The 4 vital ingredients for building a UK Schools Database

Any budding chefs out there will know the importance of layering flavours. The same must be said for building a UK Schools Database to promote your products and services into schools. Picture the spice rack in your kitchen, you may have the small 8 spice version, you may have the larger 20 spice version, or you may be the adventurous type who spends their weekends in the Chinese supermarket, boasting hundreds of different herbs, spices and flavours to layer up your dish.

Regardless of how many, or what variety of spices you may have, you would never throw them all in the same dish, right? So why waste your time building a database of schools which has no relevance to your product or service. Don’t be the supplier trying to offer GCSE Revision modules or Careers advice to Primary Schools, be the one that knows its market and targets the correct schools in the correct areas.

So how can you make sure you target the right schools for your product? Here are 4 vital ingredients to building a schools database to zest up your marketing.

1. Size – schools come in a variety of sizes, the best barometer of size being the numbers of pupils on roll. Make sure your target schools are the correct size for your products and services. Let’s look at some examples. If you are a national building contractor or a large catering firm, targeting schools with at least 500 pupils and building your database from there will give you the best chance of success. If you are a sole trader with limited resources offering a personal service such as IT support, then smaller schools are going to be your key market. However you build your database, choose carefully – approaching the right schools in the first instance will save you time in the long run

2. Location – the second key to your database being optimised for you is school location. Targeting local schools will be important if you do not have the resources to travel, whereas if you are selling online resources then your business is footloose enough for you to not have to worry about where your clients are based. Be realistic here, look at the radius around your business and think about how far you can go to service schools, then see how many schools are actually in that radius and decide if the market is large enough to make an impression in schools.

3. Age range – dependent upon your product or service, you will have to decide what type of schools you are going to add to your database. It is important to remember that schools in the UK teach between the ages of 4 and 18, so there is a vast difference in the marketplaces within them. Selling careers advice to 4 year olds isn’t going to get you very far, nor is offering children’s books to a sixth form centre! Think carefully, who am I targeting, which age range will my product or service suit, and build your database from there. Remember, it is better to have a smaller target to concentrate your efforts on than a scatter gun approach which hopes for the best.

4. School type – there are now over 5,000 schools in England which are classed as Academies. Some are new in name only, some schools have been relocated to brand new sites, and some are new schools altogether. The database of academy schools has grown rapidly over the last 5 years and along with Free schools, is continuing to do so. Adding these to your schools database is vital. Not only do they have a need for a different range of suppliers, but their procurement process is different from other schools. They are independent of local authority control and therefore have much more autonomy when it comes to making purchasing decisions. Check your schools database for academies, and if you haven’t already, start collecting data for them, your sales will rocket!

So remember, if you want to boost your sales and become a selling to schools expert, you need to start with a great database. You need to make sure you have thought about the 4 vital ingredients for successfully developing your database in the first place. Get this database growth strategy right in the beginning, and you will reap the benefits in the long run.

EdProcure actively assist UK Schools suppliers in finding buyers in the education marketplace. Whatever the product or service, if schools buy it, then EdProcure will find a buyer and boost your sales.

Matching buyers to suppliers in Education

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This release was published on openPR.