Deborah Janz has a passion and curiosity for international and corporate culture. This, combined with her experience with business, sales, and technology, created the foundation of IMPACT Marketing International in 2007.

One of Deborah's first projects was a family business, providing safe and educational online experiences for young children. She geeked out daily on how to attract more paid users to the website. The KidZap website ultimately received more than one million visitors per month.

After twenty plus years of helping businesses reach their audience and generate leads through social media and digital marketing, Deborah began to customize strategies for international education. With a focus on deeply understanding a school's culture, thereby creating marketing promises a school can fulfill, IMPACT's methodologies revolve around high-integrity marketing practices.

Deborah thrives on the complexity and challenge of the intercultural mix within international schools and in the various countries they draw from. She has developed strategies, and workshops, and built and led a team of experts to help schools in Asia, Europe, Africa, and North America understand their unique brand position, expand their reputation, and increase enrolment.

Deborah Quoted

“Most schools defer to ‘this is our target audience and we know all about them.’”

“You can make your best guess about what your target audience is, but research will clarify not just one persona but multiple personas.”

“We’re not just marketing for enrollment. We’re also representing the school to faculty members… and alumni as well.”

“Start with one persona: the mother or father.”

“We want people to identify themselves in the materials they’re seeing.”

“A collaborative process is so important for this.”

“Personas change.”

“What’s on your tuition page that’s compelling?”

“How do we serve this persona? It’s all about service.”

“We want to serve BUG content: beautiful, useful, and generous content.”

What You’ll Learn

What personas are.
How to have well-developed personas develop a common language that spans departments so that you can have communication between departments about the different segments.
How to build out a persona using demographics, influencers, and goals.
How to ask the right questions to develop a strong persona.
How many personas your school might need.
How the process works using an example of admissions personas for an international school in Poland.
How to test your personas.
How to map out their journey.

Resource

The Culture Map by Erin Meyer

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Featured

Rob Norman

Best Boy, InspirED School Marketers

Rob has 25 years of independent school marketing experience as principal of Turnaround Marketing Communications, a branding and marketing firm specializing in independent schools. Rob shares his experience on InspirED School Marketers by blogging, editing the Daily Jolt, and by podcasting with fascinating independent school movers and shakers. As InspirED's Best Boy — a term borrowed from theater, Rob's longtime passion — Rob loves to be out and about, meeting with school marketers, learning their needs, and helping them overcome challenges. Be sure to ask Rob about his golf game.

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