Nick LaIuppa

The argument: any company, product, service, or school has a dozen or more possible positions, but schools rarely work through the choice.

• As LaIuppa sees it, the result is a website and campaign full of claims that could describe almost any school, making it hard for the right families to recognize a fit.
• Choosing a position means stating who the school is for—and who it is not for.

LaIuppa lists the default claims that make school marketing sound the same: a school has been around since 1800, Thomas Jefferson’s children attended, it develops the whole child, it is inclusive.

• Two folk sayings sum up the point: stand in the middle of the road and get hit by a truck; chase two rabbits and catch none.
• The companion post makes the same argument structurally: “something that makes you different” is one of the foundational items a school needs, alongside a website aimed at prospective families’ pain points, email follow-up, tracking, directory listings, and an ad budget.

Across the two posts, the emphasis shifts: the positioning post presents a chosen position as the single highest-leverage move, while the prioritization post treats differentiation as one of several prerequisites. Both argue that a school without a clear differentiator spends money on a message that blends into everyone else’s.

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The sorting is the argument: visible, appealing activities only pay off once a school can address prospective families’ pain points, distinguish itself, follow up by email, track results, appear in directories, and fund advertising.

Need-to-have: a website built around prospective families’ pain points, a point of difference, email follow-up, tracking, profiles and directory sites, and an advertising budget.

• Nice-to-have: chatbots, social media advertising, split-testing landing pages, lead generators, student-led tours, ambassadors, a “creative” website, and audience building or content marketing.
• The concrete claim is that student-led tours and ambassadors are optional: activities many schools treat as core recruiting rank below tracking and follow-up in LaIuppa’s ordering.

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It should state the main goals, every method intended to reach them, why those methods should work, how much money goes to each method by week, month, and year, and the numbers used to judge success.

• LaIuppa’s minimum is two: the break-even number for a new enrollment and the conversion rate from a lead to a valuable action.
• The plan must also define in advance what makes a campaign worth continuing on monthly, quarterly, and yearly cycles.

LaIuppa names search ads, directory ads, social ads, email marketing, geofencing, and content marketing as examples.

• The plan calls for weekly, monthly, and yearly budgets for each method, plus an enrollment break-even figure.
• That turns a list of channels into a spending test: schools must work out the enrollment result that justifies each line of spend, then measure it against pre-agreed monthly, quarterly, and yearly thresholds.

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It answers “how do you decide what your school actually stands for?” and sets up the two planning posts that follow.

LaIuppa collects definitions of positioning from Square, Wikipedia, and the Product Marketing Alliance, then offers a shorter one: the strategic angle used to convey your message.

• The useful part is the problem this definition addresses.
• They argue that many schools default to interchangeable claims — founded in 1800, Thomas Jefferson’s children attended, we develop the whole child, we are inclusive — which is why so many school websites sound the same.
• The point isn’t that schools lack substance; it’s that a school with a dozen or more possible positions can end up saying everything and standing for nothing if it doesn’t choose one.
• The post ends with two blunt folk sayings applied to enrollment marketing: standing in the middle of the road gets you hit, and chasing two rabbits catches neither.

For brands planning a campaign

A campaign built around this argument sells a decision, not a channel.

• Rather than proposing ad placements or a content calendar, it starts with a positioning exercise that asks a school to name whom it serves and what it wants to be known for.
• The school’s existing proof points become evidence, not decoration.
• Any later paid or organic activity gets a clear filter: does it communicate the chosen position, or dilute it with the generic claims LaIuppa lists?

It answers “where should a limited school marketing budget go?” and offers a concrete ordering rather than another list of tactics, making it worth opening before the plan post.

LaIuppa divides school marketing options into two columns, drawing on a client conversation.

• The need-to-have list is short and unglamorous: a website built around prospective families’ pain points, something that differentiates the school, email follow-up, tracking, profiles and directory sites, and an advertising budget.
• The nice-to-have list holds many familiar tactics: chatbots, social media advertising, split-testing landing pages, lead generators, student-led tours, ambassadors, a “creative” website, and audience building through content marketing.
• LaIuppa presents the split as a way to make a long menu digestible and turn it into an actionable roadmap.
• The asymmetry is telling: student-led tours and ambassadors, which many schools treat as core recruiting, land in the optional column.
• That placement is the argument — visible activities only work when tracking, follow-up, differentiation, and budget are already in place.

