Marketing Plans for Niche Markets
Marketing a Writing School
At Gaebler, we've seen what great marketing can do for a small business. But if you own a writing school, exceptional marketing may well be the determining factor in your long-term survival and success.
If you're hoping to leverage marketing to give your writing school a competitive advantage you're not alone.
In some businesses, marketing takes a back seat to sales and operations. That's a mistake because without marketing, your brand messages aren't being heard. On the upside, great marketing is a real possibility for a writing school with a strong value proposition and a desire to achieve a visible market presence.
Public Relations Strategies
Public relations is more subtle, but no less powerful than a full-blown marketing push. For example, if you buy a premium mailing list and use it to conduct a direct mail campaign, that's marketing. On the other hand, if the Sunday paper runs a story about your writing school, that's PR. The art of storytelling is a core PR competency. Storylines need to be believable and objective while communicating your brand's strengths and value proposition.
Price Matching
In a difficult economy, consumers expect businesses to engage in a certain amount of price matching. The principle is simple: Since pricing is a primary factor in product selection, your business agrees to match advertised competitor pricing. If your company's prices can be beat by someone else's writing school, customers will transfer loyalty to the competition - and take their friends with them. So whether you like it or not, pricing is a necessary element of your overall marketing strategy. If your business isn't prepared to match standard price points, you'll need to adjust your business model and pricing structure to accommodate the rates that are being charged by other writing schools in your area.
Expand Your Advertising Options
Take a look around the industry. Chances are, you'll see companies using a vast array of advertising vehicles to communicate brand messages. But for writing schools, it is mission critical to identify the advertising vehicles that are most likely to meet the specific marketing goals your business is facing right now. These days, writing schools get solid marketing results from online channels capable of streaming high value content to a large, yet targeted customer base. In general, if your competitors know more about promoting their business online than you, you may lose market share.
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