Tag Archive for: Yearbook

7 Marketing Strategies To Sell Your Yearbook – LOCKDOWN SPECIAL

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Now that you’ve spent time putting together the most awesome yearbook ever, it’s time to actually sell it!

Perhaps you’d normally gather your yearbook team in your office and enthusiastically throw around some marketing strategies as your team slowly back out of your office with a little whistle or a sudden much longed for class to attend?

Or you’d simply pop up a poster announcing the yearbooks are ready, cross your fingers and wait for sales with a slight feeling of desperation?

But not this time!

Lockdown yearbook marketing will be digital, clever and water tight, not letting any sales slip away. 


Telling students to buy a yearbook needs more thought, more emotion and more messaging coming from many different angles. We can’t just pull out our inner Yoda and tell parents what to do.

We’ve put together 7 clear actionable marketing steps to work through, to make sure you sell more yearbooks than ever this year. Carve out one week and work through one strategy each day.

In no particular order…

1] Big, bold and free advertising on Facebook 

Most of the school’s we have daily contact with have rather an active Facebook page. When it’s time to start marketing your yearbook, why not refresh your cover photo – the top banner image that sits behind your profile picture.

It can be tricky popping an image directly on here because of the custom dimension constraints but the simplest way to do this is to design the banner in Canva. Sign up for a free account and simply hit ‘Create Design’ and choose ‘Facebook Cover’. Pick a design template from the left or use a blank canvas and create your own. 

This isn’t just an announcement though, make sure you include a clear CTA (Call to action). What do you want your parents or students to do in order to buy the yearbook? Do you want them to pre-order by leaving their name and details or are you ready to sell? There should be simple clear instructions on the banner with exactly what they need to do next.

2] The Sneaky Peek

Pick out some tantalisers and show them off in a Facebook photo album or simply drip feed them through your social media channels. Use captions to tempt parents to purchase. 

>> ‘The coach ride to the best school trip of the year!’ – for all pics of the outing, order your yearbook here

>> ‘The moment before the whole class ended up in the sea’ – to see more of these, order your yearbook here

>> ‘Polly Temple being awarded Kent School’s Athletic Champion’ – for more awards from our talented sports pupils, order your yearbook here

3] Run a Competition

Now this strategy gives you a triple whammy win. 

Create a competition where the winner receives a free yearbook. Use our idea or just the framework for your own idea.

  1. Create a Photo Caption contest
  2. Announce the contest in the newsletter, in the parent email, on social media or if not in lockdown, on flyers and posters around the school.
  3. Contest: Send in any photo and write a caption. A free school yearbook will be awarded to the best entry. The rest will be shown in the yearbook, after being vetted by the yearbook team 😉
  4. Get the students to share their entries on social media using a specific hashtag #farnhamschoolyearbookcontest

Win #1 – You receive some great content for the yearbook

Win #2 – You create a buzz! Students will be sharing the funniest photos and captions with each other and they’ll be desperate to buy the yearbook whether they win or not, just to see all the funny entries.

Win #3 – Using the hashtag will generate a little hub of images on social media all grouped together. Every student will be desperate to see if they have been included in a funny photo caption! This in turn creates more buzz around the yearbook and more buzz equals more sales!

4] Plan a Sequence of Email Messages Leading To Purchase

Particularly since school closures in lockdown, the email newsletter has become the primary link between schools and parents. If your school sends out an email every Friday, make sure you write a carefully crafted email for 3 or 4 weeks as follows:

Week 1 – It’s time to pre-order the yearbook. Click here to pre-order yours now.

Week 2 – Exciting news! The yearbook has gone to print. It includes some amazing school memories that we know your children will treasure forever. Each and everyone of them is included. Have you ordered your copy yet? Click here to Buy Now.

Week 3 – And the winner of the Photo Caption is Bertie Smith with this photo and caption. Congratulations Bertie! You have won a free yearbook. See all the other hilarious entries in the yearbook. Time is running out, make sure you get your order in!

Week 4 – Last call, the deadline to purchase your yearbook is Monday, don’t miss out. 

5] Refresh The School Website

Use the messages from the sequence above to refresh your website. Include a banner at the top of your website with a clear call to action and align the messaging with the messages going out in the parent email or newsletter. You’ll be amazed at how the ‘Last Call’ email and messaging drives those final sales.

