Empowering Wake County Public School System Magnet Schools to Reach New Families
Client
Wake County Public School System
Services
Audience research, core messaging, strategic communications tactics
“The strategies and tactics that you all presented to us were so well received by our principals and coordinators. We can’t thank you enough for all the great ideas!”
- Tasha Haynes, Recruitment & Grants, Office of Magnet & Curriculum Enhancement Programs, Wake County Public School System
The Brief
The Background
Magnet schools provide fantastic educational opportunities for Wake County families. To ensure the community received a unified, powerful message about WCPSS Magnet Programs, the team needed a data-driven strategy and fresh messaging.
The Challenge
The WCPSS Magnet Schools team needed a deep, data-driven understanding of their target audiences to develop unified district-wide communications, as well as customizable messaging and actionable outreach tactics for individual schools.
Our Solution
We partnered with the Magnet Schools team to research their community and build a comprehensive communications strategy.
This included:
Detailed Audience Research: To truly understand WCPSS’ target audience of parents at key school choice inflection points (such as pre-k, 5th grade, 8th grade) and parents who have chosen to leave their base school, we analyzed more than a dozen studies, articles and reports to understand the local community and what caregivers care about when enrolling their child in a specific school.
We looked at national and state parent surveys, as well as demographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the CDC, the NIH and the Wake County government.
Educator Insights: We managed a robust research process to gather qualitative data from WCPSS educators, leading stakeholder interviews and focus groups. We then incorporated their insights into our research findings and messaging.
Dual Core Messaging: To ensure each target audience hears the message that would resonate with them specifically, we developed two sets of messaging:
One set for WCPSS magnet schools as a whole, to be used for district-wide communications.
One set that incorporates customizable options by audience type and individual school.
Actionable Tactics Memo: Using our research, we created and presented a tactics memo recommending the best ways to reach each target audience.
We also provided specific best practices for some of our ideas, such as reaching out to realtors, setting up a Nextdoor account and landing in-kind donations for billboard advertisements.
Our Results
We equipped the WCPSS Magnet Schools team with a deep understanding of their audiences, two versatile sets of core messaging, and highly actionable outreach tactics — empowering both the district and individual schools to move forward with their communications with complete confidence.