Handing out leaflets to students outside of secondary schools

[Ali_SA]

Hi there,

I have a training centre where we provide training for Computer Games Design for teenagers and pre-teens.

Our most effective method of advertisement has been handing out leaflets to students outside of secondary schools.

We send our staff to stand outside the school before students leave, and we give them the leaflets.

Considering we do this on public streets, we don't need permission from schools, however we've had a couple of schools approaching us and asking us not do hand out the leafelts.
Before, we used to just show up to schools without saying anything to them in advance, however we have now started to send e-mails to the school we want to visit to inform them about our intention.

However we get many schools asking us not to do it.
We think this is very unfair as we're doing it on public streets, advertising an educational activity.

What is the best way in approaching this? I've contacted the council to get a license for this, but they say there is no license to give as we're free to do this, however if the school complains, an officer will come and may ask us to "move on".

Any ideas on how to advertise to school students?
We've also spent a big amount of financial resources for online marketing (google and fb) and have had VERY little response. Leaflets have worked very well, but if we don't advertise we can't run!

Any ideas?

 

[UKSBD]

If you ask anyone in authority if you can do anything you have created a problem for them.

If anything goes wrong, it comes back on them, so they will inevitably say no.

 

[LeafletsInLincs]

If it were me, I'd scrap the hand to hand and just put them onto lamp posts near schools. Much less time consuming.

I agree with you about facebook advertising.

What about getting your flyers put up in the shops near the schools or maybe places like skate parks? Might be worth a try.

 

[paulears]

The Police can't ask you to 'move on' unless you are causing an obstruction, but handing out leaflets on the pavement could well impede passage, so you may well be unintentionally causing one. The problem of course is your unsupervised contact with minors. You've opened the door to the never never land of dealing with children and vulnerable young people. Doing what you do will create deep distrust. Totally crazy of course, but your only correct process would be to be DBS checked and as a 'checked person', the school couldn't really object to yo doing this in a public place. It's madness of course - but that's how is nowadays.

 

[The Byre]

Schools ALWAYS react as if stung by a wasp when people try to sell kids stuff outside the school gates. This is not something new either. When I was at school back in 49BC, the teachers chased any vendors and other nefarious people away from the gates and called the police if they did not move immediately.

If they did not do this, the road would be filled with burger and ice-cream vans, Scientologists, Muslim preachers, Seventh Day Adventists, pimps, thieves and pick-pockets and every other ne'er-do-well and yummy-mummies in four-by-fours.

 

[ethical PR]

If it were me, I'd scrap the hand to hand and just put them onto lamp posts near schools. Much less time consuming.

I agree with you about facebook advertising.

What about getting your flyers put up in the shops near the schools or maybe places like skate parks? Might be worth a try.

Why are you suggesting to the OP he does something which isn't legal and which the local council can take him to court for? In your line of business you should know better than to suggest fly posting on lamp posts.

 

[myfairworld]

If you are looking to use social media Facebook isn't the place if you are targeting teens and pre-teens. I don't know exactly which is the place at the moment - it used to be Snapchat but that may have changed. Facebook these days is essentially a hang out for the middle aged and older person like me! N.B. When I employed an apprentice, a young lady with an iPhone welded into the palm of her hand, I had to get her to open a Facebook account so that she could help me with the management of our Facebook page. She used social media all the time of course, just not Facebook, Twitter and similar old time stuff.

It would be useful to observe the flow of students as they come out of school and where they head for. You might be able to station yourself further along one of the 'flows' and refrain from being an obstruction by handing out leaflets as you walk to and fro rather than standing and handing them out. If you can observe where the various flows go to - cake shops and takeaways tend to be one of the places that age group heads to after school - it might be possible to persuade some of those end points to display and advert or a pile of leaflets for a small financial consideration or even just because the owner happens to be in a good mood.

 

[Ali_SA]

The Police can't ask you to 'move on' unless you are causing an obstruction, but handing out leaflets on the pavement could well impede passage, so you may well be unintentionally causing one. The problem of course is your unsupervised contact with minors. You've opened the door to the never never land of dealing with children and vulnerable young people. Doing what you do will create deep distrust. Totally crazy of course, but your only correct process would be to be DBS checked and as a 'checked person', the school couldn't really object to yo doing this in a public place. It's madness of course - but that's how is nowadays.

