You have something wonderful to offer and it's free, the next step is to find all the eligible families. You might think this will be easy but getting people's attention is surprisingly difficult. Only an average of 20% of eligible families book - why?
There are lots of reasons why families might not know they are eligible for a council-funded activity. People can be busy, stressed and distracted, particularly if they are under financial pressure. Some parents might not read their emails and some might have poor literacy.
Sharing responsibility for raising awareness
It's hard to get people's attention and many families don't know what they are entitled to. Raising awareness is a shared responsibility between you, the council and Eequ.
How you can promote your Listings
Most councils expect you to promote and market your listings so that you can achieve the number of eligible bookings that you have been funded for. Here are some ideas:
Posters and flyers
Creating a poster and smaller flyers can be helpful for families that aren't connected to social media and don't check their emails regularly.
You can download a QR code from your My Listings page and add a QR code to your poster.
Go to the local schools and ask if you can hand out flyers at home time
Give some flyers to the school to put in eligible children's bags
Put up posters in community centres and village halls
Put up posters in GP surgeries
Give flyers to the local Citizen Advice Centre
Give flyers or posters to the Jobs and Benefits offices
🐘 Remember to collect old posters and provide new ones
Social media
Facebook and Instagram are the best channels for parents.
Before bookings open, post the Eequ link and ask parents to Register their Interest
TIP:
Facebook's algorithms don’t want links in the main body of the text that take you away from Facebook. If you put them in the main body of the text, they dramatically reduce their support of your post.
Best to put the link as the first comment to the post 😉
2. After bookings open, post your link, every few days, with extra photos of what you are doing. Keep posting until you are fully booked.
Export your Marketing List from Eequ
Eequ collects your marketing consent from every booking. This means you can promote your next delivery to everyone who has opted into your marketing. Go to My Listing > Manage Listing > Download listing information, to get a neat list of all the parents who want to hear more about what you offer.
Consider asking your families to share your email with other eligible parents.
Make your marketing email interesting. Tell the families what specific activities you will offer and how fun it will be for the children.
IMPORTANT
Be careful to enter the parent's emails into the BCC (blind copy) line of any marketing email so that you don't disclose personal information to other parties.
Collect Reflections
Once a session is over, you can send a group message to your bookers and ask them to follow this link to send a message: https://eequ.org/reflections
They can open their menu and go to Reflections at any time as well.
How Eequ helps to promote your Listing
SEO
Eequ works on the technology side of promotion by focusing on SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). We make sure that your listing ranks highly and will be found by anyone searching directly on Google or other search engine. Google knows what location people are searching from and will find the most relevant link for the searcher. Bookers can discover you via Google, even if they don't have the council's link or your link.
TIP
If you put text in your cover photo, Google will downrank your listing as text in images does not comply with accessibility standards.
User experience
Eequ also works on the "user experience". This means that a person with only a few moments of attention will be able to land on your listing, understand the offer and take an action to book. We know that this has to happen in only a few seconds as people have a limited attention span when using the internet.
Emails
We also send two booking emails and two reminder emails for each booking or session.
How your council promotes your listing
Your council will promote the delivery via multiple channels but they need your help and this is an important part of the funding agreement.
They have a dedicated website page
They have a dedicated Eequ Organisation Page
They promote via social media
They send marketing emails to parents who have previously booked
Your council communicates with schools and head teachers.
Sometimes they host information days
They communicate with professional services such as children in care, social services and SEND teams
They communicate with other council teams with overlapping concerns such as household support funds
Summary
If we work together we can increase the percentage of eligible families that book. Currently, only 20% of eligible families engage in the funded programmes.
It will have a big impact if you:
Make your listings beautiful - read our help guide here
Make a marketing plan for before, during and after each delivery