The prospectus or brochure is often the first impression that a parent or prospective student has of the school or college. We all know how first impressions count, so what does your prospectus say about your school or college? Oyster has been working with schools and colleges for some time and we’ve got some tips on the process and considerations involved in designing your school or college prospectus or brochure.

Making decisions

Very often the first point of reference when considering a school will be your prospectus. First impressions are critical, a bad start is hard to overcome, a good one is a big stride in the right direction. Selecting a school is a fairly prescriptive process – you read the prospectus, (visit the school website) and then, if the impression is good, you visit the school. The school visit is probably when you make your decision but the prospectus will shape your attitude before you visit, or at worst prevent you from making that visit!

Design and message

The values and character of your school need to radiate from your prospectus. It sounds simple but actually it’s a refined process that needs a lot of thought. People don’t want to wade through reams of copy or endure a flat copy style, so how you deliver the written message is critical. Images are the first point of reference for the eye, we interpret a great deal from pictures of people. Paper stock and size will influence the look and feel. Design and layout need to make the prospectus easy to view and of course look fantastic!

Creating your prospectus

At Oyster we like to take you through a fairly detailed process to make sure have all the information we need to design a prospectus that promotes your school in its very best light. We start by showing you a range of other prospectuses. We find out what you like and what you don’t. Then we tend to chat a lot about the school, what’s important to you, what are your school’s core values and why your school and your team make it a special place to be. We will ask for a potential parents tour and also to speak to some of your key staff. Only then do we stand back and take a view.

The next step is to present you with a range of initial visuals. We’ll show you some different ideas and get your feedback before agreeing the right direction and developing the prospectus. We keep talking with you all the way and our online management system means you can follow progress, view visuals, see agreed timescales and send messages without requiring email. The whole project is archived online, so anytime you need to refer to an action or download a visual you can.

The Results

The end result is a prospectus that will sell your school and it’s character and values to prospective students and parents. Lots of our clients decide to work with Oyster on a variety of projects. If you would like to discuss your requirements with Oyster, please get in touch.

Oyster is a full service marketing and design agency based in Emsworth in Hampshire.  We specialise in helping schools and colleges to market themselves effectively in a tough economy.  We’d love to work with your school or college too.  For more information please call 01243 389713 and speak to Kharran, our education specialist.  Alternatively, connect with Kharran on LinkedIn or email hello@oysterdesign.co.uk.

Everyone is talking about social media; hash-tags, likes, groups and updates.  We predict that social media will be very important for businesses in 2012 as more organisations use it to research ideas, people and products, creating a incoming marketing environment.

If your organization is looking to embrace social media it is important to have a plan.  Dabbling with the odd social tool (Facebook, Twitter etc) is OK for learning the ropes, but could be potentially damaging for your organisation’s reputation, as an unattended and outdated social media profile is in fact worse than not having one at all.

We’ve put together a 6 point guide for writing your social media plan – it won’t take long and is definitely worth doing.  Enjoy!

1. Understanding you current situation

In order to write your social media plan you need to fully understand your organisation and its situation.  For example you need to know what you sell, who you sell it too, how you position yourself and how you’re currently marketing yourself.

Next, you need to understand what you are looking to achieve from social media in order to meet your expectations – why are you even looking at a social media strategy?  And ‘because everyone else is doing it’ isn’t a great reason, and isn’t a good motivator for the team involved.

Finally, what budget and resources are available?  Is there money in the pot to devote to the effort?  Is there a dedicated team member who can be involved or is this something that people will work on in addition to their job role, in their ‘spare time’.

2. Analysis of your existing community

Your community may already be established, or you may be starting from the ground up.  Either way, you’ll need to understand what is already out there and what people are saying about you (if at all!).

Next, and probably more importantly, you need to understand who your audience is.  Who are you looking to communicate with?  Where are they currently active?  What tools are they currently using?  This is more that just women aged 30-45, this is about their interests, hobbies, shopping habits, website they frequent, time spent on social media etc.  This is valuable information and not a stage that you can afford to skip.

