Marketing to Tech-Savvy Students

I know I usually write about math-related topics, but today I wanted to share some of the great things that are going on in my yearbook class.

I am a yearbook advisor at a school with just over 1100 students.  Each year we order 600 yearbooks to sell to students and it always comes down to the last moment to see if we can sell them all.  If we don't sell all of our books, our program ends up in debt.  If our program ends up in debt, Waukesha North might not have a yearbook next year.  So, we are always looking for new ways to advertise to our students and parents to make sure that all future Northstars will have a yearbook to capture their memories.

This year I have had some wonderful students want to get involved with the marketing side of yearbook.  I have had students volunteer to make signs, talk with students during class and sell yearbooks at parent-teacher conferences.

This year we wanted to try some new techniques.  One of the things we tried that got quite a

reaction was our "Parking Ticket" event.  Students created "parking tickets" and put them on the cars in our parking lot.  When it was time for students to leave for the day, many were startled by the ticket.  Some were pretty upset until they read the ticket more closely and realized that it was just an advertisement.  It definitely got people talking and thinking about the yearbook.

We also paired up with the people in charge of our vending machines at North.  I had a couple of students meet our vending machine representative before school started in the morning.  We placed address labels on many of the items in the machine to advertise our book.  We kept our message simple: "Buy Your Yearbook: yearbookforever.com".

We have also tried to jumped into the digital age by creating a couple of videos to promote our book.  The first video was created early in the school year.  A group of students created an entertaining movie trailer to promote our book called The Unpurchased Yearbook.

This past week, another group of students took a more classic approach.  They were able to incorporate photos and video to create a video that captures the moments and memories of high school.

Both groups did an amazing job with their videos.  We have entered both of them in a video contest through our publishing company, Walsworth Yearbooks.  If we get enough "likes" on Facebook, we could win a yearbook makeover.  You can find our videos at facebook.com/yearbooks.