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- 1. Select the right area
- 2. Customise your advertising
- 3. Keep your message simple
- 4. Use offline advertising
- 5. Use flyer delivery
- 6. Don’t stress about the logistics
- 7. Use the help of professionals
- 8. Combine multiple methods
One of the most important elements of advertising as a private tutor is focusing on your local area. You should be targeting places that are likely to have the demographics that match your ideal clientele.
These areas should also be geographically close to your home or place of business.
We can split the advertising methods available to us into two categories. Online and Offline.
As we are London based offline advertising specialists we are going to focus mostly on the offline methods. However we will lightly touch on online marketing as well.
Select the right area
The most important thing to do is to find the best areas to target. This is especially true when you are thinking about advertising yourself as a private tutor in the crowded UK market.
It’s better to target a couple small carefully curated areas rather than hitting millions of homes all over the capital.
You want to make sure that the areas you are focusing your advertising on are close to your base of operations. Whether you travel to people’s homes or have students come to you, geographical proximity is very important.
If you are in a place like London you want to check transport connections between areas you are targeting. A good connection with a reliable tube line can change what geographical proximity might mean.
This principle will apply to most marketing methods both online and offline.
Customise your advertising
You want to customise your advertising materials depending on the areas and demographics you are targeting.
If you are focusing your campaign on middle class homes in West Hampstead you might want to use specific design cues that work in that area.
The same will apply if you are trying to target affluent households in Notting Hill.
For example using images that are identifiably pictures of locations in the area you are advertising in is a good strategy. This will apply to flyers in the offline world the same way it will to your facebook ads.
For campaigns targeting parents of young children you want to use different images and designs to campaigns focused on evening classes for older people.
Under no circumstances use generic designs across the board. Always tweak and personalise your images and designs to the sensibilities of areas and people you are advertising to.
Keep your message simple
To follow up from the previous point. Always keep your message simple. Each campaign should have a single clear goal.
If you are offering multiple services as a private tutor, plan multiple campaigns.
It’s best to design your whole campaign including your designs, budget and targeting based on a simple goal.
You can run one campaign for your evening adult classes and one for private tuition for children. Your ‘creative’ will vary significantly and your budgets might too.
As you can imagine, your advertising should look different if you are trying to appeal to young parents of children starting school or retired people looking for evening classes.
Keep your message simple and decide on it before you start planning your campaign.
Use offline advertising
Private tutors often tend to jump into online advertising first. Online marketing works but especially in the private tuition space some channels are very crowded.
Agencies and listings of tutors sometimes work. Sadly they often take control over your advertising and can be expensive to feature on.
Facebook and Google ads can be powerful. However they are also very crowded channels and should be used in conjunction with offline marketing methods for maximum effectiveness.
Local, personalised offline advertising is one of the most powerful ways of letting people know about your tutoring business. The most common and powerful method of offline marketing is flyer distribution.
Use flyer delivery
Flyer delivery is used by companies of all sizes. This includes some of the largest brands in the world.
As it requires some logistics it can be sometimes overlooked by smaller self-employed private tutors.
Missing out on the benefits of flyer delivery would be a mistake. Many small local traders, craftsmen and fitness trainers use pamphlets as an integral part of their marketing.
The same should apply to private tutors.
Flyers have many advantages. They are tangible, physical pieces of advertising that are delivered into people’s homes.
Your potential customers will interact with your flyers no matter what. They can’t be eliminated by adblock or other methods.
If your pamphlets are well designed even if some recipients put them directly into recycling your branding is already being imprinted on their mind.
When you follow up with another flyer drop a few months later or with an online campaign you start developing brand recognition.
On top of this your flyers make it to every single household in your selected area. Having every single household in a given area without exception receive a well designed piece of advertising is something no other technique will get you.
The physical nature of a pamphlet also makes it easy for people to keep them for future reference.
Don’t stress about the logistics
At a first glance a lot of people might feel intimidated by the logistics involved in flyer delivery.
The design, printing, transport, stock control and delivery itself all need some form of oversight and logistical ability.
This could be overwhelming especially for a self-employed private tutor.
That’s why at The Private Postman we offer an all-inclusive service that covers all of the above mentioned elements.
We have designers on staff to help you develop the concept for your pamphlet and source high quality images for you.
We have good relationships with some of the largest UK printing houses and we can get you prices not available to small buyers.
The transport and stock management are all handled by us in our London warehouse.
The delivery is of course done by our Private Postmen and women with years of experience and great training.
We understand how overwhelming the whole process can be for an individual or a small team. We can take all this pressure off of you and help you focus on dealing with clients and tutoring instead.
Use the help of professionals
It is good to have multiple skills as a self employed tutor. Being able to edit your website, create basic designs and do your paperwork yourself can all save you good money.
However if we are talking about investing money into your marketing it is good to get help from professionals where possible.
Designing a flyer and graphics for ads in general is a discipline in and of itself. If you can, try to use a professional to help you.
You will be investing in the production and distribution of pamphlets and into bidding for ad space online.
You should use a part of your budget to make sure that your ads and pamphlets look as good as they can.
Always try to discuss your designs with your distribution company. They should have an opinion on the quality of the design and potentially offer feedback.
If your distributor is not happy to have a look at your designs and offer at least basic feedback you should be looking for a different company to work with.
Combine multiple methods
Some forms of advertising work really well together.
A great example of a multi-approach campaign would be combining pamphlet drops with facebook ads.
You can target a carefully selected part of town with your well-designed flyers. You can do this in two drops to the same homes with a 4 week rest period.
In this rest period you can target the same area and homes with well-curated facebook ads.
These should use the same branding and colour schemes as your physical offline advertising.
If you do this cleverly you can create a real synergistic effect.
After your potential clients have interacted with your pamphlet once and saw a facebook ad, your second drop has a greater chance for high response rates.
This is a fantastic way to develop mind-share in the areas that are the most important to you and multiply the effects of each campaign.
