How to Promote Your Language Program in a Tough Market

April 20, 2010

In 1998, “Asian flu” hit the markets, causing thousands of Korean, Japanese and other Asian students to stay home. In 2001, the Word Trade Center in New York was destroyed and for a time, North America was no longer considered a “safe” destination for international students; enrollments in overseas programs dropped again. In 2003, the war in Iraq had a similar effect on educational programs relying on foreign student registration.

The situation worsened in Canada when Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) caused the World Health Organization to recommend that anyone with travel plans to Toronto “consider postponing all but essential travel”. Language programs in and around Toronto were hit hard. In fact, registration in language programs across the country dropped significantly at that time. Let’s face it, international students and their parents may not know that Calgary or Vancouver are thousands of kilometers away from Toronto and hardly affected by SARS. The reality is that for a few months Canada was branded, how informally, as an “unsafe” country for foreigners.

As an educational consultant who specializes in helping language programs market their courses better, I heard more managers than ever concerned about plummeting enrollments. Program managers from across North America have asked  me, “What do we do now?” The answer is not a “quick fix”, but one focused on long-term vision and strategy.

Understand the effect of global events on your business

Firstly, recognize that what has been happening recently is by no means isolated. If we take a look at history, we can see that every few years, some event occurs in the world that has a direct impact on our enrollment. What happens on the international economic front and in the markets will affect us. One mistake language program managers make is to think that education is not business. But when enrollments drop and you have to answer to senior administrators who want answers and more importantly, want a healthy bottom line, we recognize that we are indeed in the “business” of educating students.

We need to learn to think like business people. Our programs are the services that we offer to clients. Our market is international. Therefore, what affects the global market for all goods, services, stocks and commodities affects us.

If you have historical program statistics, review them. More than likely, all other factors being equal, you will be able to correlate significant drops in student enrollment with economic disruptions or political events across the globe. We must look at the “big picture” and recognize that whatever it may be this time, it will be temporary.

Say to yourself, “This too, will pass.” Developing a long-term perspective will help you and your staff avoid the panic that so many program managers have felt this year. It will also help you answer to superiors who may be quick to blame lower enrollments on managers or coordinators (namely, you.) If you have a clear idea of the big picture, you will be calmer, more confident and you will think more clearly about the decisions you have to make and why you have to make them. Your staff and superiors may not like the fact that enrollments have dropped, but they will respect you more if you show strength, vision and a conservatively positive attitude in tough times.

Apart from keeping things in perspective and developing a long-term vision, there are things you can do to continue promoting your program in tough markets:

Take the time to strategize. Instead of flailing around to develop new courses that you hope may bring a few more students through the door, I recommend recognizing the situation for what it is: a slow market. This is the time to be pro-active, not reactive. If you complained before that you never had time to figure out a marketing strategy for your program, now you have that time. Use it wisely. Figure out where you want your program to go over the next 5 years. Realistically, you may want to factor in at least one more global event that will affect your enrollment during that time. Assess your current marketing strategy and determine what, if anything, needs to change. Instead of letting panic rule how you run things in tough times, stay calm and develop a vision that will carry you through the difficulties and into the market recovery.

Keep your prices stable. Now is not the time to increase your prices because you are feeling a financial pinch. Instead, maintain current price structure and keep your long-term vision. Conversely, now is also not the time to lower prices or offer “special discounts due to SARS”. Even if you don’t say it directly, prospective students and their parents will recognize a certain level of financial concern on your part. They may be intuitively turned off your program if it looks like it’s in financial trouble.

Focus on the students you do have. If you have fewer students, you can focus on giving them top-notch service. Remember that word of mouth is still the best promotion. Make sure that the students currently enrolled get the best quality program you can deliver. Each and every student is a prospective referral for you. No-cost or low-cost ways to focus on students include things like having every person who works in the program learn the names of each and every student. This includes correct pronunciation of their names, too! Personalized letters of congratulation to each student from the director at the end of the program is another idea.

Remind your staff that they each play a part in the success of your school, so remind them to stay positive.  This may not be easy, especially if there have been layoffs due to lack of work. That’s all the more reason for those who still have work to stay focused on the students and show a positive attitude around them. This will serve a double purpose. Not only will your students feel important and special, but by focusing on the students as much as possible, staff are less likely to dwell solely on the safety of their jobs or the dismal state of enrollment.

Take time to regroup, re-organize and even have some fun! Remind everyone that while these may not be the best of times, things will get better. There is nothing more detrimental to staff morale or to a program in general, than to allow panic or a sense of hopelessness infect the school like a virus. We need to combat fear by maintaining a long term vision and most importantly, by staying productive in the meantime.

