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. YearbookLife provides 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.