6] Create FOMO

‘Fear Of Missing Out’ is a thing. Use this proven marketing strategy well.

Drip feed tit bits across your school’s social media.

Advertise how many people have pre-ordered the yearbook with posts such as ‘297 students have ordered the 2020 yearbook’ This means that 297 will get to treasure moments like this (include a funny photo with caption). It’s not too late to order yours! Click here to Buy Now.


7] You’re on Page 5!

This particular strategy works well for smaller primary schools where the staff know every single student. It takes time but it works!

The most important part of this strategy is that every single student is included in the yearbook.

Cross check each pupil and mark down each page number in the yearbook where that pupil is featured. Then send out an email to each parent telling them that the yearbook is in print and their child is featured on pages 3 and 5. 

What parent will be able to resist?!

If you haven’t ordered your yearbook yet, there is still time! Use our resources to help you. First of all, get some ideas on how to put together the most awesome yearbook ever and then simply use our online yearbook editor to build yours right now. Get in touch with our team now for a free 10 minute demo.

9 Tips For Creating An Awesome School Yearbook

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With your class spending so much time apart already this year due to the corona virus outbreak, giving each student an extra special yearbook to mark the end of their school year is more important than ever.

Image Credit: Pinterest

 

If you’re the one tasked with the job this year we’re going to help make the whole process a lot more fun. If you get ahead now, while in lockdown, you can create a really personalised and fun yearbook and take away any last minute stress.

 

Image Credit: Pinterest

 

So in no particular order, here are 9 tips for making sure this year’s yearbook is the best yearbook ever!

1] Begin with the right intentions

Teachers face so much admin in their lives and as I write this in April 2020, they are also tasked with virtual learning and marking and keeping their students going during UK lockdown.  But it’s important not to tackle the yearbook like any other piece of admin. 

Yearbooks are treasured forever.

 

Image Credit: Pinterest

 

They tell your school’s unique story and every page is special to all your students. Make it funny, memorable and celebratory.

“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory”

Dr Seuss

2] See it as historical proof that you did actually teach the future Bieber

In years to come, how will you prove that you taught  the future Prime Minister or the latest Justin Bieber? This is where the yearbook becomes vitally important!

 


3] Pick a cool template and let the pages flow

Don’t be put off by the fact that you may not be the world’s best designer. Jump onto our online Yearbook Editor and start by choosing a template out of more than 300 and off you go. Pick one of the covers, designed by our art editors, or personalise it even further with a school photo or perhaps all your students’ names. Choose from 850 fonts and make use of a bank of emojis and icons.

Some of the awesome Yearbook Covers designed by our Art Editors!

 

4] Make it a Team Effort

It needn’t be just you organising the yearbook and chasing images and quotes. Put a team together with everyone that can help. You can all log in to the online editor at the same time and add images, text, emojis and icons. You have full control over which pages each team member can edit so there’ll be no embarrassment at the end when you realise a student has changed a friend’s photo caption!

Image Credit: Pinterest

5] Ask awesome interview questions

To give your yearbook it’s own special uniqueness, you need to steer the ship. By asking the right questions, you will bring out hilarious anecdotes and cultural relevance which you just won’t get with ‘what’s your favourite colour?’ answers. Make it fun for the kids to answer their interview questions. You want them to look back and laugh hysterically as they hold their dusty yearbook in their hands (they’re old at this point). Get creative. Head to Pinterest if you need some ideas. 


Here are some of our favourites…

1] What’s the most embarrassing thing that happened to you in school this year?

2] If you and your friends could get together right now and do one activity, what would it be?

3] What TV show/ blog/video game is most talked about at school?

4] What was your favourite school dinner this year? Or your favourite packed lunch?

5] If there is someone in your class who’ll end up on TV, who would it be and what would they be doing?

6] Where do you see yourself 10 years from now?

7] If you had to pick one piece of work that you did this year, where you enjoyed doing it and you thought it was great, what would it be?

8] One teacher has to go with you and your friends trampolining and then for milkshakes, who would you pick?

9] What did you love learning about the most this year?

10] What one song from this year will remind you of your friends and being at school?

6] Let the kids lead

Once you’ve allocated roles and individual logins to the online editor, it’s time to sit back and let the kids take the lead. It’s not just the final yearbook that will bring joy, it’s the process of putting it together and you want the kids to enjoy doing it and create yet another memory in the meantime.

