It’s that time of year where you might be busy organising the finishing touches to your Halloween costume or deciding if ordering all those fireworks was really a good idea, but don’t let the celebrations distract you from promoting your business too much. As Annie mentioned in last week’s blog, this is the time of year where things can slow down, so this week I am going to give some tips on how to do your marketing a little differently.
Think outside the box
We are all a little guilty of sticking to what we know and love and this can happen with our marketing materials and strategies too. The real trick to standing out and being noticed is doing something a little different, taking a bit of a risk and being creative.
A good example of thinking a little more creatively is utilising events to your advantage. With Bonfire night soon upon us It may seem obvious to add a few firework themed images to your marketing materials, which is a great thing to do, but to stand out, have a look at what local events are going off and try to get involved with them. You don’t have to base your marketing material on a popular event just because everyone else is however, sometimes it pays to get involved with smaller, more local events.
You could also try hosting a party and allow students to bring their friends, this is a great opportunity for word of mouth advertising. Things like this help to not only engage more with your current students and keep them motivated, but it gives the chance for prospective students to visit your facilities with a more relaxed atmosphere and see what you’re like.
With Halloween happening very soon, you may think it’s too late to do anything if you haven’t already planned something; thankfully it isn’t. If you run children’s classes and are the type that prefers to stay in and let the trick-or-treaters come to you, then why not hand out flyers offering a free trial lesson along with the sweets? This makes great use of your target audience coming to you and requires very little of you in return.
Try something a little different
To keep things fresh and different, we have to change them and with change there often comes an element of risk. This isn’t always a bad thing by any means, but what it does mean is that you should weigh up the advantages and disadvantages to ensure it’s worthwhile. It’s not a wise idea to spend a lot for your time and money on something that has a very high chance of not working out.
Putting a poster up in a new local area, for example, would be considered a low risk with the reasonable potential for reaching new students; as the only downside to this is that it doesn’t get noticed, but a positive is that it is quite cheap to print a poster. Try to think of local areas you haven’t advertised in such as local shops, youth clubs and even schools and see if they will allow you to put a poster up. You could even extend the reach of your advertising to within a 20-minute drive of your school to help increase the chances of engagement.
The more modern approach to this is advertising online with things such as Facebook, which can have some very impressive results. Again there is an element of risk, especially with your first advertisement, as you will be trying to figure out what works best in terms optimising your advert to reach your target audience and maximise engagement. Thankfully you don’t have to spend much to begin to figure this out, as Facebook is very flexible in terms of adjusting your settings if you notice something isn’t quite working as you would like it to. You can adjust these adverts to meet varying budgets, reach certain age groups and areas and run for specific times or indefinitely. It is worth spending some time with Facebook and trying out what options work best for you and your needs.
If you’d like some additional ideas or help with your own marketing materials, or perhaps you have had some great ideas you’ve had success with, we’d love to hear from you! Send us an email marketing@nestmanagement.co.uk
