School of Rock

The Challenge

For School of Rock, it’s important to have a clear picture of their current portfolio and where the best growth opportunities lie. To do this, they wanted to be able to manage territories and evaluate the viability of each new location in addition to identifying optimal markets. They also wanted to provide their marketing team insights that could be used to recruit new students. With this knowledge, School of Rock could inspire confidence in their franchisees and help them succeed by providing deep analysis on customers and the market.

How CBRE helped realize potential

To begin, CBRE Retail Analytics analyzed all School of Rock locations to profile their current student base. From this analysis a student prospect model was created which estimates optimal student counts to help School of Rock locate areas that match the best demographic profiles for new locations. Many other analyses were conducted including identifying the best co-tenants, effect of competition, best site characteristics and other important criteria important for a successful school. The model was used to run a market optimization to identify the best opportunities and determine an optimal expansion strategy giving real estate the tools to focus on areas with the highest value. In addition to the market optimization, CBRE Retail Analytics analyzed School of Rock’s existing territories and used the student prospect model to run a territory optimization to identify both greenfield and infill prospect territories meeting all pre-defined criteria. The deep insights into territories have been invaluable to School of Rock in recruiting new franchisees, especially for the more business-savvy candidates looking to assure a successful location and maximize their franchise investment.

As part of the solution, CBRE Retail Analytics also conducted a student lifestyle analysis, a descriptive segmentation system used to enhance marketing efforts and provide an understanding of student composition and habits. This allows School of Rock to target unique consumer niches to better understand the population served and map hot spots of like-minded students.

School of Rock’s Marketing Team leverages these insights along with zip code and location data to develop a digital strategy with targeted marketing efforts to assist franchisees in recruiting students to help the location succeed.

The analytics produced were integrated with CBRE’s proprietary mapping technology. School of Rock uses the solution to run site forecasts and generate map views with data layers including competitors, traffic counts, retail centers, and many other important factors. When School of Rock secures a new franchise partner, their development team uses the platform to generate a heat map with key demographic information on the territory to assist the franchisee with marketing in the area and building their student base.

The overall solution helps School of Rock target the highest value areas first to maximize ROI and minimize risk and open locations that will be successful. School of Rock has more than tripled their number of units in the time they’ve been working with CBRE Retail Analytics.