Ad campaign ideas?

V

vebjar

New Member
Hi everybody,
I am hoping to get some ideas on setting up an ad campaign to get people to be interested in joining my ballroom team. The goal is to urge them to join the team or sign up for the public ballroom classes. I am thinking of placing ads online on google/facebook apart from the posters we put on campus. If you have any ideas for what the message could say for specific target population can you share it here?

My current ad is a basic one targeted at all students in the college. The message says something like 'Ballroom dancing for everybody. See our website today!'. Like many places there is a shortage of men in the team. I am thinking of setting up another ad targeting male engineering/science student describing how ballroom dancing can be logical/structured but yet stimulating.

Can you guys suggest other slogans for this and other target populations to get students to take a look at ballroom dancing? Facebook ads allow up to 135 characters in the message.

Thanks!
 
I would suggest something catchy and attention grabbing. If you want to target the male population, emphasize that they can meet girls (as long as you keep it tasteful). Or, something as simple as, "Always wanted to learn how to ballroom dance? Here's your chance!" Another option is capitalizing on the popularity of Dancing with the Stars in some fashion.

I would also make sure you research all of your school's advertising options, such as email lists & listservs, digital outlets, chalking sidewalks if it's something that is commonly done, newspaper ads, stuffing mailboxes, and so on. Sometimes there are so many flyers and posters that people stop paying attention to them.

Also key is having a really easy-to-find, professional looking website that is informative and easily navigable. All the lesson information, FAQs, and relevant contact information for officers, etc.
 
We do send out ads on email list/listservs etc. But still there are a lot of groups trying to get their attention.
 
perhaps start with who you want to target?
for example:
- social dancers
- competitive dancers
- college students
- alumni
- males/females
- jocks, frats/sororities, nerds, etc...

once you have a more specific group in mind, then designing a poster or ad campaign which appeals to them is easier. of course, you can appeal to more than one group.

secondly, through the different channels of advertising(postering, email, web, facebook, radio, newspaper ads, etc...), give coupons to events which identifies which channel it came from. this gives a rough metric for effectiveness of each channel. for example, we found that the ROI(return on investment) for postering if very low, and email/web is best. but postering is good to get new people, while email/web is good for our consistent socialites.

just some ideas to start with, we can talks a lot more about this, pm me if you're interested.
 
My team went with the facebook ads one semester, and did not choose to do it again. I don't think there was a bad experience or anything, just little return. So make sure you monitor how effective it is! :D

Does your school have sit-down dining halls? If they do, contact whoever is in charge and ask to put little table tents with a postcard sized advertisement. My school conveniently already had a system for this, including plastic table tents we could slip our flyer into. If yours doesn't, you can still create a folded paper table tent like this: http://blanksusa.com/accelsite/images/imagemgr/tn800_image367.jpg

Another option my team has had a lot of success with is demos. Whenever the school has an involvement fair for clubs, or any sort of culture day, we offer/ask to do a demo. We also contact dining hall managers and ask to do demos in the middle of dining halls while people eat.

Also, be sure to advertise for both your team and your public ballroom classes (we have something similar, a team and a club). People who are interested only in a club activity will avoid it if they think you need to already be good at dancing, so stressing "No Experience Needed!" is important. Our team uses "No Partner? No Experience? No Problem!" (soo cheesy!) On the other hand, you don't want to loose potential team members who are looking for something more serious, if they think you are only a club activity. Our team uses several different fliers, with different pictures: some of club members learning to dance in a group lesson, and some of team members dancing in competition dress.

Targeting engineering/science students is a great idea... many of our best dancers (and one of our favorite coaches) are math, comp sci, etc. Perhaps using just diagrams on a flyer (like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Line_of_dance_us.jpg or http://www.dancesport.uk.com/tid-bits/chart1.gif) could sway their interest. A cheesy line like "Mathematics in Motion" couldn't hurt, either.
 
middy said:
I would suggest something catchy and attention grabbing. If you want to target the male population, emphasize that they can meet girls (as long as you keep it tasteful).
Click to expand...

We used to do this. :rolleyes:

I think it got guys in the door, but you have to have a way to keep them there as well.
 
jjs914 said:
We used to do this. :rolleyes:

I think it got guys in the door, but you have to have a way to keep them there as well.
Click to expand...
Yes, of course. The rest of the organization has to work for them to stay. We've made a bunch of changes to run the team smoother this year. So the hope is, once they are in the door, more would stay now than they had in the past.

