. At kindergartens, we can leave leaflets at children's lockers. 

5. On-site visit, promo stool or promo presentation during events for parents
Plenary meetings for parents, Christmas/Mother's Day/Children's day, etc.

We will come personally and have a table with our leaflets and video presentation.

When we go there, we can also offer a part-time job to English teacher to become our online teacher or to be the second teacher during our on-site lessons.


How to contact schools

This is an example of a call to a school. You can choose one or more sentences from each part, but sound natural and think about talking to a friend that you want to help, not a stranger that you want something from.

Unknown / Indirect contact

1. Greetings: Hello, this is (name), ESITY - online language school.

2. Title 

- Mr / Ms XY,...

- Am I speaking correctly with Mr / Mrs XY? (YES)

3. Request attention

- Do you have time for a while?

- Can I have a moment?

- You can talk? (YES)

4. Excuse 

- I'm calling because many parents are looking for language courses at the beginning of the school year.

- We are working on an "Online English at schools" project and would like your school to take part in it.

5. Finding the need - question

- Are there any extra English courses at your school?

- Are you open to cooperation with a language school?

- Do you have a language school in your town/municipality or do pupils have to attend elsewhere?

6. Offer, "bait" 

- Mr. __, we are running online English courses for children and looking for schools to include in this program.

- Can we arrange a free open class at your school?

- We offer students the opportunity to learn English online with international teachers as it works elsewhere in the world.

- Are you interested in receiving a reward for recommending your students for our language courses?

- Can you send course information to parents by email, post on your site or social networking sites?

7. Proposal for a meeting

- ... could we meet briefly, or will we solve the details by telephone, Mr ___?

Could I come on ... at ... (when)?

Well (name), I write it in my diary. (YES)

8. Summary, Challenge

- So will we meet (time, place), correct? (YES)

- Great, I'm excited. Goodbye.

- Thank you (for something).

Meeting at school

Meeting preparation

  • Attitude - I am going to offer them a great benefit that will be good for them
  • What to take - notebook, paper and a pen, our promo materials if I have them (leaflets, posters)
  • Reason for them to "buy" is not our product, but the result of its use for them

At the meeting

  • Ask first, then offer (What do you think about extra English classes for your students?)
  • Find out what they need and give them the opportunity to do it through our service.
  • Mention the benefits for students first. The school should understand why is our service good for students. A director is also a private person and mostly a parent or even a student himself! What is interesting for him as a parent will also be interesting for other parents!
  • Offer recommendation commission if you think that it is needed and the person will help with the marketing - informing parents, arranging and being at open lessons, communicating with parents, etc. You will have a better chance to get students through a person they already know and you have another marketing team member :-) Simply because 2 times 3 is more than 5...

Objections

  • "How much does it cost?" "That depends on you. It can be from € 5 to € 40 per lesson. I'll explain immediately what it depends on, but first, you have to understand the context. (We talk about prices AFTER we present the service)


Flow of work and Administration

Marketer processes his contracts by himself.

Marketer gets help and guidance from his/her team manager. If the manager is not available, then the marketer can contact his/her team director. If none of those two are available, the marketer can contact Esity.

Marketer's personal documents - Marketer takes care of his own personal documents and of the personal documents of his team. Personal documents contain personal information, training and mentoring history, planning, customers list and payment information, etc.

Documents about customers - Marketer processes information about his customers (schools) - their basic information, our students and parents' contacts (if we operate directly with them), what type of lessons they want, communication history, lessons history, etc.

Arranging all we need for the lesson - Marketer is responsible for everything needed to set up our lessons (or do marketing for home-based lessons) at schools and maintaining its' long-run functioning. This includes:

  1. Contacting potential schools - kindergartens, primary schools, secondary schools, language schools
  2. Meeting at schools - come personally to the school premises, arrange our online classes at school premises (when and where will it be, who will be there and how will you let parents and students know, how will it be paid), arrange all marketing tools that we will use and do the marketing right there (send email for parents and online promo materials to the director - he/she can resend them to parents and put on their facebook page, etc.); have the leaflets and posters with you and put them where needed (walls, students' lockers, cabinet, teachers), observe the place where our classes will take place - the classroom and technology that they have (and plan what needs to be bought or rented from us, because it should be school technology). Plan the next steps with the director.
  3. Complete course and open class arrangements - do all marketing steps that you agreed on with the school, arrange a teacher who will be present during online classes on-site, arrange that all technology needed for online classes will be at school (big screen, internet, camera, microphone - or notebook with camera and microphone; all cables needed like HDMI cable or internet cable). Prepare sign-up materials - online or paper with prices and timings of those lessons. Let the company know about the timings of the open class so we can arrange an online teacher.
  4. Do the open class - be there during the open class, turn on the technology, greet parents and students and tell them what will happen - children will sit on chairs and parents will be behind them or close to the door (not with them), show them where can they sign up for the course (you will have a computer there or a paper). During the class, tell children what to do and help them during the online class. You should also dance if the online teacher asks them to do so - so they can see what to do (mostly they do not see online teacher's legs). After the open class, answer all questions, help with signing-up and explain the positive impact of our online classes.
  5. Process the applications - if we go through language schools, they process their applications and pay us for the whole course. If the school is not managing these English lessons, then we process the applications and communicate with parents. At this stage, you communicate with the Esity company about how many applications you got and you will be informed about their payments through our system. Only students that paid can attend lessons. You can also give them more time to send the payment in individual cases, but not more than 2 weeks. If the course is not paid 2 weeks after it began, the student will not attend the course anymore.
  6. Ongoing course managing - the company manages online teachers, you manage on-site teachers - manage the calendar of classes and cancel classes in case of national holidays, sick teacher or when needed (for example sick holidays at school, etc.) You will also manage communication with parents - in case they want to leave the course, join later, or have any questions - you and the on-site teacher are contact persons for those parents and you are the contact person for the on-site teacher. If nothing is happening, you just contact the on-site teacher or the company once a month about how is it going.

BtoB

Business to business (or StoS for School to School) means that a school that is registered in Esity can refer another school that will also register in Esity. They will become their referral if they complete more than 50% of marketing work listed above. Then they can have a commission as a marketer.

Now you know all the basics. Let's get your first school!