3. Set your goals

It is important to set realistic goals for yourself.  They also need to be SMART, Strategic (work towards your desired outcome), Measurable (how can you measure your success), Achievable (relying on resources/budget), Realistic (don’t over stretch yourself) and Time (how long you expect this to take).

4. Your plan of action

What, specifically are you going to do to achieve your goals?  This will include your content strategy (what, who and when), your channel strategy (where and how) and your campaign strategy (where does this fit in to other campaigns and on what timeline).

5. Measurement

How will you know if you’re doing well?  Measurements can be taken from your goals, if you wanted to see move website visits then you can monitor this by tracking your site on something like Google Analytics.  If you wanted to raise awareness and support you can use ‘like’s’ and ‘re-tweet’s’ to track this.

6. Teaching others and implementing a plan

A social media plan often involves other members of the team.  They might need some training to be able to use some social media tools.  You might also need to write a plan or timetable to help team members understand what is required of them and when.

That’s it!  Good luck…

For help with your social media strategy, or to outsource it off your hands, please get in touch with Oyster on 01243 389713 or email hello@oysterdesign.co.uk.

Marketing on a budget doesn’t necessarily mean cutting the amount you spend but instead assessing where you will get your best returns, what actions you can take that are easy, immediate and cost effective and how you prioritise them. Here are our top 5 activities that won’t break the bank but could open up some new opportunities.

1. Utilize your existing client list

How many of your current customers use all of your services, buy all of your products or even know your full range of offerings? Current customers are the easier people to market to; you know them, they know you, they’re happy with your work/products (of course) and you have their contact details. Never miss an opportunity to cross-sell your products/services. This January, why no arrange a catch-up meeting with your clients to discuss that going on in their business?

2. Shout about the work your doing

Show that you’re busy and that you’re working with lots of people. By talking about your projects people can get a feel of the kind of work that you do and what it might be like working with you. You can use blogs and social media of course but don’t miss the opportunity to talk to people, groups of friends and acquaintances included.

3. Offer free advice and information

By offing free advice you can establish yourself as an authority on your topic. As a source of information you can also offer direction as to products and services that they may wish to use – hopefully yours! After all, a supplier should be an expert in their field.

4. Target similar customers to those you already have

A conversation that starts with “We’ve done something similar with huge success with a similar company to you” is much more powerful than, “We can offer you a services that does X and Y”. Profile your biggest customers, identify the job title of the contacts that you have in this organization, and find their equal in the similar organizations.

5. Go Targeted

Mass marketing is impersonal, non specific and often very expensive. By knowing your market and understanding their needs, you can create a highly targeted campaign that is likely to be much more fruitful that a broad general one. In a world of marketing and information overload, personalising your approach provides a welcome change for consumers

For personalised tips for your organisation or a consultation, please contact Mike or Anna on 01243 389713 or email hello@oysterdesign.co.uk.

Happy New Year and best wishes for 2012 from all of us at Oyster. New Year is a great time for a fresh approach, new initiatives and some thinking outside of the box, and never has this been more important than in 2012. Recession. Double dip. Economic downturn. Good, they’re out of the way and I promise I won’t mention them again….  but their is also some great news; now is a really exciting time for marketing communications, with the advances of our Internet culture and the incredible advances of online marketing tools.

Businesses have two options it seems. The first is to sit out the storm, hibernate until better times return and hope a competitor with a more active approach doesn’t poach your clients. The second is to take a proactive approach to improve and refine your marketing whilst aiding the wider economy a little too.

Marketing and Sales promotion is the single most effective way to grow your business. Marketing smarter is a great starting point; what are you spending and what is the return? Could your money be better spent elsewhere? What is working and what isn’t? There’s an optimum solution for every organisation’s marketing, a point at which the return on investment is good and the integrated approach productive.

Integrated marketing holds the key to effective, lean promotion. An integrated approach looks at the bigger picture of all your marketing efforts and delivers a unified, effective message and strategy. Perhaps you use different agencies for web, PR and design. If you do then you’re certainly not alone but by using different agencies and individuals, the organization is in danger of missing out on a co-ordinated and cohesive approach that will ultimately lead to bigger returns and better returns on investment.