Do you know where I could read about the powers the police have in regards to asking someone to "move on"?
I've looked everywhere and cant find anything.

 

[Ali_SA]

If you ask anyone in authority if you can do anything you have created a problem for them.

If anything goes wrong, it comes back on them, so they will inevitably say no.

Do you think we should just show up and hand out leaflets without prior notice?

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Is it the school or the teaching pre-school children they are concerned about
What checks do you make on your staff, are they all DBS checked, are all male or mixed sex
Most adults would wary of a commercial establishment teaching their kids these days

 

[myfairworld]

Do you know where I could read about the powers the police have in regards to asking someone to "move on"?

I suspect they have a generalised right to ask people to "move on" whenever/wherever and obstruction is being caused which could lead to difficulty, danger or simply inconvenience for others. So a pavement pedlar or busker (who does not have permission to trade in that particular place) maybe told to move on because they are impeding the flow of pedestrians along the pavement. As well as breaking up a fight the police may ask those watching to "move on" both to help defuse the situation and because the crowd is making it difficult for others to move around the shopping centre or wherever. I suppose it comes under the general heading of keeping the peace (not just fighting crime) and has been reinforced over the years by the fact that most of the public will indeed move on if requested to do so by a police officer.

I'm sure that generally speaking you have every right to hand out leaflets but you'd have to work in a school or have traded opposite to one (I had a shop opposite a primary school until recently) to really understand the problems which arise at school gates. The behaviour of parents in their cars is bad enough but added to that are all the things mentioned by The Byre. School entrances are a magnet for ice cream vans, those advocating a variety of religions and branches of religions, people who want to sell things (!) or steal things, and people who'd like to persuade the child of their choice to come for a ride in their car. If you ask to hand out leaflets and the school agrees all manner of other people will then demand the right to do the same - even leaving those promoting religions or political viewpoints out of it, there are so many people who, like you, would love to distribute leaflets advertising this, that or the other outside schools. As well as the obstruction caused parents will complain bitterly to the headteacher about this and expect them to do something about it.

Also schools are increasingly commercial places, the days when fund raising focused mainly on the Christmas Fair and the Summer Fair are long over. Some schools would probably allow you FOR A FEE to advertise in the school email newsletter or on the school website or even to stand within the school premises in a designated place to hand out leaflets pre-approved by the school. Some schools would not even consider this of course.

 

[UKSBD]

Do you think we should just show up and hand out leaflets without prior notice?

Depends how badly you want to hand them out or not.

If you ask, chances are they so no, so if you do, it makes you look bad and could get you bad publicity.

If you just do it, when approached and asked to stop, you continue, it makes you look bad and could get you bad publicity.

You do it, try not to attract the attention of anyone who you think will ask you to stop, if they do, you move on to the next school.

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

Try to work with the schools. Make it official and offer incentives.

Schools should (in theory) appreciate extracurricular activities providing they are of educational value to the students and you work within the framework of the school.

Anything else is just too risky. All it takes is one child to tell their parents that they received the leaflet from school, and then parent to ask a teacher about the course, and find out it's not approved or endorsed, and then it opens up a can of worms. You'll have the school on your back even more, especially if parents become concerned as to how your staff are gaining access to their children.

Right now, you're just a company trying to advertise unsolicited services. You need to work with schools to help them understand the value you will give to their students in helping them to learn new skills and introducing them to new career choices.

 

[stender]

pay one of the kids to give them out.

 

[ethical PR]

It sounds like you may have rushed in and assumed online advertising would work for you without taking the time to do a bit of market research.

I can completely understand why schools don't want your team hanging around the school gates.

However you dress it up as an educational activity at the end of the day you are running a business and doing this to make money.

You need to invest in an advertising approach that doesn't put schools backs up.

Invest in

• Stalls at school fairs
• Advertise on school websites
• Advertise in school newsletters
• Talk to the schools about running after school clubs and taster sessions

You can use the money you were using on online advertising - it was never going to work for this target audience.

 

[Karimbo]

If you listen to the life stories of entreprenuers like Mark Cuban, the dragons etc you'll find that they did not have this sort of "seeking permission attitude" you need to be shameless and put yourself first. You are not doing anything illegal, and school has no legitimate grounds to object.

Schools are rightfully quite protective over their students and they will come out and ask what you're doing. You need to explain what you're doing (so they realise you're sane and normal) and politely tell them you are outside of school grounds and you're not doing anything wrong and keep leafleting away.

