According to the National Retail Federation, back-to-school spending could reach $39 billion this year. With the right marketing strategies, small businesses can capitalize on back-to-school shopping to bring in more sales and revenue.
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6 back-to-school marketing ideas
You can create an effective marketing campaign by understanding your ideal customer, where they shop, and how to best reach out to them. Let’s look at six low-cost marketing ideas for the back-to-school season.
1. Set up an email marketing campaign.
Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to reach your customers and build an ongoing relationship with them. But most customers are going to be inundated with similar emails, so you need to look for ways to make yours stand out.
Focus on the subject lines above all else — it doesn’t matter how great your emails are if the customer never opens them. Play up the back-to-school theme in the subject line, and if you’re offering any discounts or sales, highlight them right off the bat.
Include engaging elements in all of your emails, like GIFs, drop-down menus, and image carousels. Increasing customer engagement is the best way to also increase the ROI of your campaign.
2. Create a giveaway or contests.
Hosting a contest or giveaway and promoting it on social media is a great way to get the word out about your business. For example, everyone who makes a purchase and posts a photo on Instagram using a specific hashtag will be entered into a drawing for a free iPad.
This is a great way to offer more value for your customers and create more user-generated content for your business. As your customers begin posting about your business, the word will spread to new potential customers.
[Read more: How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy in 6 Steps]
3. Offer back-to-school bundles.
For parents, one of the worst parts of back-to-school shopping is having to visit multiple stores to find everything on their lists. You can solve this problem for them by offering personalized back-to-school bundles.
You can create different bundles for different purposes. For example, you could create a back-to-school bundle for different age groups, like elementary school students, high schoolers, and college students.
You could also create a back-to-school bundle that has everything teachers need to stock their classrooms. You can promote these bundles as an affordable and easier way for teachers and parents to complete their back-to-school shopping.
Hosting a contest or giveaway and promoting it on social media is a great way to get the word out about your business.
4. Partner with a local nonprofit.
If you run a brick-and-mortar store that relies heavily on local traffic, you might consider partnering with a local nonprofit. Look for a charitable organization focusing on improving educational opportunities for local children. From there, you can pledge to donate a certain percentage of your back-to-school profits to that organization.
This gives you an opportunity to not only promote your business but, more importantly, give back to your community. And 70% of customers want to do business with socially responsible brands, so giving back could help you build customer loyalty.
5. Offer special discounts.
Many parents plan to look for additional ways to save on their back-to-school shopping this year amid concerns about inflation and the economy. On average, parents plan to spend $586 per child, which is down slightly from last year.
Offering special discounts on back-to-school necessities could be a great way to incentivize parents to shop with you. You could also offer special deals for returning customers or free shipping for online customers.
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6. Analyze your data for next year's trends.
It’s important to track and analyze your back-to-school marketing campaign’s performance. Measuring key performance indicators (KPIs) like website traffic, email open rates, and social media engagement will help you measure the effectiveness of your campaign.
Tracking and measuring your campaign will also help you learn more about your customers and figure out how to improve your performance next year. You can do this with free and paid tools like email marketing software, Google Analytics, and social media management software.
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