Large organizations all over the World are consolidating their supplier lists to benefit from savings and a properly integrated approach to marketing. Now is a good time for SMEs to follow suit and work closely with integrated creative agencies that can handle all areas – using modern web tools and exploiting opportunities, assessing marketing approach, delivering strong design, writing effective content and unifying marketing communications.

Oyster’s integrated marketing approach is helping our clients to continually achieve better results. We work hard to streamline off and online communications, identify the best value marketing investments and continually monitor activity and results.

For more information or to talk about how Oyster can help with your integrated marketing, please call Mike or Anna on 01243 389713 or email hello@oysterdesign.co.uk.  You can read more about integrated marketing on our website.

Oyster design prospectuses and websites to meet the modern requirements of schools and colleges.  We love the work that we do and we hope you enjoy looking through some of the examples in this booklet.

Download our Schools and College Prospectus Design Brochure here.

Oyster delivers exceptional marketing and design services for schools and colleges:

Design
Lively, modern designs that capture the unique character of every school and college.

Photography
Capturing that special moment, the enthusiasm in the classroom or showing the strength of friendship between pupils, our photography reflect the character of your school or college.

Copywriting
Writing copy with a friendly tone and keeping it digestible and informative – our copywriter gives real impact to prospectuses and websites.

Print
We only use papers supplied by ISO14001 accredited paper merchants and paper mills.  All publications are printed on alcohol free presses and use vegetable based inks.  Paper is sourced from fully sustainable forests if it is not recycled.

Web
We design and build websites to fully meet the requirements of modern education.  We build sites with full editing facilities so you can update copy and images and add pages when you need to.

For more information, please feel free to get in touch on 01243 389713 or email hello@oysterdesign.co.uk

Visit the website – www.tallships.org

An opportunity to take a really good look at your marketing strategy with our full day marketing workout. Your input, ideas, and reflection drive the session, while we keep the process flowing by employing structured models and exercises, and providing our input and experience when you feel you need it. The marketing workshop is run by one of our directors, who is an experienced NLP facilitator.

How is it structured?

Ideally, one or two people from your organisation act as ‘sponsors’. The sponsor should ideally be directly involved with your marketing strategy. It is their job to agree clear goals for the day with us, and to take ownership of the final outcomes.

We structure the process to bring out ideas, air concerns, identify needs, explore modern marketing techniques, consider existing and potential supporters and open up the arena. Together we build ideas, set actions, pose questions and explore options.

At the end, you will have thoroughly reviewed what you do and how you do it, explored new options, asked poignant questions, considered various approaches to marketing strategy and received input from Oyster.

We then feed everything back the outcomes to you as a working plan with agreed and allocated actions and timescales – an enlightening place to arrive!

What does Oyster add?

Oyster is a modern marketing and design agency located on the Hampshire, West Sussex border just an hour from London. We  specialise in marketing strategy. Our clients include Save the Children, Marie Curie Cancer Care, Tall Ships and General Electric.

We bring our experience to the table but we aren’t looking to lecture – you know your business! Our job is to structure the workout so you keep moving forward, and to offer our experience where it helps.

If you would like to consider a marketing workout simply email mike@oysterdesign.co.uk or call us on 01243 389713 and ask to speak with Mike Blatch. We look forward to speaking with you soon.

Attractive, affordable, effective websites

We design and build websites to meet your specific needs and to allow you easy editing of your website. We take you through a thorough and logical process to make sure you get exactly what you want – planning navigation and user experience, a selection of visuals to discuss and adapt, a fixed price that doesn’t change, regular online visuals and full training so you can use the content management system with ease.

Oyster provide a full web solution for your online experience – e-commerce, bookings, search facilities, search engine optimisation, social media integration and bespoke programming to meet those one-off needs.

We’ll discuss your brief, advise on approaches and provide a fixed cost estimate that you can rely on.

Call us now 01243 387713, email mike@oysterdesign.co.uk or use our contact form.

Most recent website – August 2011 Tall Ships Youth Trust