Though this is a pretty labour intensive approach - you may want to find a facebook group that may be your demographic and sponser them.

 

[ethical PR]

Sorry @Karimbo this is such bad advice. You seem to have taken advice from this book verbatim without any thought to the situation being discussed.

1. You may be doing something illegal in many areas councils limit where you can distribute advertising or you need a permit. One of the areas they are particularly concerned about is outside schools.

2. Schools and parents are two key target audiences this company will need to get on board. Schools because they can endorse, parents because they more likely than not be the ones paying for their services.Why would you want to alienate them?

3. You will end up causing littering - not a good way to get your local community on board

4. Schools and parents understandably have concerns about strange adults hanging around school gates - is this really the reputation you want for your company?

 

[Karimbo]

Sorry @Karimbo this is such bad advice. You seem to have taken advice from this book verbatim without any thought to the situation being discussed.

1. You may be doing something illegal in many areas councils limit where you can distribute advertising or you need a permit. One of the areas they are particularly concerned about is outside schools.

2. Schools and parents are two key target audiences this company will need to get on board. Schools because they can endorse, parents because they more likely than not be the ones paying for their services.Why would you want to alienate them?

3. You will end up causing littering - not a good way to get your local community on board

4. Schools and parents understandably have concerns about strange adults hanging around school gates - is this really the reputation you want for your company?

1. OP approached council, council said they're not bothered

2. School may dislike something doesn't mean it's illegal. Good luck going through the red tape to get endorsement from school/parents (whoever these "parents" are). Unless OP is a further education accredited organisation I highly doubt they'll get any endorsement.

3. Who cares. if you're bothered then go around and pick up all the discarded leaflets around the area after handing them out. Most drops will happen within the first 60 seconds so they should be discarded around the proximity of where it was distributed.

4. Who cares about what others think. There will always be naysayers and jobsworth who interfere in your business. You can't listen to every critic. If you believe in something you just have to go and do it.


You seem to be very risk averse and too concerned about the negative sides. You cant be too concered about this because no matter who you are - you will always have whiners and naysayers. In business I don't care about all the noise and whiners, the focus should be on your target clientele. What will any 16 year old who wants to get into video games programming think of your actions. I only ever care about my target audience.

As a PR person I'm sure you are aware of loads of PR strategies which capitalised on "bad press". E.g. the are you beach body ready ad. All the fat women who would never buy protein shakes got offended and when on social media to complain about the bad adverts - but who cares about what they think, they're not in the gym, they would never buy protein shakes. The company got massive amounts of publicity from all demographics far more than anything that their billboard campaigns could ever get. As a result their brand got massive exposure and it was received by both the out of shape mob as well as women who were trying to get in shape and at the gym 3-4 times a week and were looking for the beach body.

The critics indirectly aided their marketing goals and they're sales went through the roof.

having a thick skin will get you far in life.

 

[ethical PR]

As a PR person I am of course aware of companies who didn't listen to their publics, get it badly wrong and in some cases ending up losing their business.

I am not risk adverse, but there is no point taking pointless risks for the sake of it, when there are much better ways of the OP promoting his business.

Unless the OP got something in writing from the local council, someone on the phone saying they are not bothered is worthless. Wait till the 20K fine lands on his doorstep.

Schools often endorse suppliers whether schools photos or after school clubs.

The target audience isn't the 12-16 year old it's the parents who buy it for them. That's why any sensible business should care about them.

Hilarious that you decided to highlight the offensive beach body ready campaign as an example to highlight your argument when it has been named by campaign magazine as no 1 in it's top ten turkeys of 2015 for being the most dreadful ad campaign out there

http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/top-10-turkeys-2015/1376237

 

[Karimbo]

So what law has OP broken? Council isn't bothered and OP is on council (public) property.

Again who cares about the naysayers. The ad campaign was massively successful in generating sales and getting the company's name out there. They got free publicity for weeks they used the media to their strength and got free nationwide coverage.

What qualifies it to be a flop? it's just one writers opinion who has his/her head stuck up their backside.

They offended loads of people who weren't even their target audience, but reached almost every one of their target audience.

 

[Karimbo]

You are making it sound like leafleting outside a school is akin to molesting the children. They're just handing out leaflets for gods sake. What has this country come to?

 

[The Byre]

You are making it sound like leafleting outside a school is akin to molesting the children. They're just handing out leaflets for gods sake. What has this country come to?

