Project Description
About the Client
Hampton Court House is an independent co-educational school for children from Reception to Year 13. The School is based in Surrey, opposite Hampton Court Palace in its own private parkland. As a leading public school in the South East of England, Hampton Court House is committed to laying the foundations for a love of life long learning from the earliest days in education in every pupil.
The Project
With many entrants coming from outside the local region – including some students applying from Europe, Asia and wider afield, the school was struggling with understanding the best marketing methods and strategies.
The Headmaster of the School engaged Strategic Discourse to provide an analysis of the current school environment, a detailed analysis of local and regional competitor schools, and a number of strategies for marketing the School to a wider audience.
The work included building a full understanding of the views of parents, teachers, support staff and pupils to enable the School to better market their services to a wider community – leading to increased engagement and an increase in applications from capable students.
Our Approach
From the outset, it was clear to the team that any approach would need to blend various techniques and models to ensure the highest levels of success for the School.
As well as working closely with the Senior Leadership Team, and running various primary research activities, the Strategic Discourse teams were able to design specific models – based on recognised best practice techniques – to ensure the best overall analysis.
The interviews were held on-site, and also by anonymous online surveys, and desk research was conducted to fully understand the specific environment in which the School operates.
The teams then used the information from both the primary and secondary research to develop various models for success.
In keeping with the teams stated aims – to ensure academic rigour is at the centre of all solutions – Strategic Discourse engaged several Best Practice academic models. This was supplemented with the creation of bespoke models for engagement and success.
The teams detailed analysis ensured that the various issues faced by the School were fully understood thus allowing the team to provide them with advice which would lead to the best marketing outcomes.
Strategic Discourse were also able to help the Headmaster, and the Senior Leadership Team, understand some of the underlying challenges faced by his staff and the support teams.
Strategic Discourse were brilliant. A number of staff were against change and there were numerous barriers preventing departments from working collaboratively. Through their thoroughly enjoyable workshops and team building exercises, several of these barriers were reduced and their follow-up report showed us the changes we had to make in order to improve our strategy, marketing and internal communications.
The Outcome
The work carried out at Hampton Court House enabled the Headmaster, and the Senior Leadership Team, to make several changes in Strategy. Marketing and internal communications.
The overall number of applications to the School increased by over 40% in the year following the implementation of our suggestions. This increase has continued.
We could not be more happy with the work Strategic Discourse has done. By assisting us with the redevelopment of our marketing materials and facilitating a change in internal communication, we were able to work more collaboratively and improve our marketing reach and message. In the academic year following their involvement, our applications increased by over 40%, and we expect this increase to continue.