Start the new year with some yearbook sales tips
Written by Marketing Staff
The new year usually comes with resolutions and pledges to make improvements on various aspects of life. Well, you can still start eating better or kick all your bad habits. But at the same time, why not put a little work in on improving your yearbook program’s bottom line?
Get 2010 off to the right start by using some of these ideas to boost your yearbook sales.
Sell online
You can make yearbook sales easier by selling online. Walsworth’s Online Sales program will let you set up your own online School Store to make the buying process smoother for your customers. You can see the benefits of Walsworth’s Online Sales program and all the support materials we provide at our Marketing Help page.
Include everyone! Market to everyone!
You should always strive to be inclusive with your coverage, and make sure as many students as possible are featured in the yearbook. A student actually appearing in the yearbook is more likely to be a buyer.
Just as you would always want diversity in the yearbook, you should always make sure to bring some diversity to your yearbook marketing as well. For instance, if your school has a large Spanish-speaking population, target them with mailers and posters written in Spanish.
Sneak preview
Some schools have had great success by teasing their audience with a small sample of the contents of the yearbook. The entire yearbook doesn’t have to be kept a secret. For example, set up a display during lunch and show off a couple of the book’s most attractive spreads and an order table.
One Response to “Start the new year with some yearbook sales tips”
Comments are closed.
January 01, 2010 at 5:31 pm, Steven Kuba said:
Hello, my name is Steven Kuba and I am one of the editors for the Aftermath Yearbook. I would like to say the three points presented in the article are all very good points. I have been on staff for three years and we have always sold online. In order to market to everyone, we handed out candy canes before winter break. Attached was the website where the students could buy a yearbook. And in terms of sneak preview, this year we started a Facebook fan page and started a campaign called “Two-Spread Tuesday” where we show two spreads for two hours every Tuesday.
Other tips I would suggest is doing something as simple as making posters, or if you have a broadcast crew at your school, have them make announcements about the yearbook. The more people see and hear about the yearbook, the more they will want one. Another simple thing is having your staff wear their staff t-shirts on the same day.
Our staff also sends a letter to all the homes of families who have not bought a yearbook yet, reminding them that the deadline is approaching in January.
Something else that we will be doing for the first time this year is posting a list of all the people who have already been used in the yearbook on the cafeteria, and include the page numbers they are on. This would be under the “Marketing to everyone” category.
Sometimes the best marketing is word of mouth marketing. Tell your staff to spread the word to their friends, even stand up and make announcements in their other classes when free time is provided.
So make your school feel like they are surrounded by the yearbook. Posters, shirts, lists, announcements… Anything to get yearbook on the minds of students will benefit your bottom line. And remember, BE CREATIVE!