school

Education

Education is changing in America as student demographics and attitudes shift, government policies change, technology advances, and disruptive competitors emerge.  These changes have a profound effect on families’ decisions for their children, from planning and preparing for education, to choosing schools, to financing.  As a result, schools and service providers to the education sector are discovering traditional acquisition and retention strategies are not enough to grow enrollment or their customer base.

Rockbridge has science-based qualitative and quantitative research solutions designed to help schools and service providers adapt their marketing strategies to this new reality.  We have developed our solutions over the past two decades while working with our clients in the education sector and conducting research with a wide range of education-related audiences, such as the following:

  • Parents of K-12th grade children and college students
  • High school and college students
  • College admissions officers, financial aid administrators, and high school guidance counselors
  • Heads of private schools, principals and teachers in public schools
  • College professors and administrators

Rockbridge’s education research services include:

  • Brand positioning research to understand your school or company’s position in the marketplace and the drivers of brand choice using MaxMindShare™
  • Communications messaging studies to understand the deeper emotions and values that drive educational decisions using MaxMessage™
  • Strategic segmentation studies to identify and understand the unique motivations and needs of your target audience using MaxSeg™
  • New product and service development to prioritize product and service benefits and features
  • Customer dialogue through our qualitative social media research application, OpinionPond™

Our clients in education include K-12th grade private schools, universities, EdTech providers, and education finance companies.  A few of our clients in this sector include: McGraw Hill Education, Ellucian, National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), George Mason University, Ascensus, Sallie Mae, and CollegeNet.

I needed to conduct a complex research study and wasn’t sure of the best way to approach it. I reached out to Rockbridge, and they coached me through it. I told them what I wanted to accomplish and they guided me on how to get there. They’re personable and were happy to translate technical information for me to understand because I didn’t have the technical background. They designed the report so that I was able to easily split it up and share it with my individual clients. This was important because we could use the segregated data to help inform our marketing strategies. Our advertising firm is using the research to come up with new campaigns and to adjust our goals too. The study provided tremendous value to our business.
– Suzanne F, Marketing Director, Ascensus College Savings
Rockbridge did everything they said they would do and when they said they would. Everybody was professional and quite good. We are using the results as part of our strategic planning process and our assessment of the overall market and our position in it.
– Terry A, St. Patrick's Episcopal Day School
From the very beginning, Rockbridge was very responsive and helped us customize the questions we were able to modify. They told us what to do every step of the way. We are very satisfied with their service, and they provided solid data and a report of the results. We got what we wanted in many ways and it will allow us to go in greater depth on some topics in the future. We're pleased with this study as it provides a new set of data we can use. We used the results in our strategic planning process.
– Nishant Mehta, The Children's School