As a marketer, you’re always looking for new ways to reach your target consumers. And what better place to reach them than in the classroom? After all, children are our future. But before you start brainstorming ways to get your brand in front of school kids, it’s important to understand the different methods for doing so—and which one is the best. Here are three ways to integrate brands into classroom learning, plus the pros and cons of each:
- Pay for Play
This is the most direct method of integrating brands into classrooms. Businesses simply pay schools for the privilege of having their products and services featured in the curriculum. The benefits of this approach are obvious—namely, that it’s a surefire way to get your brand in front of students on a regular basis. However, there are some downsides as well. For one thing, pay-for-play arrangements can be perceived as being unethical, which can damage your brand’s reputation. Additionally, these arrangements are often expensive, and there’s no guarantee that students will actually engage with your brand or remember it after they leave the classroom.
- Product Trial and Sampling
If your goal is simply to get your product or service into the hands of students so they can experience it for themselves, then product trial and sampling might be the way to go. Schools are often open to receiving free samples from businesses, especially if those samples can be used in the classroom setting. The benefits of this approach are twofold: first, it’s relatively inexpensive; and second, it allows you to target your audience directly. However, there are some drawbacks as well. chief among them being that you have no control over how or when your product is used, which means there’s no guarantee that students will actually interact with it in a meaningful way.
- Educational Content Contributions
This third option is based on contributing educational content—such as lesson plans, worksheets, or videos—to teachers and then leveraging that content to promote your brand using different in-school and at-home communication tactics. The benefits of this approach are numerous; chief among them being that it allows you to align your brand with educational content that students are already interested in—which increases both engagement and retention rates. Additionally, this approach is relatively inexpensive and provides a great deal of flexibility in terms of how and when you promote your brand.
So there you have it—three different ways to integrate brands into classroom learning, each with its own set of pros and cons. When making the decision about which approach is right for your brand, be sure to consider your goals carefully and choose an option that will allow you to achieve those goals in the most efficient way possible. And if you’re looking for an approach that provides high engagement rates at a low cost, then educational content contributions just might be the way to go.