Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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BUSINESS TO BUSINESS Schools Will Be True to You by LOUIS FERACA An often overlooked, but very effective venue for promotion is schools. Public/private, elementary or university, they are all excellent places to promote your brand. Students of all ages are a driving force of purchases but they also have parents who are buyers. The right promotional product supported by the right media campaign can launch any brand to top of mind in a countywide market. The trick is to help the school while they help you. Parents have a natural affinity for companies that support their kids' school. Public schools are always looking for ways to make money. The financial pressures on them have grown even stronger lately as state and county budgets have been squeezed. We parents prepare every year to be inundated with one fundraiser after another. But some schools and business owners have teamed up to make money for schools while actually giving value for the money (not that huge chocolate bars don't have value). Here is how one scenario that I came upon that works: Entrepreneur A would like to sell stadium cups to a school. The school needs the stadium cups to promote the sports schedule to the fans but can't afford them. Entrepreneur A then has a great idea (wasn't me by the way); she will visit Entrepreneurs B and C and sell them advertising space on the cups next to the school's sports schedule. The advertising pays for the cup so Entrepreneur A makes money. The ads are seen by hundreds or thousands of local parents so Entrepreneurs B and C get good advertising inexpensively and the school gets the cups they needed. Everybody wins. It's brilliant! Many schools also offer to hang advertising banners in stadiums and gymnasiums for a fee. They often produce the banner for you included in the price. The banners are seen by thousands of people per season, driving the cost-per-view down to a very reasonable number. Another method of advertising in schools is to sponsor T-shirts for various activities like field days, fun nights etc. A business can buy space on the shirt and have their logo and message on hundreds of T-shirts that travel all over the school and back to the student's home — sometimes on several different days! Sometimes the cost is as little as a dollar per shirt to participate, so the cost-per-view again is very low. Lastly, here is an idea brought to me by a local chain restaurant. They bought a few hundred bumper stickers for each school in their area. The school's logo and slogan ran across nearly the entire sticker but at the end of each sticker was a tear-off coupon promising a discount for a meal purchase. The school gets the stickers free of charge then sells them for a couple of dollars each to parents who want to show school pride — and raise thousands of dollars. The restaurant gets a stream of new customers for a few hundred dollars. I could go on but the point is that there is no limit to the promotional opportunities through teaming with schools. See your promotional products professional and brainstorm your own plan for cracking the school market. You'll be doing good while doing well. LOUIS FERACA, Owner, U.S, Logoworks, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomingweekly. com. The ABCs of Back to School Vision Why 20/20 is NOT Enough (Seminar) Monday, August 5th 6:00 to 7:15 pm at the Owen Drive Location Classroom 1629 Owen Drive Fayetteville, NC Presented by: Dr. John T. Krempecki Pediatrics & Vision Therapy www.CapeFearEye.com Please join us for our quarterly seminar on The ABCs of Back to School Vision where we will discuss the importance of yearly comprehensive eye exams that goes beyond solely testing for 20/20 vision as well as discuss treatment for numerous visual efficiency & visual processing problems that can directly influence academic performance. RSVP today at 910-672-5017 or register on our Face Book page at www.facebook.com/capefeareye Seats are Limited!! Refreshments will be served! ** (1 out of 4 children) have an undiagnosed vision problem that will interfere with learning 16 UCW AUGUST 21-27, 2013 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM