How OOH Advertising Can Help Private Schools

Key steps for success in private school marketing plans

Step 1 – create your brand

For private schools, when it comes to filling student classes year after year, reaching the right audience is crucial. Just like other businesses, it is essential they leverage opportunities in their local area to become the stand-out education choice for parents.

Schools need to create a brand identity to ensure parents can establish clear reasons for choosing your school. You should consider elements like learning opportunities, how pupils learn and grow, school ethos and facilities. Once you have established your brand, it is important to market effectively.

Step 2 – market your brand

After your brand identity has been established, it’s time to get your name out there. Choosing the right place to reach your target audience of affluent families is key to a successful private school marketing plan, and Boomerang’s environments will help you cut through the noise in the local area.

Health Clubs -David Lloyd & Nuffield Health offer an unrivalled high concentration of local affluent parents & families, the average member salary is £70,000 and some clubs have a creche and Kids Club.

Playcentres – 6 in 10 UK parents regularly visit a playcentre, and with an average dwell time of 90 minutes and wide range of engaging formats available, you can communicate with your audience whilst children are front of mind.

Shopping Malls – reach children and their parents at the hub of the local community with our shopping malls. 20% of adults visit with children, allowing you to communicate with a high number of families in the local area.

Step 3 – communicating to your audience

Once a fitting environment has been identified, there are a range of different media formats available that will help you effectively reach your key target audience at the right time, with great impact:

6-sheet poster – Large (2m x 1.2m) static poster providing stand-out and cut through, situated in high traffic areas of each venue, including the café, gym, crèche and reception areas for maximum impact between your school and prospective parents.

Digital 6-sheet posters – Eye-catching 55” HD screens, capable of both static and video content, positioned in high traffic areas of each venue. Screens are also used as venue notice boards making them a point of reference for visitors and ensuring high impact.

Step 4 – measuring effectiveness

Once your campaign is live, there are a number of quantifiable metrics you can put in place to measure and monitor the campaign’s progress and success.

Surveys – One of the most popular methods of measuring effectiveness is to ask parents whether they have visited the venue your advertising is in, e.g. “are you a member of Nuffield Health?”.

Prospectus requests – monitor the number of prospectus requests during the dates your campaign is running, compared to the number of requests when no campaigns are running to understand effectiveness.

Event sign-ups – many private schools feature an open day on their advert. It might be a good idea to track the number of sign-ups to a particular event which featured on the advert and compare it to one which didn’t.

Web visits – it is recommended that your website is featured on your advert as a call to action. Effectiveness of the campaign can be measured by monitoring page visits during your campaign and where they have come from.

If you’d like to find out more how OOH can add success to your private school marketing plan – please get in touch today.