For brands planning a campaign

Cite this post when a school wants to spend on the most visible tactic first.

• It supports a staged proposal: scope and price foundational work before awareness or engagement activity, fund the items in the need-to-have column, and defer each nice-to-have tactic until tracking and follow-up are in place.
• For a partner or agency pitch, the strongest application is a one-page roadmap showing what the school is buying now, what it is postponing, and what signal would justify moving work from one column to the other.

It answers “what should the plan contain?” with a checklist, making it a natural companion to the prioritization post and an easy place to start.

LaIuppa lists the components of a private school marketing plan: the main goals; every method intended to reach them, with search ads, directory ads, social ads, email marketing, geofencing, and content marketing as examples; the reasoning behind those methods; the weekly, monthly, and yearly budget for each; the measures of success, including at minimum the break-even number for a new enrollment and the conversion rate from lead to a meaningful action; and the thresholds for deciding whether a campaign is successful and worth continuing on monthly, quarterly, and yearly cycles.

• The unusual elements are the budgeting cadence and break-even requirement.
• Most tactic lists stop at channel names; this one requires the plan to specify the enrollment number that makes the spend worthwhile and when a campaign gets renewed or dropped.

For brands planning a campaign

This post supports a plan-shaped deliverable instead of a campaign idea: goals, chosen methods, stated reasons, allocation by period, and two or three KPIs, including break-even enrollment cost. It also lays out monthly, quarterly, and yearly checkpoints with pre-agreed continuation criteria — a credible way to propose a limited pilot without asking a school to commit to a full-year spend up front.

The post opens with definitions from Square, Wikipedia, and the Product Marketing Alliance, then offers a shorter one: the angle used to convey your message.

• The common school claims they list — founded in 1800, Thomas Jefferson's children attended, whole-child development, inclusivity — are presented as interchangeable lines that fail to say who the school is for.
• They recommend planting a flag on a distinct position, because a clear position attracts right-fit families more effectively than other marketing tactics, while trying to appeal to everyone dilutes the message.
• A school evaluating LaIuppa would see a direct challenge to its current messaging: pick a position, accept the families it excludes, and make that choice visible across the website and campaigns.

LaIuppa builds the argument by collecting definitions from recognizable marketing sources, then narrows them to a one-line definition and applies it to the school context. The post ends with direct questions to the reader, making it easy to reuse as a discussion or workshop prompt with a school's leadership team.

For brands planning a campaign

Strong fit for a brief about differentiating a school's message. A campaign could focus on one chosen position — for example, a specific program, academic approach, or family type — and show consistently across the website and ads who the school is for, rather than listing general strengths.

Examples: Source 1

In the need-to-have group: a website built around prospective families' pain points, something that makes the school different, email follow-up, tracking, profiles and directory sites, and an advertising budget.

• In the nice-to-have group: chatbots, social media advertising, split-testing landing pages, lead generators, student-led tours, ambassadors, a "creative" website, and audience building or content marketing.
• The value for a school is the habit of categorizing before spending, so a limited budget goes first to the work that recruits families.

The post explicitly says the list is not exhaustive and that LaIuppa was still working on it, so it should be treated as a starting framework rather than a complete checklist.

For brands planning a campaign

Useful for a school that has scattered its budget across tactics and wants a sequence. A campaign can address the need-to-have items one at a time — pain-point-based website copy, a differentiator, email follow-up, tracking, directory listings — and save the nice-to-have list for later-stage or test-only work.

Examples: Source 1

The distinguishing element is the pairing of budget allocation with named success thresholds: a plan is only complete when the school knows what result would justify continuing each tactic.

The short bulleted checklist is directly reusable as a planning template or intake questionnaire for a school.

For brands planning a campaign

A natural anchor for foundational content aimed at schools without a written plan. A campaign could provide a fill-in template or a worked example based on these components, then follow up with the enrollment break-even and conversion-rate numbers a school needs to set its own thresholds.

