Have you noticed how there is a lot of real estate available in our education magazines? This may be a good time to advertise and not have a lot of competition. I realize no one really knows how much money will be coming to the schools to purchase curriculum, technology and supplementary materials but I would rather be in front of the buyers with some ads than playing catch up in May and June.
I have always been a firm believer in multiple impressions. Public relations efforts coupled with advertising and the rest of the marketing mix help put your products in front of school buyers. Furthermore, advertising ensures PLACEMENT and MESSAGE. We can try to achieve this with pitching products to the trades (PR lingo for magazines) but nothing guarantees you will get across your intended message like pure old ads.
So this is my advice for today…revisit those trades and pick the ones that are getting to your buyers. Then dig out some money to place a series of ads this spring. Work with your PR people to tie in the news release campaign and product pitches. NECC is coming up very fast and my guess is that there will be educators at the conference who have a pocketful of money and not a lot of time to make choices.
This week’s tidbit — Create a series of podcasts to place on your website. Then populate those on at iTunes, PodcastAlley.com, Education Podcast Network( http://epnweb.org/), or Podfeed.net (there are many others). Interview your customers on the phone and record the conversation. Interview your marketing people, your editors, your CEO. Let your prospects hear first-hand, your passion for your products (and something about the pedagogy as well). Build up the personal connection to your products and your company.
The last word…While at NECC, give away an iPod or two and populate the iPods with your collection of podcasts to get them started on learning about your products.
