Marketing To Schools

Send press releases to the local papers in advance of your conferences.

Set up a vendor booth at conferences for educators.

Attend conferences and collect business cards. Then when you email you can say, "We recently met at the xxx conference."

Offer reward incentives for referrals.

Understand the budgets of your market. In what areas do they have funds to spend? Market to those needs and problems.

Just a few ideas. Rose

I'd use Google Adwords. You have to think about specific problems your audience may be experiencing and what kind of search queries they'd perform to try and solve those problems. Advertise under those keywords with pain/dream/fix sales copy and you're golden.

Hey Mark,

You have described your advertising in terms of online strategies, but have not mentioned whether or not this is also augmented by offline methods of advertisement.

I would suggest that you need to expand your presence by including offline mailings not only to those you believe to be the decision makers, but also to the influencers. K-12 schools in the US are typically funded by municipalities, but there are also various programs sponsored by state and/or federal governments... and those governments ALL have a Board of Education.

Offline mailings should have a cover letter describing your organization and the purpose of this mailing. Include glossy brochures with photos from prior conferences and a description of individual conference sessions. Include a separate page with upcoming schedule and cost information.

Typically, funds are appropriated once per year by each government agency (Federal, State, and Municipal levels) and at least one mailing to each government agency should be scheduled to arrive AT LEAST 30-60 days (or more) before that agency's budget planning meetings.

Experiment with mailing to surrounding jurisdictions to gain attendance from a larger population.

Include registration forms, instructions for payment, etc. OR instructions for how to register online.

Conduct separate mailings for each conference, well in advance of the scheduled date of the conference. You may get additional, last-minute registrations.

I keep coming up with additional thoughts, but I think you get the idea.

Brand your company in the minds of the influencers, the budget planners, AND the educators. Where possible, personalize any offline mailings, and make those mailings memorable.

Besides what has already been mentioned, there are teachers, principals, and other educator associations in every state that you might approach to advertise in their mailings or to have a booth or presence at their conferences and workshops.

Go to your local library (probably needs to be a larger one) and ask to see their Encyclopedia of Associations from the reference section. It is a four volume set (quite expensive) and it lists all the associations in the U.S. including facts about their size, history, membership, fees to join, newsletter, etc. It will also give you contact information including email addresses of the officers, the association manager, etc. You should be able to learn many details about all the associations that cater to educators (its own category) - invaluable information for your list building.

The very best to you in your business,

Steve