The Answer - A blog about Education, Preparation, and Commitment.

YES Prep Wins Marketing Over Coffee Award

February 15, 2010 by Jeremy Jones

YES Prep’s Talent Strategy Team is responsible for attracting and acquiring the best teachers to do whatever it takes to send more of Houston’s low-income students to college. There are many strategies that we use to attract great talent to our team. One of the most effective is creating a captivating online presence. By becoming a great marketing team we are able to reach out to, engage with, and draw in the best leaders.

Prior to becoming the Director of Talent Strategy for YES Prep, I taught 6^th grade math and science and served as the 6^th grade level chair at YES Prep North Central. Teachers have to be great marketers! They have to compel students to listen to them, believe them, share information in a compelling way, and make that content sticky enough for students to remember. The marketing that we do now, is no different. We have to find creative and compelling ways to engage our audience and share what makes us special in a way that they will be compelled to act. 

So, over the course of the past year, I have sought out and found great professional development. First, I started downloading the video podcast from HubSpot, the inbound marketing software company that we have since purchased. Then, I found Marketing Over Coffee, the weekly marketing podcast with hosts John Wall and Christopher Penn.

Not only am I a big fan of John and Chris and their commentary each week, but have learned so many things that I have been able to use that have made me a more effective marketer and talent strategist. For instance: 

·         We have a robust Facebook Fan Page that grows daily and highlights YES Prep videos, articles, news, and photos. 

·         Our Facebook updates are linked to our Twitter account. 

·         We have a blog that we update almost daily with outstanding content from teachers, school leaders and system administrators and our blog focuses on the possibilities in public education (Read more at “The Answer”). 

·         Our email marketing service, we use Constant Contact, has almost 3,000 subscribers and an average click through rate of 40% on links! 

Because we have begun to excel in marketing to attract more and better teachers to help us grow to serve 10,000 students at 13 campuses, we were nominated for a Marketing Over Coffee Award and we won! As a public school, we have been able to implement great marketing strategies suggested from Marketing Over Coffee to increase the size of our footprint and have a more dominating online presence. 

Thank you to Marketing Over Coffee for the outstanding advice and for informing our team on great marketing strategies! We are happy to be a 2010 Marketing Over Coffee award winner and will continue to listen to the podcast religiously! 

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