The client provides homeschooling curriculum, support services and education tools to individuals, families and groups from pre-kindergarten through grade 8. Currently, the home instruction division has an enrollment of approximately 20,000.
The client wanted to develop a long-range strategic plan for growth, and to serve and defend its core customers. The client also wanted to analyze the potential for serving new and emerging segments by determining which customer segments were most attractive and to gain a deeper understanding of their educational needs.
One of the major strategic challenges the client faced was the lack of consensus among the industry as to the size of the homeschooling market or the customer segments within it. Therefore, Kannon was asked to build a better understanding of the homeschooling market. This included a competitive assessment of the market and a detailed analysis of the macro trends in education in general, and homeschooling in particular.
Kannon developed several innovative methodologies for sizing the homeschooling market and performed a competitive analysis that clearly mapped the client’s competitors. Kannon also developed a strategic-alternatives framework which assessed market opportunities and determined the client’s strategic fit to ensure it was poised to capitalize on industry growth. By acting on Kannon’s findings, the client was able to focus on opportunities that leveraged its core competencies and market equity.
The Kannon findings also led the client to reposition itself within its marketing materials and website to highlight key differences and build on strengths. The findings emphasized the importance of the Internet as a tool for homeschooling families to gather information; consequently, the client has made changes to its website to ensure better placement on the large Internet search engines. The client also implemented a new customer retention program, and hopes to reduce customer churn from around 66% to 56%.
“Under previous management, Board members and staff had grown skeptical of marketing research. They felt it hadn’t generated any meaningful insights or resulted in actionable recommendations. Kannon turned this perspective on its head,” said the client’s CEO. “The strategic framework Kannon helped us to develop allowed the organization to move forward quickly. Their work converted a variety of opinions into a shared vision, and provided the focus to invigorate the entire team to execute an action-packed turnaround agenda.”
“Kannon listened carefully to our objectives,” the CEO added. “They redirected our plans from a pricey segmentation study to one that took stock of existing internal and publicly available data. This approach provided the strategic direction we needed within our financial means.”