This means hands-on work for teachers and staff to keep everyone busy while preparing for better times ahead. Now is the time to clean out your teachers’ offices, resource rooms, filing cabinets, cupboards and bookshelves. Organize a second-hand book sale of any old textbooks or resources you really don’t need. Use the money to take the students on a field trip or buy pizza for the staff on a Friday afternoon. There is still room for fun and in fact, small ways of boosting staff morale that don’t cost your program significant dollars can be a huge emotional investment in the mental health of your staff.

I tell language program managers to listen to their financial planners when it comes to having their language programs make it through tough times. Sound strange? Not really… Investment planners tell us not to make rash decisions when markets fluctuate unexpectedly. We need to think long term, plan for the future and stay calm. Your program is similar to your personal investments. Stay steady in your belief that all your hard work and investment in your program will not be lost and that the market will recover. The next time a market fluctuation causes a drop in enrollment, you will be all the wiser.

© Sarah Elaine Eaton

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

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Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D.

Marketing Workshop for Language Programs

April 19, 2010

Last Thursday I gave a 3-hour interactive workshop on marketing language programs. We had participants there specializing in English as a Second Language, literacy, German as a Second Language and Spanish as a Second Language.

Here is a copy of the slides that accompanied the presentation binder that participants received:

I was just thrilled with the evaluations that had comments such as these:

  • “An excellent workshop. Time well spent! Thank you.”
  • “Great! Loved the informality combined with organization”
  • and “Sarah, you are an excellent instructor”

When I get comments like that, it’s confirmation that I have absolutely chosen the right career path. I love this stuff and wouldn’t change it for the world.

I hope the slides are helpful.

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

2 Comments | 101 Ways to Market Your Language Program, branding, education, ESL, languages, leadership, marketing, recruitment | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D.

Marketing Your ESL Program Successfully: Tips and Tricks

April 13, 2010

I came across this presentation I gave a few years ago at the TESL Canada / BC TEAL conference. Given the power of technology, I thought I’d try an experiment and share those slides with you here.

Marketing Your ESL Programs Successfully

View more presentations from Sarah Eaton.
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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

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Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D.

How to find a good ESL agent: Tips from the trenches

April 12, 2010

One question that comes up time and time again is, “How do you find a good agent?” I think that part of the answer is to avoid wasting your time with unproductive potential agents. Sound harsh? It’s not, really. If you’ve ever been in the classroom, chances are that you’ve had a student who wants to monopolize your time in ways that don’t contribute to the overall lesson or are just plain distracting or even bothersome.

As teachers, we learn how to handle students with all kinds of personalities and motives of their own. We learn to set boundaries with them while keeping the lesson focused and hopefully avoid too much disruption in the classroom. We call that good class management. We try to achieve this without embarrassing the student, if possible, while making it clear that as the teacher, we’re the one in control of the class and that’s the way it should be. In fact, if we don’t do that as teachers, we may lose others respect and not be taken as seriously.

The same idea applies to business relationships, particularly when it comes to others outside your school who want to work with you or represent you. The larger your program grows, the more people you will have knocking on your door wanting to work with you. Annoying though it may be, this is a good sign. It means you are being noticed and your image is one of success.

One of the ways that businesses get more business is to let the world know who their partners are. If an educational agent or tour operator can say they are working with ABC Language School and that school is well known in the community, either locally or internationally, then it lends them credibility and prestige.

That’s precisely why you want to take your time establishing new business relationships. It just may be that you don’t want your name associated with that business.

One tactic that I learned while managing a university ESL program was to ask prospective new “business partners” or agents for a package in writing. Sometimes if the person was in the same city as me, either living here or just passing through, they would insist on a personal meeting first. I would gently but firmly state, in every case, that it was our policy to consider written proposal first, before a meeting. The reality was that the first few times I said that, I was fibbing. We didn’t actually have such a policy. Having said that, we quickly created an internal policy that stated we had to receive all proposals in writing before a telephone or an in-person meeting.

Once everyone in the office knew the policy, we all stuck by it, asking frontline staff to help prevent such calls coming through to us. One polite way for a frontline staff member to do this is to say, “If you send the written proposal to my attention, I promise that will hand-deliver it to our manager to ensure she receives it.” Anyone who took the time to send a proposal – even a one-page, detailed letter – would gain our attention, at least long enough for us to review the proposal.

If they couldn’t deliver, we would gently but firmly apologize and move on. I was able to stop wasting time on agents and others who may or may not have had good intentions.

That was the first step. From there, we would ask for references and examples of previous work done. If this caused our prospective business partner distress or caused them to become uncomfortable, we eliminated them from our list of possibilities.

