Designing materials
The 5 key communication tools are:
- Advertising (flyers)
- Sales promotions (pens, memory sticks)
- Public relations (launches, newsletters)
- Personal selling (the ‘face-to-face’ approach, learning champions)
- Direct marketing (mailshots and e-shots)
You should plan to use a mix of tools when promoting your project to learners. Advertising can be particularly effective for raising awareness of your project – through posters and flyers, whereas the ‘personal selling’ approach can be the most successful way to get learners to sign up to courses.
5 top tips for designing promotional materials
- Focus on the benefits: for example, it’s the difference learning makes to someone’s confidence and skills (the benefit), rather than the type of course they attend (the product) which makes us want to engage people in learning. What benefits will your project bring?
- Spend time getting your design and branding right – we buy from brands that we recognise and trust
- Placement is everything! Where do your prospective learners spend their time?
- There isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ solution. Be prepared to ‘segment’ your target audience and adapt your messages and materials so that they are appropriate and meaningful for each different group within your audience
- Asking the audience is the best way of finding out if your promotional materials are effective, before you spend your budget on something that doesn’t work