We have NEVER accepted the pestering of kids by sales-people, religions, nut-jobs, perverts, ice-cream vans, hot-dog vans, or any other people with an agenda in the vicinity of schools.

When I was but a stripling in short pants, an ice cream van pulled up outside the school gates.

"Bing, Bong, Bing, Bong!" and there was a queue of some 50 kids at the van-side. Within a minute, the headmaster strode up and told the van driver to 'Go away!' in no uncertain terms.

The van driver flatly refused and stayed put, knowing that the headmaster could hardly prevent the children from leaving the school for ever! Then the police rolled up.

Oh, them pesky bylaws!

 

[Karimbo]

We have NEVER accepted the pestering of kids by sales-people, religions, nut-jobs, perverts, ice-cream vans, hot-dog vans, or any other people with an agenda in the vicinity of schools.

When I was but a stripling in short pants, an ice cream van pulled up outside the school gates.

"Bing, Bong, Bing, Bong!" and there was a queue of some 50 kids at the van-side. Within a minute, the headmaster strode up and told the van driver to 'Go away!' in no uncertain terms.

The van driver flatly refused and stayed put, knowing that the headmaster could hardly prevent the children from leaving the school for ever! Then the police rolled up.

Oh, them pesky bylaws!

No, leafleting is not pestering. You have one leaflet out and people who are interested take you. You use common sense, dony stand at a choke point in pedestrian traffic, dont obstruct and those who are interested will take the leaflet.

There is a school up my road and in the summer there is an ice cream van always there. It's been there for years and years. You dont know what reason the police asked the ice cream van to jog on, probably just a double yellow or something along those lines.

 

[Karimbo]

What bylaws btw? http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1745916-Ice-cream-van-outside-school

Look at all these whingers [mumsnet lot] complaining about ice cream vans outside schools and headteachers writing to council and nothing being done about it. I'm sure the police were called and police probably said it's not their matter.

I think your head has too much time on their hands and focus on whats within school gates and not outside.

 

[Scalloway]

Permission to distribute leaflets (England and Wales)

https://www.gov.uk/permission-to-distribute-leaflets

 

[Newchodge]

Do you know where I could read about the powers the police have in regards to asking someone to "move on"?
I've looked everywhere and cant find anything.

That will be because they have no powers to do that, unless someone is committing an offence, such as obstruction. You need to lookup the offence.

 

[ethical PR]

The ad campaign was massively successful in generating sales and getting the company's name out there. They got free publicity for weeks they used the media to their strength and got free nationwide coverage.

What qualifies it to be a flop? it's just one writers opinion who has his/her head stuck up their backside.

They offended loads of people who weren't even their target audience, but reached almost every one of their target audience.

This isn't just 'one writers opinion' it's the opinion of Campaign - the leading, well respected trade magazine for the marketing and advertising industry.

Do send over the research you were quoting which demonstrates the campaign you are so fond of was 'massively successful' in generating sales and gaining positive publicity for the company amongst its target audiences.

This will make your arguments more credible.

 

[Karimbo]

This isn't just 'one writers opinion' it's the opinion of Campaign - the leading, well respected trade magazine for the marketing and advertising industry.

Do send over the research you were quoting which demonstrates the campaign you are so fond of was 'massively successful' in generating sales and gaining positive publicity for the company amongst its target audiences.

This will make your arguments more credible.

Protein world and their ad caption "are you beach body ready" are renowned all over the country. It has made protein world a household name.

The source for their success is here: http://uk.businessinsider.com/prote...the-beach-body-ready-campaign-backlash-2015-4

It was massively successful and the bra burning femenists who kicked up a fuss about it were Protein World's number 1 advertising tool. The more they complained about it, the more publicity they gave and more sales Protein World got.

 

[Karimbo]

If that's not a success, I don't know what is. A mere 18 month old company makes £1M in sales in 4 days!!

 

[ethical PR]

Protein world and their ad caption "are you beach body ready" are renowned all over the country. It has made protein world a household name.

The source for their success is here: http://uk.businessinsider.com/prote...the-beach-body-ready-campaign-backlash-2015-4

It was massively successful and the bra burning femenists who kicked up a fuss about it were Protein World's number 1 advertising tool. The more they complained about it, the more publicity they gave and more sales Protein World got.