Sometimes, the prospect would say, “Oh, well… our partners are located in a foreign country and no one here speaks the language.” We would always reply that we were prepared to hire professional, accredited translators to check references. Very rarely did we ever hire a translator to check anyone’s references.

The steps we followed were:

  • Insist on a written proposal first.
  • If you receive a form letter or pre-made package, request more details on how exactly they would propose that you work together. Get this information in writing.
  • Insist on references. If they can’t or won’t give these to you, the process ends there.
  • Arrange a phone or in-person interview during which they do most of the talking. Ask about the history of the business, the person’s credentials, and examples of experiences they have had working with other language schools.
    • Close the meeting saying that you will consider their proposal and you will get back to them within a fixed amount of time (usually not more than one week, unless you’re about to leave on a trip). Never agree to anything on the spot.

Part of the process involved abiding by our policies and the next step was to gauge the reaction of our prospective partners at certain points along the way. It became like a behavioral interview.  If the other party wanted to bend our rules from the very beginning, insisted on doing things their way instead of ours or if they became frustrated, aggressive or unwilling to cooperate with us at any time, we knew we didn’t want to work with them.

In the end, there can be any number of reasons why you would choose not to pursue a business relationship, including (but not limited to):

  • The relationship may not be mutually beneficial.
  • What the prospective agent wants to provide for you is not something you need at the moment (i.e. not a “good fit” from a business point of view.)
  • The timing of the proposal is off. This can happen if you are undergoing changes in your organization. You can always ask the other party to check back with you again in six months.
  • Your gut tells you that working with the other party would be a bad decision.

Although we sent some policies and procedures in place for dealing with prospective new business partners, the bottom line was for us to feel comfortable with the new person. You want your business partners to respect how you run your organization, be willing to provide you with what you need and be as interested in your success as you are.

Remember the 80/20 rule. 80% of your business will come from 20% of your clients. You want to ensure you have the time and energy to cultivate strong relationships with your top 20%. Part of being able to do this is to avoid those who have big ideas and good intentions, with no way of ever realizing their goals or yours. Be polite, be considerate and be firm.

© Sarah Elaine Eaton

Related posts:

Tips for finding ESL educational agents

Tips for success at educational trade fairs

Finding an ESL agent – A open discussion (with link to webinar recording and slides)

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

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Collegiality wins over competition when marketing educational programs

April 9, 2010

Often, we think of other language schools as being our competition. People who work at other educational institutions are colleagues first, and competitors second, not the other way around. This is a call for professional compassion and relationship building to help one another success.

The gap of compassion and understanding widens into a chasm when educational leaders who run schools that receive government see themselves as having nothing in common with private schools and vice versa. It gets worse when leaders from one type of institution look down upon fellow administrators who work in another type of institution. I have heard university program administrators  speak about  private schools as being “poor quality” simply because they do not have the history of the academy. Private school managers sometimes think universities are outdated and don’t listen to the needs of the students. On and on the arguments go.

The bottom line is that the people who work at other institutions are our professional colleagues.  Not only would I call for compassion in the profession, among teachers and administrators alike, but also, I urge us to treat one another with respect. This is a topic that could be discussed at length, so for now I will simply suggest that treating each other with more than professional respect alone is not enough. Together we form a community of language teachers, school administrators and managers. We are very proud and protective of our individual schools and programs, which is admirable. I suggest that we take it one step further and become proud of our profession and (heaven forbid someone should use the term when referring to education) our “industry”.

Every language school can benefit from developing excellent relationships with other programs. In order for this to happen effectively, we each will need to stay informed about what programs are offered by other schools and how you can help each other succeed. This may mean simply having a directory of local language schools on hand or a Rolodex full of useful contacts at other schools.

Share information about other schools. Recommend students to your competitors if you can’t help them. For example, if a student comes to you looking for a program that you do not offer, why not refer him to a nearby school that does offer that type of program? Even better, give the student the name and phone number of a person there who can help him out. That way, you won’t be sending the student on a wild goose chase, but you will be giving him a solid lead. This is not only professional courtesy, it will help the students.

Moreover, you will be giving the other school an excellent referral. In return, you can ask that your colleagues send students to you, if they can’t help them.

But don’t stop there.

Use this tactic to build relationships with other schools. If you receive a student because someone at another school recommended your program, give that person a call to thank them. Here’s an example of what you could say:

“Hi, Joe. It’s Mary calling from XYZ language school. Thanks so much for referring María García to our program. It was exactly what she was looking for. I sure appreciate you letting her know about us. I look forward to returning the favour when I have a student who fits well into one of your programs. I hope you’re having a super semester over there at ABC language school. Talk to you soon….”

By following up and acknowledging your colleagues for helping you out, you will help to create a bond with them that, over time, could develop into a strong professional rapport.

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

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