Examples: Source 1

Both see what families experience on a tour as decisive, and argue that a school's distinctiveness drives enrollment rather than simply supporting it.

Delane makes the case for motion-based mixed-reality learning from an education-technology vendor, citing research figures of 86 percent learning gains and 6.7 times engagement.

• The differentiator is the in-classroom experience.
• LaIuppa focuses on message, budget and follow-up, offering vendor-neutral checklists schools can use without buying a product.
• They urge schools to choose a position before spending on visible tactics.

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Vana's formula — we are the only {category} that provides {unique value} by {method} for {ideal customer} — makes the same move LaIuppa asks schools to make: plant a flag and state whom the school is for.

Vana works across B2B industries, using profit stories such as a metal fabricator growing from $14M to over $60M.

• They teach through a paid template and a multi-workshop process.
• LaIuppa focuses on schools, framing the question around whom a school serves and which families it excludes.
• Their resources are free LinkedIn checklists, not paid products.

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LaIuppa's plan is unfinished until it names a break-even enrollment cost and a lead-to-action conversion rate. Adolph argues that ratios, rather than absolute numbers, should be performance KPIs and uses a monthly push-and-pull rhythm for campaigns.

Adolph focuses on ecommerce and direct-to-consumer brand growth, including new-customer acquisition cost, bottom-of-funnel remarketing and design drops drawn from his own seven-figure brand. LaIuppa focuses on recruiting families to private schools, where the goal is enrollment rather than revenue and the buyer is a school rather than a consumer.

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The posts view the tour from the family's perspective: Do students look engaged?

• Does the room feel energetic or passive?
• Are students collaborating?
• Does learning feel active?
• The argument is that families “instantly feel the difference” and the visit becomes the differentiator.
• LaIuppa advises schools on choosing a position and funding the unglamorous basics, but not on how that position should show up in the building on tour day.
• The posts also link classroom practice to enrollment, citing embodied-learning figures—86 percent increase in learning, 6.7 times engagement, 33 percent teacher performance—attributed in the post to Arizona State University.

The posts promote a specific mixed-reality product, SMALLab, via EdMotion, rather than an independent planning method.

• Neither defines positioning, forces an audience choice or addresses budget, break-even or conversion targets, so the school would still have to choose its position and build the numbers itself.
• The posts report research figures that were not independently verified here, and propose a product rather than an assessment or workshop.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The posts provide a fill-in-the-blank template—“We are the only {category} that provides {unique value} by {differentiated method} for {ideal customer label} unlike {competitor label}”—a method of three workshops and roughly two weeks of building proof before revision, and a low-cost, self-serve version of the same template.

• Vana frames brand strategy as one decision about unique value, for whom and how, then says everything else follows.
• That is the same decision LaIuppa asks schools to make, expressed as a repeatable workshop format.
• For a small team that needs structure rather than sector advice, this is the more concrete of the two options.

The work is B2B industrial branding, not education.

• The case study is a metal fabrication shop, and its results are revenue and preferred-vendor status, not enrollment.
• It offers no school marketing plan checklist, need-to-have versus nice-to-have priorities, break-even enrollment target or lead-to-action conversion measure—the planning tools a school needs.
• The post offers the template as a paid product; ask about purchase terms, delivery format and current availability.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The posts argue that ratio KPIs beat absolute numbers—cost per new customer, conversion rate, revenue per visitor and per recipient—because clicks or revenue alone do not show what produced them or whether a gain came from better advertising or simply more spend.

• They describe a “push and pull” monthly calendar that alternates a demand-capture sale, when acquisition cost drops and spend scales, with a later profit and returning-customer push built on owned channels, especially email.
• For a school that knows its position but cannot tell which campaign is working, that ratio discipline and monthly rhythm map onto enrollment planning more usefully than another positioning voice.

The work is a seven-figure ecommerce brand, focused on new-customer acquisition cost, monthly design drops and email-driven returning customers.

• Neither post addresses admissions cycles, inquiry follow-up, campus tours or family decision timelines, so a school would have to translate the method into enrollment terms.
• It is a measurement swap rather than a school-marketing substitute; the posts do not show Victor Adolph working with schools.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2