Thanks Karimbo. However the key words in the article are 'apparently made around £1 million ($1.5 million) in four days'. This is likely to be some PR puffery from the company or their agency, rather than any statement of fact, which is what I thought you were providing to support your argument.

The word is feminist by the way - 'bra burning' haven't heard that word associated with people who believe in equal rights for women since the 1970's.

Anyway I apologise to the forum for dragging this thread off course.

OP - it would be great to hear back from you in terms of what marketing you decided to invest in and how it is working for your business.

 

[Nochexman]

Any ideas on how to advertise to school students?

Have you tried working with the schools?

As a school governor, schools have never been more interested in commercial proposals, so try them out.

One reason why schools don't like people giving out leaflets unsolicited outside schools is because the school has a duty of care to the children, so if for example a child went into the road to avoid a crowd of children surrounding a leaflet distributor and was strike by a bus, the authorities would want to know what the school did about keeping the pavements clear.

 

[Ali_SA]

OP here.

Thank you all so much for the conversations.
I'm sorry for not taking part in this. I have been very very busy.

But I have come back to tell toy about how it went and ask for even more advice.

Truth is, we tried handing out leaflets outside 3 schools, 2 of them went well and we got some students and for the third one there was actually an argument between us and the school's headmaster, who would actually take our leaflets from the hands of the students and destroy them.
I did tell him those are technically our property and he is destroying them, but how far can you push something over a bunch of leaflets?

Anyways, so later on we realized there is a market within the home educated students. So we started to target them and considering they have their own online presents within facebook and so on, we managed to bring them along.
It was very difficult however, because if you don't personally home educate your child, they wont let you join their group. But a couple of our students were home educated so they did advertise for us.

We did manage to get a number of students from that market, however we have come to an issue now.
The issue is, because they're home educated, they try to fill out their times with as many different activities as they can, and all of their activities are at different times. So it has made it very difficult to set up classes which would suit multiple students timetable.

So we are deciding to target school children again. And I have come back to get more advice.

What's the best way to advertise to them without handing out leaflets outside schools?
I've realized the leafleting option only works if you don't inform the school about your intention, just show up and hand out leaflets. In this case, some schools do argue and give you hassle.

Now, parents who send their kids to schools, unlike home educating parents, don't have their own circles of online presents which you can easily target (or maybe they do and I just don't know how to find them).

We've also tried advertising online (for example I paid a lot of money and advertised on netmums and didn't get anywhere), some other websites did send us 1 or 2 students but not enough to build a business upon. We just got so much more students from the free advertising we had on home educated groups.

So any ideas on how to approach this? How can we target kids and bring in high number of students without going through the schools? We've tried e-mailing many different schools but never heard anything back from any of them.

Many thanks for your help in advance.

 

[The Byre]

One of the businesses I am involved in, is a music school. We began last Summer with an open day and signed up a whole host of new pupils, as well as taking over a collection that came with the main teacher. We shall be recruiting further teachers this Summer, so as you see, we seem to be doing something right.

There is one target demographic and one only for additional tuition for kids and that is the 'aspirant middle-classes'. That means doctors, lawyers, senior architects, that sort of thing. Our most popular profession for parents is something medical, usually doctor, but also includes senior nurses, radiologists and stuff like that. Many of the adult learners are also doctors.

These people demand that those teaching their children are teachers. That means people with a music degree that have also attended teacher training college and have actually taught in schools.

They are qualified professionals and expect their children to be taught by qualified professionals. If they look at the website of the school, they can see who the people involved are and what qualifications and experience they bring. People pay and pay well for quality tuition for themselves and for their children. They pay nothing for a pig-in-a-poke!

I had a look at your website and the only information about you is deeply hidden in one of the course descriptions! That should be right up front. You are a nice looking chap and seem to have the right qualifications, so show your face! If I am to de-trouser c.a. £100 a month for 12 months (that's roughly what we charge) I want to know who I am dealing with and what experience and qualifications the tutors bring to the party.

OK, so if you were in our area (you ain't!) I would immediately offer you a contract, stick you in a room with equipment and some snotty kids and generally get the ball rolling.

Step one, would be to get some local PR going, local TV, radio and the press, to attend some gala event to launch the school. It would only be small at first, but remember what Hilaire Belloc said about the Ketchup Bottle -

"Oh beware the ketchup bottle,
First nothing comes and then a lot'll."

