Would you be more interested in a (state) school that advertised in a newspaper or on the radio?

[Itchyandscratchy]

I'm doing some adverts for my school in the lead up to open events in the autumn. The local paper is hounding me to commit to their 'Education special' but I don't think I'm interested. We always used to automatically put an advert in the paper but budgets are much tighter now. It's about £1K for a page advert!!

I'm a parent myself and I just don't take any notice of the local press anymore, except the odd article online. I think the demographic for newspapers is pretty high in age anyway (50+?) so they wouldn't be the ones choosing the school or going to the open events.

I'm thinking I'd rather spend the money I've got on a radio advert. It's about the same price to have a radio advert for 2 weeks as it is for a full page in the local paper. I also know that the demographic for the radio station is younger and more female, which I'm thinking is the right audience for parents interested in hearing about schools.

Would any of you / do any of you pore over the local education supplements? Would a newspaper - or a radio advert for that matter - make you interested in a school?

Thanks.

Our school is tucked away so many locals don't know it's there. They have a large poster on the advertising board outside the largest supermarket nearby, which is sufficient to get people asking on FB etc, "Do you know anything about X school?"

Though a 6th form would have a larger catchment area - I'd suspect mailouts to secondary kids' schools would be the way to go?

No

Are you somewhere big, as round us every parent knows every available school, and advertising beyond leaflets explaining yourself sounds desperate to me. I know i think less of the private school that advertises heavily (yes you queen ethelbergers).

Our local bestest best school sends out an a5 piece of paper with the open evening dates, that is it.

t we have a relatively new sixth form

Keep it simple, "we now have a sixth corm, bet you didn't know that hey".

Radio advertising is ephemeral. I think it's better to put the information into print (I'm including the internet in this category) because there is more chance of people referring back to it. You can dig a leaflet out of recycling or find an old newspaper down the library but you can't re-hear an advert.

It seems like there isn't one answer to the question. It may be a case of doing whatever-it-is-they-do in your area.

However, would the money be well spent on buying your way to the top of the Google list?

"Are you somewhere big, as round us every parent knows every available school, and advertising beyond leaflets explaining yourself sounds desperate to me"

This ^^. Surely all the primary schools and parents are fully aware of the secondary school choices in the area?

We live in a rural area so 99% of pupils at DD's old primary school go on to her secondary school. The ones that don't go to independent schools in the city about 15 miles away.

Working with the primary schools where the majority of the intake comes from has proved over many years to be the best way to attract the kids to the secondary school. That translates partial into convincing the parents when they see their child enthused by the work they have done at the secondary school but in my opinion it is the open nights that convince the majority of parents, especially if the other parents are also thinking that this is right way to go. An hours talk by the head teacher is not considered the best advert for the school!
However you do need to think very carefully about what it is that is the attraction or the thing that puts pupils off. When my school did some work on this, it was the pastoral care / house system that came out top for reason to come, plus a new build which they could see being built. When we asked pupils why they did not go to another local school with a very good track record, the answer from more than one pupil was that it was full of dead people! What they meant was that you walked though the front door of the school and the entrance hall had many photos and paintings of past head teachers and past pupils of the school. Not something that most of us would pick up on but they did. Cue revamp of entrance hall to put up energising displays of pupils work and exciting activities.

I'm in London. The 60 kids who have just left Y6 are going to over 30 different schools (only 1 or 2 private at most), and some parents end up looking at 15-20 before losing the will to live. There's definite scope for advertising that would convince the average parent to look at your school as one of 3 to 5 contenders.

One of our local schools advertises with a poster at the big supermarket which is in the next town, so somewhat beyond the default catchment area. I think that the posters serve two purposes for them:

1. To make parents consider sending DC out of catchment, which isn't that common round here.

1. To advertise that there is a bus for pupils from that town to the school. That isn't something that parents would already know.

I think you have to be very clear about who you are advertsing to, and what the particular information is that they might not already have.

So a general 'come to our open day' with Photoshopped pictures of smiling pupils on some 'untargeted' media - whether print, radio, or back of buses - would simply have me thinking 'that school is really desperate, I wonder why?', and so would be negative rather than positive.

A targeted method - e.g. leaflets in primary school bookbags (or, increasingly, e-mailed out to parents from an initial high-quality mail to school administrators) - that focused on Y7 in particular, publicising open days for Y5 and 6 parents, emphasising e.g. recent Ofsted, change of head, much better GCSE results, new sports hall, feedback from current parents on excellent pastoral care, 'now your child can stay on to 18 in our exciting new 6th form' would be much more likely to have me looking round.

