There are over 4 million parents of children aged 5 to 16 in the UK.  Quite obviously they come from all social classes, and can be almost any age and live anywhere.   They can be involved in any sport, cultural or social event, or in none.  They might be regular attendees at a religious service of their choice, or actively campaigning against religion in school. They can be criminals, members of the House of Lords, drug addicts, pop stars, Olympic champions, or just regular people, such as live next to you.

Which raises a huge question: how on earth can you contact such an amorphous group of people - and then make some sort of sense of your advertising.

The answer is, you can potentially use any medium you wish, depending on the nature of the product, type of parent, age range of the child and so on.    However there are three methods of reaching these parents which dominate the market, and we focus below on just these three:

1. Via schools

2. Via web

3. Via magazines

Via schools

Reaching parents with the co-operation of schools is the most well established and generally the most successful method of selling to parents products and services that can be considered to be educational in some way.

In essence, one writes to the school and invites the school to write on your behalf to the parents, suggesting that they purchase your product.  The school gets some sort of reward for doing this.

You can imagine that the "voice" that you use in this type of work, and the reward the school gets (plus the way in which it gets the reward) are among the key factors in this kind of selling.

Full details of selling to parents via schools can be read in an article by Tony Attwood which is on sale (£5.00 per download) on our on-line shop.

Via the internet

Find a website which is visited by a large number of parents of the type you want to reach, and you might well find you have a way of advertising to and selling to parents.

Clearly we can't list all the possible websites here - the simplest method of looking for them is to type into google some key words which define the sorts of parents you want.

We will mention one site however, because it is a site that those of us who put this website together operate: The Schools Directory.

This site gets a significant number of visits each day (up to around 800) mostly from parents seeking information on schooling and education.  The site has links to every school in the UK, plus information on school holidays, home schooling, how to find each school, school exam results and many other such issues, plus a range of articles.

If you are interested in advertising on this site please do call us on 01536 399 000.  The current rate for a link from either of the two main pages (the home page or the page containing the links to all the schools) is just £30 per month.

Via magazines

As with websites, there are numerous magazines relating to parenting, from those that deal with very young children, to those suggesting things to do (in all senses!) with teenagers.  There are magazines covering parenting in general, parenting at certain ages, and the specific areas of helping your child develop – such as magazines on children’s books, children’s education, children’s fashion, children’s interest, children’s safety, plus magazines on pregnancy and the early years of childhood – and that’s before we get to the hundreds of magazines aimed at children themselves.

Results are variable - it is always worth looking carefully at the publication first before advertising and then considering the price of the advertisement against the possible return.  

Do remember that results are never guaranteed.  One might expect a readership of (say) 30,000 must bring in some sales – but then the same can be said about any form of advertising.  Some advertising works and some does not, and, until you have established which is which, it is unwise to splash out too much money.

Hamilton House can advise on possible publications and can help arrange the placement of advertisements.