Summer Marketing Guide 2022
Introduction
This marketing guide will provide you with strategies and tactics you can use for your summer marketing. It’s important to plan your summer marketing activity so you can fully execute on that marketing plan over the summer.
Although parents are feeling exhausted from the last couple of months of home learning, many have opened their eyes to the current state of children's education and their futures. This means it is more important now than ever to be present and visible in your communities! As restrictions ease, there will be many opportunities to position Tutor Doctor in front of those looking for academic support. Be the educational leader and go-to resource in your community and educate parents and families of the learning loss school closures have caused.
Your Summer Offer
It's important to think about your summer learning offer - it needs to be a strong offer that will cut through the noise and grab parents' attention. Once you've decided on your offers, then plan out your marketing tactics accordingly. Some offer ideas include:
To learn more about how to create an engaging summer promotion, check out this segment with Kimberly Selchan and Nick Clement from our Summer Planning Series (Skip to 19:52):
Once you've decided on your summer offers, you can build your own custom flyer for your 2022 summer promotions using this template. You can print and distribute this flyer to your communities or share it via email.
Keys to a successful summer promotion flyer:
- Information about the effects of learning loss and why summer learning is important
- Different packages of hours
- Deals for free hours as an incentive
- A deadline for the offer
Marketing Essentials For Success
Community Signs
A community sign campaign is essential to any Tutor Doctor community marketing plan. They are the number one lead generator in the Tutor Doctor network and have a low F1 cost per lead. Using community signs (lawn signs, pole signs, posters) as part of a comprehensive marketing program will achieve the following results:
- Direct leads generated
- Your brand becoming well-known in the community
- Driving leads to your digital marketing
- Visibility as a ‘local’ provider of quality one-to-one in-home and online tutoring
- Influence people’s future purchasing decisions
Summer is a great time to consider signing up for the Community Sign Excellence Program, which will help you in maximizing the potential of your community sign campaign with key data analysis tools.
Eventing
Attending events throughout the summer is a sure-fire way to help get the brand name out there in a very organic and local way. Imagine, if you attend 12 events over the summer with an average footfall of 500 people, you’re exposing your business to 6,000 people! That’s 6,000 people that not only will see your brand, but 6,000 people you have the opportunity to connect with.
Below you'll find the items you'll need to be event ready:
- 1 Tent combo – frame/canopy/single sided back wall/carry case
- 1 Tablecloth – 6 feet
- 1 Prize Wheel – 24”
- 1 Client Banner Stand
- 1 Tutor Recruitment Banner Stand
- Bookmarks & Academic Success Formula Books
- Pencils or Pens
- Summer Marketing Print Materials
- Lead Forms
Click on the links below to see advice from franchisees on eventing:
Top Tips for Planning Your Events
- Get all your summer events booked now
- Can’t find an event to attend during a particular week? Create your own!
- Make sure you have summer material printed beforehand
- Make sure you have your event kit ready to go (replenish any promotional/giveaway items)
Event Engagement Ideas
- "Guess How Many" Jar
- Make your own buttons
- Free balloons
- Spin wheel
- Trivia Questions for free candy
Pay Per Click Campaigns
Your PPC campaigns should never be turned off. Although searches for tutoring may dip over the summer, you want to ensure you still catch those parents that are searching for tutoring or summer learning programs over the summer months.
It’s important to remember that your community marketing efforts will drive the success of your online campaigns.
Outside of management fees, you only pay for those ads clicked so you will be able to roll over any funds not used. Work with your vendor to determine which keywords and ads are producing the best results and tweak your campaigns to focus appropriately. When potential customers do a Google search you want to be listed not only in multiple places on the first page, but also be the brand name that people remember!
Google Review Generation
Generating reviews can serve as a powerful tool with the potential to funnel customers to your website and increase the chance of purchasing your services. Google reviews can help your business stand out and provide a big credibility boost. Looking up business reviews is something many customers do before making a purchase decision, so reviews are important to help show potential clients the positive impact you have made on other families. Businesses with an active Google business page with lots of reviews have a higher SEO ranking, helping improve the online visibility of your business. These reviews can also be repurposed as testimonials that can be shared on your website and on social media. The best part is, this campaign method is completely FREE!
Tips for Generating Google Reviews:
- Send an email to your current and past clients asking to leave a review
- Create a post on your social media channels using one of our templates
- Have tutors ask families for reviews after a successful tutoring session (you can provide incentives to tutor)
- Ask verbally after having a positive interaction with a client over the phone or in person
Facebook Group Lead Generation
Joining local Facebook Groups is a great way to network, build your brand and generate leads! This article provides strategies and tactics on how to use Facebook Groups to generate leads. Click below to review our resource on generating leads through Facebook groups:
Email Marketing & Re-enrollment Campaign
You can download a couple of email templates from the Resource Library. Use these to promote your summer learning programs to your current clients, leads and database! Click below to review all of our resources on email marketing:
Now is a great time to run the re-enrollment email campaign - it's a low cost, time-sensitive sales promotion that targets your current and past customers and prospects.
Franchisees have enjoyed an extra $20,000 - $45,000 in enrollments from this promotion.
IDEA: Consider using text messages / whatsapp to reach out to current and past clients to promote your re-enrollment campaign!
Additional Campaigns for Local Engagement
Prize Draws / Contests
Running simple prize draws or contests on your Facebook Page over the summer is a fantastic way to keep your community engaged with you and the brand! Here are some ideas:
- Academic Success Formula E-Book Giveaway >>
- Tutoring Hours Giveaway (families can use this when it’s time for Back to School)
- Amazon Voucher Giveaway
- Set up a story writing contest for students
- Run a simple reading challenge (a recommended summer reading list for students will be added to the corporate sites that you can use as a resource for this)
Summer Reading Challenge
The Summer Reading Challenge is a way for you to engage with your community and customers over the summer. It’s a simple local challenge – students read some of the books from a recommended reading list (or whichever books they like) and fill in a worksheet to show they have read the books. You can run this challenge in many different ways, but one of the simplest is to run a prize draw. All students who send in their worksheets to you after reading books can be entered into a prize draw.
Spot the Tutor Doctor Car
The Spot the Tutor Doctor Car contest is a fantastic community marketing activity for increasing online engagement and for building your brand awareness. Use this campaign to introduce the Tutor Doctor brand to people in your community who may not know about you, and increase the touch points people have with your business. As we expect more people to be out and about, this summer is a great opportunity to run the campaign.
Additional Resources
Below we've listed out some marketing and promotional creatives that you can use as part of your summer marketing!
- Summer Reading Challenge >>
- Community Signs Playbook >>
- Summer Learning Creatives 2022 >>
- Facebook Community Groups Playbook >>
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