A state-of-the-industry report - Fine Point Communications

Independent school communications directors, as a group, have never been more versatile, better supported or more highly paid. Their offices are becoming more specialized, in part because of new audience and technology demands.

Managers suggest that professional development has become more vital to their continued success. And schools are increasingly looking not within their own ranks but to other industries when searching for senior communicators.

These are the conclusions I drew from reading InspirED School Marketers’ 2022 Private School MarCom Survey Report, which came out this month.

InspirED’s report, which draws responses from hundreds of communications directors, provides a great service by putting a spotlight on broad trends and emerging areas of opportunity — context that is useful for directors and heads of school alike.

Because this is InspirED’s fifth such survey, I placed the 2022 report against the first, published in 2017, to find what and how things had changed over the five-year period.

Better pay, more responsibility

There were several encouraging signs:

Marketing and communications offices are larger: 42% of respondents report their school has four or more FTEs in communications, double the percentage who said the same in 2017. This growth means not only capacity to complete more projects but also that managers have more opportunity to focus on the big picture — to analyze, as well as to do.
Directors have more institutional responsibility: 72% report to the head of school, up from 59% in 2017. (The survey doesn’t ask whether respondents sit on their school’s senior administrative teams, but that’s a fair implication of this finding.)
They are better paid: 31% say they make $70,000 or less a year, while the cohort was 51% of respondents five years earlier. On the other end, 24% say their salary is at least $110,000; only 12% could say the same in 2017.
They have more longevity: 73% have been at their current school for at least three years, up from 60%.

A move away from generalists

These larger communications offices house plenty of specialists: Schools are much more likely to employ a social media manager, a graphic designer, a digital marketing manager or a photographer/videographer today than in 2017.

The larger headcount has allowed schools to bring certain communications tasks back in-house — for instance, hiring fewer freelance writers and photographers to fill their magazines. On the other hand, magazine design is outsourced more often (63% in 2022 vs. 57% in 2017).

Hard-copy magazines are published just as often today as five years ago, and online magazines have not taken hold as an alternative. But printed viewbooks are in a sharp decline: Only 41% of respondents say their school has one (down from 72%).

Regular Refill readers know that I encourage schools to do surveys, and I was happy to find that they have become much more common: Schools are four times more likely to have surveyed magazine readers recently.

Two-thirds of respondents said their school’s website is three years or older, a big jump of the 37% number of 2017.

An even bigger jump involves virtual tours: After COVID, two-thirds of schools have such a tour to promote, up from 21% in 2017.

Are managers ready for the future?

The 2022 survey makes plain how much school communications has changed in five years. No longer is the communications office simply an in-house print shop, producing two magazines a year and a weekly newsletter, and maybe helping with the yearbook. Now these offices are churning out video content and virtual tours, they are responsible for social media and digital marketing, and they must know the workings of search engines as well as they know crisis communications.

As the work grows more complicated, though, communications directors report that their skills are strongest in writing and managing production — talents, in other words, that were critically important to schools 10 or 20 years ago.

In an era where media releases are passé and adults read less, are textual skills still the most important qualities for a senior communicator? Or are school leaders basing their selection of directors on an outdated understanding of communications, putting less weight on cutting-edge talents?

Managers, meanwhile, report that they could use professional development especially in video production, search-engine marketing, search-engine optimization and crisis management.

I hope this is a message that heads of school will heed: On-the-job training — including through attendance at conferences — is common for development and admissions personnel, but it is far less so for communications, and I fret that the necessary dollars may not be budgeted to develop employees’ skills.

Who’s in the pipeline?

Finally, I was struck that nearly half of respondents are relatively new to educational communications, with less than five years of experience. That’s another jump from 2017.

The statistic does not surprise me. After all, this is the path I followed into schools, coming from daily journalism.

But the growth in this trend makes me uneasy, especially as managers report that they need more training. I can’t help but wonder if it all portends a “pipeline problem,” where schools rely on other industries to develop their future communications leaders rather than cultivate talent themselves.

I may have this wrong; the InspirED folks suggest that I do, calling this “influx of new MarCom talent from outside the private school world … a positive trend (attracting) experienced professionals.” And there is no doubt that fresh views and voices can energize a communications department.

Two things give me pause.

Bringing in a communications leader from outside education is no guarantee that a school can hang onto that person. While the job skills are easily transportable into schools, academic folks tend to miss that schools are a different type of workplace. There’s much for a newcomer to learn about school culture, and acclimating to the internal and external politics can take a while. Some never get used to the dynamics and ultimately choose either to return to their previous line of work or go where the culture shock is not quite so severe.

Meanwhile, what about the young talent in communications offices? Will they become demoralized, seeing top jobs go not only outside their school but outside the industry? Schools need to give junior communicators a reason to stick around and, ultimately, work their way up. If the odds of getting promoted or advancing at another school feel no better than a coin flip, what’s the point of remaining in education?

What’s new at Fine Point Communications

Stanford University recently commissioned me to write short profiles for its Graduate School of Education. The first one just published, on Alison Cook-Sather, a Pennsylvania professor who is placing students’ lived experience and needs at the center of learning. And it’s pertinent to independent schools: Alison’s SaLT Program has a lot to offer schools looking to broaden the diversity and inclusion of their classical education models.