Introduction
London is an international city. Just under 40% of the population of London was born outside the UK and over 300 languages are spoken here.
Other than English, you will find the most common languages that people speak here to be Polish, Punjabi, Urdu, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and Chinese.
You can have a more detailed look at the exact statistics on the ONS website.
It is therefore not surprising that in an international city with a population from different backgrounds, speaking hundreds of languages, you will find many schools, companies and individuals teaching language classes.
You will come across everything from individual conversational classes to accredited programs aimed at achieving official certifications of fluency in a wide range of languages.
Here are some examples of language proficiency tests that are available.
Whether you specialise in teaching children their second language, polishing up some rough edges for business people or helping new immigrants develop their English skills, you will need to advertise in some way.
We’ll focus largely on leaflet distribution as that is what we specialise in at The Private Postman. However, to give you the whole picture of what is possible we will also discuss other methods of marketing like social media and more.
Why flyers?
Flyers or leaflets are one of the best ways to advertise language classes of all types in London.
The power of the leaflet lies in three main areas.
You can reach everyone
The great thing about leaflet delivery is that when you select an area in London you want to target with your campaign, your leaflets will reach every single household within it.
Some of the online platforms/social apps allow for amazing targeting but inevitably exclude everyone that doesn’t use the given app.
Flyers get your message through every single door in your target part of London.
If you are a tutor that travels to people’s homes, a school with a set location or even multiple locations, focusing on advertising in specific geographical areas is a must. There is nothing better than flyers for this.
We can help you identify your local area in a way that is similar to developing a flyer campaign for a restaurant,
Your local area is a cross section of places that are geographically close to you and places that include demographics you want to target.
For a restaurant, this generally covers their delivery area. For a language school or a tutor, this could mean areas that are within a walking distance or sub 20 minute commute.
To find these places we can look at public transport connections, driving options and
more.
At The Private Postman we can check which demographics are prevalent in these areas with our proprietary mapping system.
To find out more about how our mapping system works, have a look at our tracking and mapping page.
The leaflet is physical
The physical nature of the leaflet is one of its biggest strengths. People tend to often keep flyers they find interesting for later reference.
Even if they are not interested in your services they have to interact with your flyers in some way. As such, you can build mind share in your key areas over longer periods of time and when people finally need the services you offer they already know you.
This is especially true if you spend time carefully designing your flyers and making them look as good as possible.
You can find all the various statistics on flyer delivery in our blog dedicated to statistics and facts about leaflet distribution.
What you will discover is that people respond well to physical advertising. A well-made physical flyer delivered to every single household in your key area is a great tool to spread the word about your language courses and classes.
With leaflets you are in control of your advertising
When you look at online advertising you’ll be able to identify an issue that goes across industries.
In the online sphere, a few big players tend to dominate the market and control how most smaller companies can market themselves.
There are apps, websites and directories dedicated to connecting people to language tutors. However, these technology companies dictate exactly how you can present yourself on these platforms.
Everyone on the given website or platform has to use the same small image size and amount of text.
On top of this you will find that you are inevitably going to be listed together with all of your competitors.
This is perhaps the biggest weakness of these platforms. Everyone you are competing with is listed on the same page with hundreds of people or institutions fighting for the same clients.
This inevitably leads to you paying the technology companies that host your profile to move up in their listings. Ultimately you have almost no control or power over how you present yourself.
Leaflets are completely different. You get to decide what your flyers look like. The size of the leaflets, the design elements, the size of the images you use.
If you work with a good leaflet distribution company, you are also never going to have your flyer delivered together with any of your competitors.
At The Private Postman we make sure that there are no conflicts in any of our deliveries. This means that when you are targeting a given area you effectively have exclusive access to it for that week.
Flyers give you back control over how you present yourself, who you target with your advertising and they allow you to do so separate from your competition.
Social media
With all of that said, it would be unwise to completely ignore all the options the online world gives you.
If you want to, feel free to include your profile on an app or a platform. Just don’t rely on it exclusively. Some of the big ones are First Tutors, Talk Languages and Tutorful.
More interestingly, you can focus some of your energy on social media. You don’t have to worry too much about competing with every single other language tutor or school in the world.
You can create content whether it’s video, images or text that is relevant to your area and the people that can physically come to your location (if that is your focus).
You don’t need millions of hits on your instagram posts. Just make sure that when someone who is interested in language classes or is looking for a course you offer stumbles across your profile they find value what they see.
Social media can act as a kind of a proof that you are a real person or an institution. That you are active.
The tone of your posts can also illustrate the atmosphere in your classes. It can be serious and professional or playful. This completely depends on how you structure your courses and how you want to present yourself.
Ads
You should spend at least a little bit of your time playing around with the various advertising options on your social media app of choice.
In general, they will allow you to target very specific demographics. You can either make custom ads for specific courses or you can simply push your normal content to people.
Whether you decide to go with the hard sell of an ad or a soft push of your content over a longer period of time, try to do so in tandem with your flyer deliveries.
You can have 10,000 leaflets delivered in a specific area of London one week and follow up with a week of social media ads in the exact same location.
Combining marketing methods in this way works incredibly well. When a potential client sees you in the real physical world as well as online the effectiveness of each method multiplies.
Website
If you are going to be spending anytime working on your online presence, focus some of it on your website.
Many people will tell you that websites are not needed and that social media is all that matters online.
This is not the case for most businesses. Many of your serious potential clients will come visit your website when deciding whether to try your services.
You can include a great amount of information about yourself, your classes and courses in a way that is very hard to replicate in any other format.
Your flyers can be an incredibly effective way to get people to visit your site as well. Your flyers can give some basic information and then move people who are interested directly to your website via a clearly outlined URL or a QR code.
Driving relevant traffic in this way is one of the best ways to get people acquainted with what you do and to convert people into your students.
