Still Creating Print Ads?
I'll bet you are. And that's a good thing. Where you're placing them is another. What you're placing them for is the big question. Is it for generating enrollment, or is it for publicizing an event that you want the whole community to know about?
Since we're at that time of the year when parents are registering their children for Kindergarten for next year, then let's focus on generating enrollment.
Are you placing them in your local hometown newspaper? Or in the newspaper of the big city that's near you? Or in your Diocesan newspaper? Or in the Yellow Pages?
Given those choices, which would you rank as first, second, third and fourth priority? The answer - it depends on what your marketing strategy is.
The Yellow Pages is a great choice if you want a stand-out presence where people can easily access you. Yellow Page advertising might still be effective for the next few years. If you ask my 18 and 20 year old kids to look up a telephone number though, the first place they go to is the Internet. When they become parents, that will be the first place they look for information about schools. Soon, we won't have to worry about recycling phone books anymore. They will become a part of the same category to which 8-track tapes belong.
Your Diocesan newspaper is a way to reach Catholics - but are parents of young children reading the Diocesan newspaper? Quite possibly, but you have to do some research to find out. Of course, those that do read it can pass the paper along to their neighbors or their children to further your marketing options. Your local newspaper also might be a good place - just make sure the paper has research which confirms that parents of young children (25 to 39 year olds) read it. As for the big city newspaper, ask yourself if the return on investment (ROI) is worth it. If your full-page newspaper ad costs $6000, you'll have to get two or three new enrollments to create a positive ROI. What's the chances of doing that on one ad that might be buried in the third section of the paper? If you can do a series of ads, that's better (repetition is the mother of education), but if you do smaller ads, not only could they be buried, but they might not be in the same place from day to day or week to week. Consequently, the effect of patterned repetition is lost.
But I'll bet that big town newspaper has a Web site. How about creating a banner ad! The following ad was found at the top of the Web site of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel the week before and during Catholic Schools Week:
It caught my attention...especially since I wasn't looking for it. Movement does that. I keep it at the bottom of the SchoolAdvancement site pages for inspiration. I hope you're inspired by it as well.
© Michael V. Ziemski, SchoolAdvancement, 2007
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