Introduction
In the world of marketing there are techniques you can use that work for specific niches better than for others.
In this article we will focus on techniques that are particularly helpful with the advertising of afterschool clubs and activities for children.
We’ll talk about the different mediums you can use, like flyer delivery or social media marketing.
We’ll also discuss the type of offers that are particularly helpful for these campaigns, timings and general philosophy behind the marketing of afterschool clubs in London.
Flyer drops
Flyers are an excellent tool to use for advertising activities for children and afterschool clubs. One of the great advantages of leaflets we often discuss is the fact that we can deliver them into every single household in a selected geographical area.
Every household that has a letterbox in your area will receive your flyers if you decide to use them.
This is incredibly helpful if you work in or with a school and want to target the nearest areas most students are coming from. You can learn more about leaflet distribution for schools on our page dedicated to this topic.
It is also very useful if you want to make sure that the clients you are getting are largely from areas that are near your location.
On top of this, leaflets are physical and people often keep them for later reference. You can have a look at the statistics around how many people do so in blog focused on this as well.
What to include on your afterschool club leaflet
You want to make sure to make your leaflets look attractive. Try to secure some high quality graphics or images to use in your flyers.
Always include any accreditations you hold. If you are a member of relevant associations or work with official government institutions include mentions of relevant bodies you have relationships with.
These things might be important to some parents and they can improve the response rates of your campaigns.
However, make sure not to include too much information on your flyer. Focus only on what is truly relevant.
Think about the one or two main things you are offering with your afterschool club and base your design and copy around this.
If you feel like you want to communicate more information than what your flyer allows for, feature your website link in your design prominently. You can then use your website to communicate all the information you want.
You can also use a QR code for this. All the parent needs to do at that point is to scan your QR code and they will go to your site or social media profiles.
If you’re not sure how QR codes work you can read up on the topic in this article.
Offers
There are some specific offers you can include in your marketing when it comes to promoting afterschool clubs.
You can include a discount for siblings, trial classes, percentage discount when booking with friends or other people.
If you structure your offers correctly they can seriously augment the impact of each booking.
Targeting of your pamphlet drop
Pamphlets allow for great targeting. The most obvious way you can target your potential clients using flyers is geographically.
When you are booking a pamphlet drop you will be selecting geographical areas you want within London when speaking to your distribution company.
These will likely be within some kind of proprietary mapping system. You can read about our approach to mapping and tracking here.
You might be able to select postal sectors or other areas that are segmented based on different criteria. You want to make sure that you have some granularity in your selection.
You want to make sure that your distribution company can advise on the different demographics you can find in these areas. You definitely want to be able to leave out areas you are not interested in from your selection.
If you are more interested in targeting demographics than focusing on geographical areas you should speak to your distribution company. They should be able to guide you as to which areas would be most suitable for you based on your demographic focus.
Timing of your door drop campaigns
Timing your campaigns properly and planning ahead is very important for clubs and children activities that are time specific.
If you are running a football camp during half-term, you want to make sure to plan everything weeks or months ahead of time.
You want to make sure that your flyers are designed and ideally printed at least a couple of weeks before you want your campaign to start. This is in case of unforeseen delays.
If you are advertising something that is not time sensitive a week-long delay due to bad weather or a transport strike is not significant. It can however be critical in the lead up to a small window like half-term.
You also want to have your flyers delivered at least a couple of weeks before this point.
By giving parents one or two weeks to plan their half-term and book their children into their activities is good practice. If you get into people’s letterboxes at the right time you might be the first choice when parents are deciding which activities to book for their children.
Plan ahead, and make sure that you are not having to rush your campaigns out in a few days.
Social media
Even though physical marketing like using leaflets is an excellent way to advertise afterschool clubs it would still be unwise to completely overlook the online marketing methods that are available.
Social media advertising can be very helpful as it can be used to target potential clients both based on demographics and geographical location.
As you have very good control over the exact timing of your social media ads (you can switch then on or off with a flick of a button), you can use them to augment your offline marketing.
When you are informed that your flyers are being delivered in a specific area you can also serve social media ads to these places at the same time.
In this scenario people will receive your advertising both on their phones, computers and in their letterboxes. This can be a very effective way to cut through the advertising noise that is present in most Londoner’s lives.
If you do this with tact and make sure not to serve people your ads too many times, you can get mindshare in all your key areas without bothering people with too much repetitive advertising.
To do this, keep checking your average impression per person metric and when it reaches a high enough number stop your ads. This metric tells you how many times the average person has seen your ad.
If you are planning to do this, make sure the plan your online ads the same way you plan your flyer delivery. Take extra time to create your ads, select your areas and name your campaigns properly.
You can then manage them in real time by simply turning them on and off. Most social media companies have tools that allow you to do this.
If your advertising is time sensitive and you are aiming at hitting your potential clients at key points in the year make sure to plan and prepare.
Website
We’ve already mentioned the fact that you should include a URL or a QR code to your website on your flyers.
Even with social media commanding a lot of people’s attention websites are still very important.
You want to be able to have a place where all the information relating to your afterschool club and activities can be accessed.
A well-designed website can serve an amazing amount of information in an organised way without being overwhelming.
You can use videos, graphics or text to deliver all the information you need. No matter the advertising method you are using you can always defer to your website for more information.
Do not overlook the importance of having a good website with all the information people might want to know. You will find that people will feel more confident getting in touch with you when they have already looked at your site and read through some basic information.
