Open [Action] - Part 2 -
Company values revealed by taking action

Hello everyone. I am Hayashi, the representative of Monosus.
In the previous article , we talked about the first thing you should do when incorporating the idea of Open Marketing into your company: "Open Action."
We talked about:

The most important point among them is

I touched on the fact that it is summarized in three points.
I have explained points 1 and 2 in detail.

This time, the third

3. Customers are sensitive to the company's values and judge them from their behavior.

I would like to talk about...

A project that gave birth to one of the Open Marketing initiatives

Many years ago, we were renewing the website of a certain educational institution.

The school corporation mainly operates schools in the form of correspondence high school support schools.
This is a type of school that has been gaining attention in recent years, so many people may not be familiar with it.

Correspondence high schools have been around for a long time, so I think many of you are familiar with them.
You can study without being restricted by time or place.
While it could lower the barriers to obtaining a high school diploma,
There are no classrooms to attend and students can earn credits simply by submitting assignments.
There was a disadvantage in that face-to-face education was not possible.

Therefore, correspondence high school support schools compensate for this disadvantage by providing actual classrooms and classes for students enrolled in correspondence high schools.
In other words, you can live a high school life just like you would in a regular high school.

What makes it different from a regular high school is that for various reasons,
Or perhaps there were many students who were forced to make the decision.
There are various reasons for this, including some students who are unable to attend a regular high school because they are involved in entertainment activities, but most are rather students who have not been able to adapt to school life up until now for one reason or another.

When we were building a website for this school, we first decided to ask the students attending the school, "Why did you choose this school?"
This time, I was able to speak to a total of 10 students.

After looking over the transcripts of the interviews, I noticed a few things that seemed off.

The purpose of the website renewal is to increase the number of applicants,
The purpose of this interview is to extract the school's marketing strengths.

All the students I spoke to were very satisfied with their lives at this school.
Even though it's an interview, it doesn't come across as flattery.
Despite this, I still can't really understand what prompted the students to decide to enroll in this school.

Of course, there are plenty of stories that make you go, "Whoa!"
It was something that happened to that individual student, and I feel like it's unlikely to be reproducible.
When planning, I have decided not to lie or exaggerate,
It is not possible to use a student's unique experiences as a marketing advantage...

Initially, we had planned to plan the site based on the interviews, but to resolve this sense of discomfort, we proposed holding a workshop involving the school's executives and teachers.

There were a number of great discoveries made during the workshop.
Among them, there is one episode that I still can't forget.

The school's feelings hidden in the greeting.

It asks students, "Why did you want to attend this school?"
Each person will tell you different things in response to this question,
About 7 out of 10 students said, "When we came to visit the school, the teachers greeted us."
He told me that.

At first, neither I nor anyone at school paid much attention to it,
I was curious because so many students mentioned this issue, so I asked, "By the way, many students say that 'the teachers' greetings were good,' but
Do you have any idea?"
I posed the question during the workshop.

For a while,
"Well, that's what I do all the time."
The only voice that came out was,
After I asked the same question several times, a senior official at the school replied, "When someone comes from outside, everyone in the staff room stands up to greet them, no matter who they are."
He told me that.

Indeed, that was the case when we visited the school for a meeting,
I was intrigued and thought it was amazing, but I didn't really know why.

I still couldn't see the connection to why the students decided to enroll, so I asked, "Why do they do it that way?"
I asked again, ``What do you think?''

There was silence for a moment, but I decided to wait a bit.
I still remember the words that one of the teachers who was present at the event said afterwards.
It was a long time ago so I don't remember the exact words,
He told me things like this.

"The students who visit this school have some concerns about their school life.
These are kids who have problems.
Very few of these children have ever been directly treated badly by teachers in their previous environments, but when they experience hardship or have problems, they distrust their teachers, thinking, "Teachers say great things, but they never help me."

I think the students feel that, "The teacher who used to be so arrogant here stops what they are doing, stands up and greets us. Maybe the teachers here are different."
The first step in building trust is to greet others. That's why in this school, instead of teachers telling students to say "Say hello!", the teachers start by saying "Hello!" to the students. For these students who have had bitter experiences up until now,
I think that’s what gets across.”

The moment I heard this, a lot of things suddenly came together for me.

As I dug deeper into their stories, a wealth of information emerged about what the school is doing to accommodate these students.

"This will be a great site."
I think that was the moment when everyone there was convinced.

Since then, we have worked together on a variety of projects with the school, not just the website.
In one case, I was to provide training to new teachers at the school.
I was also given a strange opportunity.

Customers are constantly observing the values hidden in a company's subtle actions.

This school operates in a similar manner to a private high school,
The annual tuition fee is by no means cheap.

Despite this, the casual greetings that everyone at the school gave me on a daily basis played a major role in my decision to enroll.

However, this is not a case of "greeting people is a marketing advantage."
This does not mean that.

The pre-school students who visited the school said,
For example, instead of the school's previous promotion of "100% graduation rate" or "college enrollment record,"
Through the teachers' greetings, he was able to keenly sense the school's "attitude towards its students."

And the way they interact with their students truly embodies the school's values.

In other words, the students were able to sense the school's values from the greeting they received at the very first moment of their tour.
And that played a part in the decision to make a purchase that was not cheap at all.

We were made painfully aware that the many selling points that we had promoted as our marketing strengths had not been able to express the essential value of our company.

The best proof of this is the results.
After the renewal, the conversion rate of site visitors requesting information or making inquiries improved to 140%, but the even bigger change was that the rate of actual enrollment increased to 200%.
The final effect is a whopping 280%.

When I asked the person in charge why the admission rate had improved so dramatically, he said,
In the past, I would just ask for information or inquire.
The most common question we received was,
After the renewal, when they contacted us, they said things like, "I want to enroll, but I'd like to get some information just to be sure," or "I'd like to see the school in person to make sure it's what I expected."
He told me that his motivation has changed to:

I have been involved in the planning of many websites, but unlike small-scale projects,
This was the first time I had seen such clear results in a large-scale project.

This incident was a major turning point that led us to the idea of Open Marketing.

Rather than appealing to customers with catchy copy and visuals highlighting the company's advantages over its competitors, it may be more effective to carefully extract and communicate the company's values from its actual actions.

The idea behind Open Marketing was born from this hypothesis, which we have gradually shaped over the course of many years as we practiced and tested it both within our own company and with our clients.

I have spoken about Open [Action] in two parts.

Next time, before I talk about the next step in Open Action, I would like to briefly touch on the effects of Open Marketing.