If what you are really wanting to do is to attract current Y11s in other schools to apply to the new 6th form, then that needs a different strategy, and probably completely separate Open Days. You may well need to enlist your current sixth form pupils and their parents to discuss how their peers receive information - could well be a social media approach rather than anything traditional. Current 11-18 schools are very unlikely to be willing to circulate information that persuades their pupils to move elsewhere, so you will need to be cannier and more direct.

Through all of this, ensure that your website is impeccable. If you are making a 'thing' about the sixth form, make that either a very distinct section of the website or even a separate but linked microsite. Consider your presence on other social media - Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc etc, and update all of VERY regularly (get current pupils to help, but retain overall editorial control as the worst thing would be to have poorly spelled Facebook entries on a school-branded page). Again, consider separate accounts for the sixth form if you are pushing that, and make that all about sixth form doings - prospective sixth forma applicants don't want to know about the U11 football team, but they might be interested in the sixth formers who won an engineering competition / raised money for a local charity / did a really exciting local internship / had responsibilities / experiences within a small sixth form that they wouldn't get at a larger one.

Be REALLY clear about what your selling point is - as a previous poster said, it may not be what you think it is!

Regardless of what media to use, you do need to emphasis how it's different, i.e. it's unique selling point and points of difference. Quack's comment above re school buses is an excellent case in point - if you're advertising outside the school's natural catchment area, then emphasising free or discounted school buses would really get attention - that's something to shout about and will attract pupils however you advertise.

I'd suggest advertising directly to households is better than in a local newspaper due to wider coverage and newspapers generally have an older reader. Many areas have a free leaflet/magazine drop every week or month where the local businesses advertise, so think about that. Personally, I'm not sure about radio adverts - I've worked with various businesses who've had little success - a lot of people may be "hearing" the local radio, but not many are actually listening - it's often just background music.

State schools have a budget of under £5000 per year per pupil to cover absolutely ebverything.
Money spend on advertising is taken directly from teaching budgets
which is utterly morally wrong

private schools are businesses so waste loads of fee money on adverts and PR

talkin if we don't get bums on seats then that's £5000 loss per empty seat. Recruitment is essential to schools.

Display advertising is a complete waste of money, even at the best of times.

There is no way of tracking its effectiveness and therefore the ROI (Return On Ivestment = value for money) is a total unknown.

Newspaper advertising is only any good for brands with enough money to chucked around on unquantified 'brand messages'.

Don't do it.

There is no way of tracking its effectiveness

Ask them!
When students sign on in September and you are gathering personal data, ask them how they learnt about the school and what persuaded them to join (free text, not tick-a-box).

Where are you? Are you doing this for a state or private school?

I'm a bit suspicious of schools advertising - I tend to think that it means they have have trouble recruiting pupils.

Having said that, the other day I noticed an advert in a schools' magazine (aimed at private schools) for a school that is IMPOSSIBLE to get into. I really can't imagine why they would bother advertising.

Display advertising is a complete waste of money

The parents of one of our son's friends didn't have a clue to the existence of a comp literally a mile over the county border as no-one else sent their kids there in our village. They saw an advert for it in a "county" magazine and went along to the open day. They really liked it and it offered the subject choices and sports that their son was interested in, so they went for it. He's been there 3 years and loves it - it was almost tailor-made for him! Without the glossy magazine advert, they'd have never known about it!

I never took much notice of the educational supplements because they were always seemed to be for private schools and we were only considering state schools.

I think an advert might only be worthwhile if you might compete with the private schools, and if that is the case your school is likely to be oversubscribed anyway and not need to advertise.

Radio ads sound naff and a bit desperate, and aren't good ways of getting info over, because they are often heard in the car and you'd have to write stuff down.
People might buy the newspaper to get all the info in a written form.
My DCs very popular school in an area of popular schools doesn't advertise (for students) and is always highly oversubscribed.

I was impressed by some bill board posters by local sixth form colleges which at least gave the info and reminded people they both existed.

I thought the MN narrative was.... almost all secondary schools are crap & of the only schools that are any good, it's fiercely competitive to get a place. If the school is any good, they don't need to advertise.

DD's secondary has gone a bit corporate which makes me feel kind of sick, honest. Notices about open days fair enough.