Management in English language teaching

Ron White, Mervyn Martin, Mike Stimson, Robert Hodge

Part two: Marketing

7. What is marketing?
8. The marketing mix
9. Developing and implementing the marketing plan
The previous chapters looked at how the aspects of marketing mix are connected with one
another and highlighted the necessary information to create a marketing plan. This one will
show how to define such plan as well as the areas of marketing that are aimed at increasing
enrolment in schools, but the effect of it begin impossible to quantify in the short-term.
The reasons why most schools do not have a structured marketing plan usually include
the lack of a staff member responsible of it, the lack of knowledge from staff, or the lack of time
from staff to carry out the plan. It is, however, attainable for all schools to develop a formal
marketing plan with the right skills, time and money put to it. There are, of course, benefits and
drawbacks of creating a marketing plan. Among the drawbacks it is possible to find a plan
without action, and a plan of action that does not suggest big changes; on the other hand, the
benefits listed include the coordination of interrelated activities, development prediction,
readiness for change, better communication, and minimization of conflict.
9.1 Segmentation
Although defined differently in some cases, markets are composed of different segments and
these have their own requirements and should be treated differently as such. If the plan does
not acknowledge its’ individual needs, the result might be failure. The most common segments
in ELT are the following:
● Business English/executive English: small groups/premium price
● One-to-one: highly specific/premium price
● Junior courses: primarily in summer/care and welfare are of upmost importance
● Courses leading to public examinations: duration to coincide with the dates of examination
● English for academic purposes: price-sensitive
● Native-speaker teachers’ courses: price-sensitive
(Management for English language teaching, 1991 p.230)
9.2 Market leadership
In marketing the goal is to lead, nonetheless, many institutions do not have a clear idea of how
to do so. If not leading, a school must aim at growing so that it can attain leadership in the
future. A school can earn marketing leadership by having the ability to attract the most qualified
and experienced personnel, by being able to set prices that mean good profits for later growth,
by developing services that respond to demand and are difficult to copy which can contribute
to profitability, by setting prices first for others to follow a standard, by working to have and
maintain prestige and respect from competitors, and by ensuring a well-equipped and attractive
environment for learning.
9.3 Strategic marketing planning
Here the important questions to be answered are: where are we now?, where do we want to
be?, and how are we going to there? The second question is the same as the objective, the
third one would be the strategy to follow. A decisive process to define strategies is to develop
a SWOT analysis that will take PEST into account. Once done a school will have a clear idea
of the issues to be addressed. To identify a school’s performance 4 concepts should be
analyzed together: enrolments, profitability, class average, and plan utilization. If all four reach
‘high’ it is possible to say that the school is doing well. It is possible to do this term by term and
branch by branch for large institutions.
9.4 Marketing plans
Marketing plans usually are about products and markets, and each has an available solution:
to exit/eliminate, defend, maintain, attack or expand the product. Regardless of the investment
made the analysis of weaknesses and sources of future profit should be addressed objectively.
9.5 Asset-led marketing
9.5.1 The plan itself
9.6 Indirect marketing
9.7 Measuring marketing effectiveness