These things spread best by reputation. Lawyer talks to lawyer "I say, how's that home-schooling going for Jonquil and Hermione?"

"Well, maths and physics is still a bit fraught, but we've found the most amazingly good private software school and they have a separate music department as well."

And before you know it, lawyer talks to doctor and doctor talks to architect and you'll be turning people away and looking for staff!

 

[paulears]

The colleges are having big issues with professionals. In the past, you could bring in an industry professional to take a class. Really as a guest speaker, not replace the real teacher and some were really good. My old college is an example. In one department, they got a very well known professional (and famous personality from the 70's and 80s) to come in and do a workshop session. It went down brilliantly - the students got loads of tips and tricks, plus a real sense of how the industry works. So they decided to repeat it. It was worth about £250 a day to the person, who fancied doing maybe a couple of days here, and a couple there. Then they dropped the bombshell - he had to take a teaching course for compliance issues, and get a DBS check done (that was the easy bit). He didn't have to take the full teaching course, but it was going to take an evening a week for a year, and require him to teach with an observer to validate the qualification. He said stuff it.

So they turned away somebody well known, very competent and a good example of how you make money, willing to pass on his knowledge. They did it again with an off-shore safety officer. The guy who looks after H&S on a gas platform in the North Sea. He needed a teaching qualification. My teaching qualification was awarded in 1996 or 7 (can't remember which) and just recently they changed the rules and wanted me to go on a new course, at my own expense - as I'm still doing a bit of supply teaching - and I figured I could justify the £800 or so. Then I discovered I could not pass. One unit involved lesson planning, which as a supply teacher you do not do - you HAVE to teach what the missing teacher needs you to do. The other unit required classroom observation, and the reason a supply teacher is there is because a teacher isn't - so if they had somebody to observe, they wouldn't need a supply! I phoned the DofE and they said = oh? Hadn't thought of that. The solution was for me to do some unpaid volunteer classes when I could be observed and plan some lessons. Teaching is great, however, the schools are often dire, behaviour shocking and the teachers stressed to the roof. No way I'm doing the training and working for free. I'm now the longest serving and most experienced teacher in my field at one agency, and I get fewer and fewer jobs because many schools now deem me unqualified. I'm not that sad.

The irony is that when I was learning to be a teacher, the people on my course were doctors, policemen, nurses, dentists, prison officers and other professionals who needed to teach as part of their job. Do I think I learned a lot on my PGCE? Nope - it was dull, boring and to a large degree, pointless. I admit some elements have been useful - but an awful lot of the content was padding!

 

[Mrs P]

The Byre is right. I think you should be able to sell your service many times over.
This is just the sort of activity schools love.

As a parent of two boys aged 8 & 13, I suspect I am your target client (for the money anyway) I would sign up both my boys to this type of activity. ( I did check your area, too far away)

You should approach the schools in a professional way and I am sure they will love what you have to offer.

To put it in context; 8yr old primary school offer a range of after sch clubs every day, from the usual sports, craft etc. to commercial clubs offering language, music, football, karate,drama, lego building (really) and they each relieve us parents of £5 - £6 per session (1hour) each week. They also get to fill my inbox with emails for holiday clubs and extras for upselling. All the paid for clubs are over subscribed with waiting lists.

13 yr old (boys grammar 1400 teenage boys obsessed with gaming and have permanent phone face) you can expect to pay £10 - £20 per session for educational extra curricular activity. He has just chosen his options of which IT & music are included. He is expected to continue with learning an instrument (at our own cost appx. £25 pw in sch time); but more importantly for you are you are aware the IT GCSE curriculum includes designing and building (writing or whatever the techy term is) a game? Again you are offering a perfect supplement to what they are ideally learning.

I'm not a marketing person so cannot help on strategy or advice on how to get in front of the decision maker in the schools. I do know though that both schools my boys attend love having workshops (google something like the bloodhound project (goes to both schools every cpl of years) and theatre workshops etc. to see the type of thing they do). some workshops are paid for by the PTA or governors and others are free in return for leaflets distributed and email to all parents advising us of the workshop our kin experienced and information, links etc on how to sign up for more. For primary schools a giveaway such as a fridge magnet or key ring provides an excellent souvenir.

Failing that an offer of a raffle prize will get you an ad in the Christmas programme.
Also try cubs, scouts etc. they love a guest talker.
Once you get one or two sign up word will go around very quickly.

Good luck (and sorry for waffling on)