Your Qabeelah's Top 3 Marketing Techniques!

Alright, this is the Marketing AlMaghrib folder, and I've seen a lot of "This would be cool to try out" or "Here's some theory about marketing" and so on.

My question to the Ameers and Ameerahs, and those involved heavily in marketing a class - what are your top 3 techniques for marketing, and what is your proof, your evidence, your data that this technique is bringing in your numbers?

Siraaj

[Megan Wyatt]

1) Personal marketing works best. As in, people are more likely to take a class if a friend or someone they know tells them about it directly.


Proof: On our class surveys, the majority of students said they heard about AlMaghrib, and we asked them to list their name. We had lots of repeat names (small number of people working really hard to tell others, masha'Allah)

Method: Aside from the fact the Ameers & Ameerahs should be telling everyone and anyone about their classes, getting volunteers to also do so, arranging their own power of ten groups keeps the motivation there.

Originally Posted by Megan Wyatt

1) Personal marketing works best. As in, people are more likely to take a class if a friend or someone they know tells them about it directly.


Proof: On our class surveys, the majority of students said they heard about AlMaghrib, and we asked them to list their name. We had lots of repeat names (small number of people working really hard to tell others, masha'Allah)

Method: Aside from the fact the Ameers & Ameerahs should be telling everyone and anyone about their classes, getting volunteers to also do so, arranging their own power of ten groups keeps the motivation there.

That's a really great idea - tracking referrals! And evaluating how strong the referral system really is, in this case. Got two more?

Siraaj

[Fouzia Usman/Quest]

When we had our "Love Notes" class, it was back in August and we were in "DO or DIE" situation as that was our third and final chance.

One other thing that worked for us is "Heavy Advertising".

I mean it. "Heavy". By all means....

Our advertisment was everywhere. Whether people were registering for the class or not but we made sure they all hear about it, and they see our advertisement anywhere they go.

Result: "Talk of the town" was Love Notes. Alhamdulilah!

How did we do that ?

1. First, we came up with a cool website www.relivetolove.com and introduced that site with a cool spam email. Alhamdulilah! just this email in itself was a big hit.





2. We invested to advertise in one of our famous local news paper InFocus. The idea is not to just come up with an Ad that has dates,location,name of the class and the instructor. Because thats already there in the postcard. So we targettted for something more and came up with this suuper cool Advertisement after hardwork...(thinking HARD). This AD also included testimonials from So Cal students who were well known in the community.




3.We mailed this poster, and post cards to all the masjids in So Cal area. There were about 75 and we also printed special invitation card to all the imams, community leaders, huffaz and mailed them. This involved so much manual work but it helped us to reach all the surrounding areas where we cannot actually drive and place the post cards. (We dont know if any students came to the class by just seeing a post card from a far away place... but the idea behind this is to reach the masses)

4. We had tables almost in any event in So Cal. Since it was summer time there were many events going on and we had tables in all of them. After seeing the advertisement in the paper, and after seeing us repetitively everywhere we ended up having many new visitors to our table. Our tables were also very creative.. we came up with the So cal Snow ... we had quiz papers in our table... we had all the books displayed in our table...

5. After we came up with So Cal Snow, we came up with another cool AD for infocus based on the same concept. We changed our site completly to have the look n feel of the snow.




5. Every two weeks we came up with new Ads for the class that was created using one of the GEMS of the class or any concept of the class. We spammed this email and it was well received as each one had different messages and they were funny too.

6. The location that we got was central location and closer to one of prominent masjid in So Cal. It helped us when we talked to new people.. "Oh the location is the Chinese Cultural center.. right across ICOI". (But since So Cal is widespread we cannot always make everybody happy regarding location as some people have to drive 2 hours.)

All the things that we did had effects in one way or other. Alhamdulilah!

Result: "Talk of the town" was Love Notes.

I wouldnt say these were very effective techniques that other qabeelahs can also follow, but one lesson that can be drawn from our efforts is "Creativity", and our "sincerity" because we were very aggressive in everything we did because we were in a "DO or DIE" situation.

Everything paid off... Alhamdulilah! This was the class that promoted us from "Banu Haqq" to "Qabeelat Haqq".

Quest, awesome re-cap and synopsis of haqq's technique - what are you guys doing right now?

Siraaj

[Megan Wyatt]

Right now? making DU'A!! lol....

Right now I believe we are focusing on reaching out to more people on an individual level. We can't do the same techniques everytime, or we will become something people are "used" to. I thik each class calls for different methods.

And of course, there is facebook...we use facebook. And I run into peopel who go "oh yea, I heard of this class!! I got an invite on facebook.."

[Ibrahim ibnImran]

What are some proven-effective ways to market to MSA students? I've been told by some brothers that our(Wasat's) efforts to attract new college students have failed miserably. Seems ironic, as that should actually be our core audience and a 'renewable' source of new students.

Originally Posted by Ibrahim ibnImran

What are some proven-effective ways to market to MSA students? I've been told by some brothers that our(Wasat's) efforts to attract new college students have failed miserably. Seems ironic, as that should actually be our core audience and a 'renewable' source of new students.

Well, I'll say this - a lot of the younger brothers look around at the people they know and try to attract, and some of them keep trying to get the same people from their childhood cliques over and over again and consider that "not attracting new MSA students".

With the past marketing effort, and all the different techniques we've been using, we've registered A LOT of new students, and they are young, college-aged kids. So there is perceived reality, and reality based on data I have the reality based on data, and the number of people that I have personally registered into the system brand new, and I'm watching the people who are registering into the system brand new without any prompting from us, and this is growing, alhamdulillaah.

If you want to know a place we are looking to make more headway and haven't thus far, it's high school students.

Siraaj

[Megan Wyatt]

Bismillah


I have started to work on the middle and highschool students.
Yep, read it again, middle school students. They have taken three classes with us, and all of them LOVED IT! And took the exam, studied, etc.

Ideally, you need some YG leaders on board, and then encourage them to start hand picking some mature youth to come. Once those youth come, then encourage them to talk to their own friends, and get them interested. They go where their friends go..its the kind of investment we should be making. Imagine getting a whole community totally connected to knowledge while at that age.

[AZikria]

I would add to what sister Quest mentioned that bi weekly clever text messages were being sent and those images above were being sent to many list serves. Although MSA Students were hard to come by I believe that change during our Light of Guidance seminar.