5 Benefits Of Print Advertising For Schools

Schools need to advertise to increase enrollment. A school cannot rely on their reputation alone to attract prospective students. A school needs to ensure that they get in front of the right people, particularly at the time of the year when parents are making decisions about where they send their children.

Schools should use lot’s of different advertising formats to ensure that they reach people. This includes newspaper adverts, magazine advertisements, leaflets, and posters. Of course, they also need to be put in the right place. Advertising only works when the right people see it.

Here, we want to look at the five main benefits of print advertising for schools. This means advertising in addition to your digital campaign and school website. Something a bit more traditional, but still effective.

1. Reach Families in Your Local Area

For most schools, advertising in the local area should be the goal. This is where the vast majority of students will come from. Of course, some top fee-paying schools will be the exception to this rule, but for the vast majority of schools, focus advertising on the local area.

You have multiple options here. We suggest researching local community publications, local newspapers, or even leaflet distribution. You can use these methods to promote any school open days, or available places at your school.

Before you pay for any advertising, always ensure that the readership for the publication is good for your school. You don’t, for example, want to spend money on advertising only to find that a community newsletter isn’t really read by families.

2. Build Recognition for Your School

Branding is everything for a school, and your advertising can lead the charge here. If you have consistent logos, colours, and messaging across your advertising then people will start to recognise your school. It will stick in their mind, even if they are not currently looking for a school.

When you advertise, you have an opportunity to highlight what your school offers. This means showcasing any facilities, values, or any strengths your school has.

Repeat advertising helps to build familiarity with the school, which can drive future admissions.

3. Give Parents Something Tangible to Keep

A parent visiting a website can get information. However, once they close down that website, that is it. That information is gone. Print advertising is different. With print advertising, parents have something tangible that they can keep and, hopefully, keep referring back to.

Advertising, for instance, can include details of admissions, key facts about the school, or promotion for open days. You’ll be surprised at how much more likely somebody is to interact with the information when they have it in their hands.

Remember, your advertising should also have a call to action on it. People need information on the ‘next steps’. For example, you can provide your contact details, guide them to your website, or tell them how to book an open day.

4. Reach Parents Beyond Your Digital Channels

Most parents probably won’t visit your website. Well, not unless they absolutely need to. This means that they are less likely to find you online when they are searching for information about school admissions.

Printed advertising provides an extra opportunity to reach parents beyond your digital channels. In fact, you can use printed advertising to guide people towards those digital channels. This means that you can encourage people to visit a website they may never have visited otherwise.

We highly recommend that you talk to local publications, venues, etc. about displaying your advertising. Even if you reach just a few prospective parents, it may be worth it. Remember – never display advertising where you don’t have permission to display it. This means no putting flyers up in random places. Not that this would really work for schools to begin with.

5. Drive Visits to Your Website and Open Days

You can only share limited information via print advertising. Therefore, you will want to encourage people to visit your website for more information. We highly recommend using QR codes for this. It will allow a person to quickly scan using their phone and find more information. You can also have short links too. Nothing too long, as people won’t bother to use it.

We highly recommend that you create unique links for each of your advertising campaigns. This will allow you to measure how effective your current campaigns are.

How to Make School Print Advertising More Effective

So, now you know why school print advertising could be beneficial, let’s provide a few quick tips on how to make print advertising much more effective:

You should keep your print advertising simple. It should have a single clear message. Don’t complicate things. Share key information, and encourage somebody to visit your website to find out more information. The text should be readable, and there should be eye-catching images to ensure that people pay attention to what you’ve written.
Think about where the advertising will be placed. Tailor advertising to that audience. You might also want to think about the time of year you’re advertising. For example, in the height of admission season, you should place details about how your school is accepting admissions, open days, etc.
Make sure all details are accurate. You may need to regularly update your advertising to ensure.
Print materials and your website information should match up. In fact, you might want to combine both your digital campaign and print campaign together. This type of campaign is much more effective. Use print advertising to drive people to your website. You’ll see way more ‘conversions’.