The Ultimate Yearbook Marketing Guide

It’s getting to that time of the year! After the many hours spent creating and designing your yearbook, it’s time to ramp up the marketing! Effective marketing will help boost sales of your yearbook. 

The end of the school year can be a busy time. Sporting events, exams, competitions all compete for our time and attention. With so much going on already, it can be hard to generate yearbook sales. How can you generate the buzz needed to sell out your yearbook? 

Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! This ultimate yearbook marketing guide will help make your yearbook a sell-out success. 

The Ultimate Yearbook Marketing Guide

Make your yearbook a sell-out success with these easy steps. 

Define Your Values

It’s true of any effective sales technique: if you want customers to purchase your product, you have to offer them value. This doesn’t just mean price! Value can come in many forms, from an authentic brand identity to meeting your customers’ needs. 

When it comes to your yearbook, you want to define values that are relevant to your audience. Clear, defined values can be the framework for powerful messaging in your yearbook. Some values that you may want to consider include: 

  • Celebrating student achievements
  • Demonstrating the sense of community in your school
  • Keeping memories of friends and events

Once you have decided on your values, make sure you stick to them. Use the core messaging from your values to help your yearbook marketing efforts. Remember to keep your messaging and tone of voice consistent throughout!

Use Social Media

Social media is a powerful yearbook marketing tool. Think of how much time you spend on social media on a daily basis. It’s a great way to reach and engage with your audience. 

If your school has an active social media presence, promote your yearbook through these profiles. If your school doesn’t yet have any profiles, make sure to set them up. Read more about using social media to increase yearbook engagement here. 

Email Marketing

Emails are a great way of reaching a wider audience, particularly parents. We know you’re already busy promoting your yearbook on social media, but don’t overlook the importance of email. 

Send out an email to parents, and make sure they know to pre-order the yearbook. Keep your email short and sweet, and include a link to your yearbook ordering page. 

For more ideas on selling yearbooks to parents, click here. 

Put Up Posters Around The School

Old fashioned print materials are still a great way to get your message across. Help drive yearbook sales with posters or flyers around your school. 

Some places you may want to put up posters in your school include: 

  • The gym 
  • The library
  • The cafeteria
  • Common areas / lounges

You can even go one step further: hand out print marketing materials at the next school event or parent / teacher evening or the drop-off / pick up lane.

Use Your School’s Marketing Assets

It’s very likely that your school has marketing assets that you can use to your advantage. Some school marketing tools you could use include: 

  • Student Publication – Does your school have a weekly bulletin or news update? If so, this is a great way to reach an audience of students and parents alike. A well-place yearbook ad in your student publication can really help drive yearbook sales. 
  • School Website – Similarly, your school’s website is another great tool to reach a wide audience. A yearbook ad placed on your school’s website can help you take advantage of the site’s traffic. 
  • PA System – Make an announcement about your yearbook sales via your school’s PA system. This ensures that the entire student body will hear your message. 

Take Advantage of YearbookLife’s Marketing Assistance Program

As we mentioned above, email marketing is a great way to reach a wider audience to drive yearbook sales. But if you’ve never designed a marketing email before, there’s no need to be intimidated!

YearbookLife’s Marketing Assistance Program is a free email marketing service that is available for YearbookLife customers. All you have to do is send us your parent email list. It’s really that easy! Did we mention it’s free? Get started with our Marketing Assistance Program today. Simply click here to submit the MAP information form. 

Not a Customer Yet? Contact Us Today for a FREE Quote!

Choosing a yearbook publisher is an important decision in your yearbook creation process. At YearbookLife, we pride ourselves on our competitive pricing, customer and technical support, fast delivery, and our free, easy-to-use software. If you’d like to request a quote today, please click here.

Marketing Your Yearbook: How to Sell Your School Yearbooks

The importance of marketing and selling yearbooks is often overlooked, yet it is just as significant as creating the book itself—if not more so. If you hit your sales goal, you can pay for your yearbook. If you surpass your sales goal, you can use the additional revenue to add more pages to your yearbook or add features like a supplement, or autograph pages. On the flip side, if you miss your sales goal, you may owe money or have to cut part of your program. Whatever the case, marketing and selling your yearbook is vitally important.

Yearbook Flyer.inddAs with any project, proper planning and organization will go a long way in helping you accomplish your goals. In this case, the first step is to assess your school’s past yearbook sales success and build on it. This means taking some time to ask and record answers to the following questions:

  • What worked well in last year’s sales process? Why?
  • What didn’t work well in last year’s sales process and why?
  • If you are new to your school, ask the school secretary and the teachers how well the marketing and sales process worked. great questions to ask could be: What did you like the most about the process? What one thing would you improve about the process?
  • Review all materials that are available from your publisher pertaining to marketing and selling your yearbook. Do you have everything you need? Posters, flyers, money collection envelopes, etc.? What else do you need in order to be prepared for your campaign?

If your school has a tradition of keeping the yearbook a secret, consider changing that tradition. The yearbook is one of a few items where a person is asked to pay in advance with the promise of receiving a high-quality product later. Simple things like including the student body in the design of the book or taking peeks into the yearbook by sharing cover ideas are ways that can increase awareness and connection to the book which, in turn, drives a student or others to purchase one. Learning from last years’ experience is an important first step in building a successful sales and marketing plan for this year’s book.

PART 3: Creating Excitement and Awareness of Your Yearbooks

After scheduling the best times to promote and sell the yearbook, you’ll need to come up with promotional pieces and/or a theme that attracts attention to the upcoming sale dates, times and locations. Many yearbook publishers provide items to help you. Of course, you can always create your own promotional pieces to supplement what you’ve been given. Be creative and come up with clever slogans and messages if you really want to personalize the sales campaign to your school. Naturally, the use of simple statements like “yearbooks on sale!” or “don’t miss the opportunity!” or “last chance!” are always effective and a fast and easy way to draw attention to the yearbook sale.

Other ideas for making the sales campaign fun and effective include:

1. Tap into the principal, teachers, coaches or others heavily involved in planning school events to find out what activities are already planned that you could work around and use as a forum to promote the sale of the year book and possibly even start taking advance orders. (i.e. are there some Open Houses, pep rallies, sports events, activity nights or other events that draw kids and their parents to the school and are a natural venue for  promoting and selling a school yearbook?)

2. Identify the heavy traffic areas in your school where posters and banners could be hung to capture student’s attention about the yearbook. The school cafeteria, library, entrances (and even restrooms!) are used by everyone…don’t miss the chance to catch their
eye as they’re going about their day.

3. Don’t forget about school announcements, student and parent news letters and web sites! Work with your school administration and newsletter staff to determine how to take advantage of these opportunities to get the word out about when and where to buy a yearbook.

Gather Input and Buy-In from Students and Staff

There’s no better way to entice students and staff to buy a yearbook than making sure they’re included in the content and the development process. After all, making sure that the yearbook is representative of the people, events and happenings at your school is the whole value of the yearbook.

1. Develop polls and buyer surveys through English classes at all grade levels. Have these surveys ask for ways the yearbook can be improved and help you better understand their perception of value versus cost. You will be surprised how many people appreciate your effort and how much stronger your yearbook program and sales will be as a result.

2. Conduct a cover design contest and use the winner’s design for the cover or the title page if your school has already chosen a cover style. Miniaturize some of the finalists’ designs and use them as custom clip art throughout your book. This way, more students will receive recognition.

3. Include quotes from student interviews about selected topics. Include as many student
quotes as possible.

Stay tuned for more ideas.

YearboookLife, a Yearbook Publishing Company