Marketing Your School Yearbooks

Your yearbook is the biggest business on your campus. Shouldn’t be marketing your yearbook one of the most important activities for your staff members? It requires much responsibility and gives staff members a taste of how a business runs in the real world. Even after putting in the effort, marketing the yearbook may be disappointing if students aren’t buying or it requires too much time.

If you are facing the challenge of trying to market your book so that as many students as possible would have a concrete record of their memories to look back on, you should check some ideas that have been developed for other advisers, and have been proven to be successful over the years.

These are some creative marketing techniques that will encourage students to purchase a yearbook.

• Display posters in school with photos from yearbook! Use bright colors so they are noticeable. Hang your posters in interesting places at school such as restrooms, lockers, library, gym and office; place them also outside school at banks, post office(s), grocery stores, the mall, fast food hangouts and especially in the store windows of yearbook advertisers.
• Ask students to submit photos for possible inclusion in the yearbook. They will be more likely to buy a book if their photo might be featured
• Offer a payment plan. You will be able to sell books to students who could otherwise not afford one. 
• If your school sends home a mailer during holydays (or at any other time), ask to include a flier for yearbook sales. If appropriate, send home fliers in multiple languages.  
• Ads in the school newspaper, or in football or basketball program. Also, Channel One Ads — Top 10 reasons to buy a yearbook. Use school radio or TV promotions. News releases in local newspapers, on radio or TV.
• Place advertising stickers on items in the school snack machine.  Use “crack & peel” paper 
• Balloons during passing periods and after school.
• Banners on the front or main entrance to the school 
• Increase price after initial campaign to encourage early subscriptions. Follow-up postcards to remind parents that it’s not too late to order yearbooks 
• Create a sense of urgency to buy a yearbook. Have a one-week sales events. During these events, advertise through posters, T-shirts for yearbook staff members, fliers on car windows or in lockers. You could even use chalk to draw advertisements on the concrete. Be as enthusiastic about the book as you can. 
• Organize a giveaway for your sales campaign. For example, you might draw one name of a student who purchased a book in a given week to receive a free iPod Touch or two tickets to the school dance. 
• Have your students use the Internet to increase sales. If they have a MySpace, Facebook, or Twitter account, have them post bulletins about the yearbook. 
• Place a link on your school website to a place where books can be purchased online. 
• Have students man a table at Back to School Night selling books. Have samples of books from previous years on display. Anytime parents are on campus, you should take advantage of the sales opportunity.
• If your school has a database of parent email addresses, send out reminder emails prior to sales events. You could also use an auto dialing system to send a phone message home. 
• In November, send every student who has not yet purchased a book a reminder. Include reasons why they should purchase a book. You might even include how many times they are already pictured in the book. You could even include the page numbers they appear on. 

A well developed marketing program will give all students in your school the opportunity to buy a book and have those special moments to look back on years down the road. Obviously, your program could use the added revenue from increased sales, and all the effort and hard work will be rewarded.