Treat the yearbook production as if it were a business. Here are some suggested roles and job titles:

Your role – Staff Rep 

Your job involves selecting which students have access to edit the yearbook, giving final sign off and paying the production bill.

Editor

This job will be deciding what will be included in the book, sorting the copy and ensuring all deadlines are met.

Art Director

This job will involve overseeing designs, deciding the order of pages and coordinating who works on each page.

Photo Editor

This job will be to take photos at school events and encourage other students to supply their photos on time.

Financier

This job will involve collecting payments from students and sponsors, making sure to keep accurate records. 

Sales and Marketing

This job is to sell and advertise your yearbooks to students, using our promotional material to help you.

7] Write GREAT awards

Put some thought into your awards/surveys before sending them to your students to answer. Make use of online survey programs to send out the questions and easily collate the responses. Google Forms  is a nice simple one and it’s free.

Don’t write obvious awards such as ‘The best runner’ – Go a bit deeper to make them more interesting. ‘Who would be able to get away from a cheetah the fastest on foot?’

Others..

‘Most likely to end up in a band’

‘Most likely to end up running the country’

‘Most likely to end up on stage making people howl laughing’

8] Add an ‘A Year In Review’ page

Include a page with all the highlights of that particular year. Especially when that year consists of a UK lockdown due to a virus outbreak. Ask the kids to give you their stand out points in the year since they’ll be looking at life from a different angle.

9] Give prompts when asking students to write their own captions

Encourage your students to write some great captions and give them some ideas to work with. Writing your caption is like writing that first paragraph in your CV. It always makes people feel instantly uncomfortable. Show some really good examples. There are so many on Pinterest. The best ones are the funniest so encourage some uplifting spirit when tackling this one.

Think about using a virtual signing tool like Kudoboard. Great for hosting virtual yearbook signings, where students can say goodbye to each other and celebrate their achievements in a remote & supportive way.

If you want to get cracking on your yearbook right now, get in touch with our team and book in for a quick demo on the online editor. Then simply put together a team and off you go!

Header Image Photo Credit: Image by Bev from Pixabay

 

Yearbook Process in 5 Easy Steps

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Here at Boomerang, we like to think we know a thing or two about the  yearbook process. So we’re going to share a few of our secrets with you while you’re in that proactive, ‘back to school’ frame of mind. There are all sorts of things to consider when it comes to making a successful yearbook and they’ve been condensed into this handy list for you:

1. Form a yearbook committee

avengers

This is probably the most important part of the process and not enough students do it. Once you’ve cleared everything with your teacher, find out which students are interested in helping to produce the yearbook and get together after school or in a lunchtime. Committees are great because you can divide up the tasks & roles meaning that everything gets done quicker and more efficiently.

You can have as many people as you like on the committee but we would suggest keeping the numbers to a max. of 10 just to stop things from getting confused. Others may want to chip in but it’s good idea to have a core group to keep everything organised.

2. Decide on content

gatsby

So now you know who’s going to be organising the yearbook, you have some decisions to make. This part can get slightly tricky as people will have different ideas on what needs to be included. In your first meeting, try and put as many ideas down on paper and then discuss. It can help to come up with say, 3 or 4 things that you definitely want to be in there e.g. student profiles, teacher awards, memorable events, etc. and then go from there. The main thing is that you include the school memories that you want to remember in years to come.

3. Choose a yearbook provider (carefully)

yearbook   Yearbook-Sample-Pages8

Finding the right company is vital and it’s important that you don’t just choose the first and cheapest site that you come across. You need to make sure that your provider has all the tools to make your student yearbook a success.

Things to look out for include: help and guidance throughout the process, sample yearbook packs, an easy design/editing process and of course affordability & quality.

4. Don’t forget deadlines & proofing

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Pretty self-explanatory. Make sure you’re clear on all the deadlines – note them down somewhere so you don’t forget! Proofing is key too, Boomerang will proofread each page but doing your best to eliminate mistakes beforehand will make the process much speedier.

5. Spread the word!

high 5

There’s no point putting in the hard yards to create the perfect yearbook if no one knows about it. Make sure you publicise it so that everyone who wants to, has plenty of time to contribute to and purchase one.

Best of luck!

Boom Ed Team x