Back-to-School Campaigns: Paid Advertising Tips

By Brendan Finegan

The back-to-school season is an exciting and anxious time for students. Children are soaking in the last rays of sunshine, and parents are preparing their kids for a new school year. Like a whirlwind, the beach days are over, and kids are suddenly back in the classroom. Parents want to ensure their children are prepared to learn on the first day. 

To ease children and parents into the academic year, Marketing Choices can provide you with a coherent guide for back-to-school campaigns. Your back-to-school ad strategy needs to have a proper framework that can fulfill your shoppers’ needs. With the right approach, you can target your audience’s educational demands and set students on the path toward success. During a highly competitive shopping season, you cannot afford to waste time on generic advertisements.

Know Your Back-to-School Target Audience

Education has a wide range of ages and grade levels you will need to consider. Where the child is in their educational career will influence your back-to-school ad targeting. A college student’s needs will vary significantly from an elementary schooler or kindergartener. Your seasonal paid ads will need to be adaptive depending on the age demographic of your audience. Marketing Choices can help you distinguish the differences across each student’s academic career stage.

For any children within the K-12 setting, your back-to-school marketing should target the parents. However, the advertisements should clearly define how the parent can improve their child’s education with school supplies. The thought of a parent’s kid walking into the first day of school unprepared is distressing. All children will need backpacks, notebooks, writing utensils, and binders before entering their classroom doors. High schoolers may need more complex supplies, like graphing or scientific calculators.

A college student can determine their own needs better and may be purchasing items on their own. Having discounts or special offers can enormously help struggling college students. Your advertising campaigns can sell textbooks at competitive prices. You can have reward programs for college students who share their positive purchasing experiences on popular social media platforms.

Teachers also need to be a part of your PPC for back-to-school. Classroom supplies are always a top priority for teachers at the beginning of the school year. Your back-to-school ads can target common items that appear on teachers’ wishlists. There always seems to be a shortage of poster-boards, whiteboard markers, and tissues for teachers.

Create Your Back-to-School Ad Campaign Timeline

After determining the age of your parents’ children, you will need a clear outline. No back-to-school advertisements would be complete without a direction and a purpose. You would be surprised to see the number of wasted ads without an idea of which school season to target. Some marketers and social media managers believe the back-to-school campaign ends after the first week of school. You can stay ahead of the game with an effective marketing timeline.

Marketing Choices has highly qualified professionals to help you map out your back-to-school paid advertising. Your approach should be flexible depending on the time of the school season. To spark your ad campaign, you should start with pre-season awareness. This should commence a few weeks prior to the beginning of the school year. Parents and teachers alike need the urgency of students returning to school to start their shopping.

Peak shopping for back-to-school goers transitions quickly after pre-season awareness. When parents are aware of their child’s educational needs, they may begin shopping as early as mid-July. Many parents want to be overly prepared for the school year and like to beat the back-to-school shopping rush. Your retail stores should be well-stocked because peak shopping can dramatically ebb and flow into late August.

Although peak shopping can be the majority of your profits, last-minute sales are also essential to consider. Not every parent is going to get their child’s shopping needs right. Within the first few weeks of school, parents may find themselves scurrying back for more supplies. For most of September, your advertisements should be geared towards last-minute sales for parents.

Use Effective SEO Words for Back-to-School Campaigns

Online and social media platforms need to be utilized in your ad campaigns. In today’s global retail world, you will find a competitive field that can easily overwhelm shoppers. Staying up-to-date on effective SEO keywords will help you stand apart. Marketing Choices can help you use SEO words that consumers are searching for the most. Back-to-school keyword research should be a critical part of your marketing, regardless of your target season.

E-commerce back-to-school shopping should also be integrated into your marketing campaign timeline. Many parents use social media platforms, so you should have advertisements that lead directly to your website. College students will more than likely be using different social media pages than the older demographic of their parents. SEO maximization and e-commerce purchasing should be closely linked as you finalize your back-to-school campaigns.

Contact Marketing Choices for a Back-to-School Campaign that Stands Out

Parents, teachers, and college students can easily get lost in back-to-school advertisements. You will have a sensitive timeframe to launch your campaign and target the advertising season. There is not much room for error when it comes to a child’s learning needs. Contact us for a strong and calculated approach to convert your back-to-school campaign into timely purchases.