Thanks everybody for sharing your experiences/ideas. Right now I am posting the ads for free (using coupons I found by binging, haha). So the investment is primarily time. But if it works out then we could allocate some money for it.

I have a few ads that target some groups. I'll also try out those charts and suburbaknght's line and report if any of this works out particularly well.
 
dbk said:
My team went with the facebook ads one semester, and did not choose to do it again. I don't think there was a bad experience or anything, just little return. So make sure you monitor how effective it is! :D

Does your school have sit-down dining halls? If they do, contact whoever is in charge and ask to put little table tents with a postcard sized advertisement. My school conveniently already had a system for this, including plastic table tents we could slip our flyer into. If yours doesn't, you can still create a folded paper table tent like this: http://blanksusa.com/accelsite/images/imagemgr/tn800_image367.jpg

Another option my team has had a lot of success with is demos. Whenever the school has an involvement fair for clubs, or any sort of culture day, we offer/ask to do a demo. We also contact dining hall managers and ask to do demos in the middle of dining halls while people eat.

Also, be sure to advertise for both your team and your public ballroom classes (we have something similar, a team and a club). People who are interested only in a club activity will avoid it if they think you need to already be good at dancing, so stressing "No Experience Needed!" is important. Our team uses "No Partner? No Experience? No Problem!" (soo cheesy!) On the other hand, you don't want to loose potential team members who are looking for something more serious, if they think you are only a club activity. Our team uses several different fliers, with different pictures: some of club members learning to dance in a group lesson, and some of team members dancing in competition dress.

Targeting engineering/science students is a great idea... many of our best dancers (and one of our favorite coaches) are math, comp sci, etc. Perhaps using just diagrams on a flyer (like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Line_of_dance_us.jpg or http://www.dancesport.uk.com/tid-bits/chart1.gif) could sway their interest. A cheesy line like "Mathematics in Motion" couldn't hurt, either.
Click to expand...

When I've met scientific/engineering types in my dancing, they've often expressed that they took up dancing to make themselves more well rounded, develop their creative side, and acquire more social skills, all the things that a science career did not provide. Being intelligent, logical people, they had identified and analyzed their shortcomings and created a plan to address it. So maybe appeal to that? :)
 
Also have a look at the promotional video that Cambridge's team in the UK produced recently:

http://www.srcf.ucam.org/cudt/pages/promo
 
Ad Campaign

Facebook, Twitter and other social media can be very helpful. It takes time to drive traffic to your sites and that's why quick off the cuff campaigns do not work. There are other people on campus who do have popular sites and these are the people you want to make friends with. I am going to recommend some books:
Twitterville by Shel Israel
The Whuffie Factor by Tara Hunt
Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan

Have you talked to professors or advanced students in the Business and Marketing Departments? They would know what communication modes are working well in your school and have pointers. Good Luck
 
middy said:
If you want to target the male population, emphasize that they can meet girls (as long as you keep it tasteful).
Click to expand...

The problem with that is the women in the class may not appreciate being presented as a piece of meat and may get annoyed at being hit on by guys when they are just there to learn. You could emphasize that it's a good way to build confidence, however.

But, you could set up a dance demonstration in a public place and have a clip board at the ready to take names/email addresses. Does your school have a newspaper? Place an ad. Make announcements at the beginning of classes.
 
Merrylegs said:
The problem with that is the women in the class may not appreciate being presented as a piece of meat and may get annoyed at being hit on by guys when they are just there to learn. You could emphasize that it's a good way to build confidence, however.
Click to expand...

That is what I meant by the suggestion. But it is true that a lot of guys (particularly the ones who have never danced at all before) started dancing at least in part to meet girls, and ended up finding that they loved it. The creepy ones don't tend to stick around.
 
On our college team, word of mouth is the strongest advertising factor, so make sure your dancers are talking up the team to all their friends.

Advertising free food will get college students to come regardless of the event. The downside is that many will just come for the free food.

Large banners placed in prominent locations help as well. Phrasing such as "no experience or partner required" is absolutely necessary, otherwise many people who would otherwise be interested will be scared off.
 
Merrylegs said:
The problem with that is the women in the class may not appreciate being presented as a piece of meat and may get annoyed at being hit on by guys when they are just there to learn.
Click to expand...

This is true, but I've found that the guys who are only interested in getting girls either drop out after one class, or never come at all, because they're not willing to put themselves out there and dance. The guys who do come, stay, and learn to dance do it because they want to dance... the "meet girls!" is often just the final straw that makes them say "eh, why not?" and attend a class.
 
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