Planning your first course as a newly qualified RLSS UK Probationary Trainer Assessor (PTA) can be scary enough! But then you realise you also need to advertise the course so that candidates can sign up.

To make the advertising stage as stress-free as possible, we’ve created this blog post full of helpful hints and tips to help you advertise your first course – even if you have no marketing know-how or experience. Plus… it makes a handy checklist to refer to when running your ongoing courses after completing your probationary period.

Planning your Advertising Activities:

• Start advertising as early as possible to give yourself enough time to promote your course and for candidates to sign up. (We recommend a minimum of 12 weeks before your course delivery date).
• Speak to your RLSS UK Approved Training Centre/Provider (ATC/P) Coordinator to ask if there are any existing course marketing plans.
• Check out the Marketing Resource Toolkits within your RLSS UK Account, which you can easily use to help promote your course. These can be found in the ‘Marketing’ folder for the qualification you deliver in the Resources & Documents area.
• Consider who the target market(s) is for your course because this will affect where you want to conduct your advertising activities. You want to ensure you are advertising in the right places to attract the type of candidate you want (e.g. advertising to attract 16 to 18-year-olds at colleges vs advertising to attract parents re-entering the workplace at nurseries, child activity centres, job centres, etc.).
• Consider a reasonable area radius for how far candidates would be willing to travel to go on a course. Research the physical locations within this radius where your target market(s) would most likely visit. Then you can contact these places and ask permission to put up posters to promote your course (e.g. schools, colleges, universities, swimming clubs, gyms, sports clubs, scout groups, youth centres, community centres and groups, supermarkets, job centres, recruitment agencies, etc).
• Ensure you’ve added your course to RLSS UK Course Finder so that it can be seen by people in your area looking for a course when visiting the RLSS UK website.
• Ensure you have a professional way for interested people to contact you to request more information, and that allows you to stay in contact with candidates who have signed up for your course. (If you don’t already have a suitable professional email , you can create a trainer-specific email address using an email provider such as Gmail or Outlook. If you plan to send out lots of emails regularly, you can also invest in mail marketing software such as Mailchimp or MailerLite to make this easier and automate some of your emails.). Ensure you follow your GDPR policy.

Support you may be able to get from your RLSS UK Approved Training Centre/Provider (ATC/P):

Your ATC/P may have a variety of places or ways that they can help you advertise your course. Here are a few ideas to help you know what to ask about when speaking to your RLSS UK Approved Training Centre/Provider (ATC/P) Coordinator or a member of their marketing department (if they have one).

Places your ATC/P could help you to advertise your course:

• On their website – such as an upcoming events or calendar webpage/section, an announcement on their homepage, a banner on their homepage or another relevant webpage, etc.
• Display posters in and around the venue, e.g., on notice boards, within the changing rooms or on public entrance doors, on A-frame display boards, within staff room areas, etc.
• Send an email to their dedicated marketing list specifically about the course or as part of a newsletter-style email that contains a banner or text advertising your course.
• Post content on their social media platforms to advertise your course to their followers.
• Add a video or graphic to their advertising screens in reception or public areas - e.g. café, canteen, waiting areas, etc.

Other ways that your ATC/P could help you advertise your course:

• Loan you or put up pull-up banners and/or leaflets, which can be displayed within reception or other public areas, and taken to other venues where you want to promote your course.
• Provide you with marketing assets from previous courses that you can use within your own advertising activities (e.g. video or text testimonials, video clips from the day, etc)

Help with Advertising the Course Yourself:

Even if you have the help of an ATC/P, we recommend conducting your own advertising activities to ensure that you attract as many candidates to your course as possible and set yourself up for ongoing success, too.

Here’s an overview of the places where you can advertise your course and some helpful hints and tips for each:

Print and Physical Location Advertising:

• Ask permission to put up posters in any local areas where your target market(s) will visit (e.g. schools, colleges, universities, swimming clubs, gyms, sports clubs, scout groups, youth centres, community centres and groups, supermarkets, job centres, recruitment agencies, etc).
• Contact local newspaper organisations and community publications to ask them to add your course to their upcoming event pages or other relevant sections.

General Online Advertising

• Contact the website administrators of local community event websites to ask them to add your course to their upcoming event webpages, calendar webpages and email bulletins (if they send out any).
• Ask permission to post on local city/town Facebook or other online groups/forums (e.g. Reddit, Discord, Mumsnet, etc) that your target market(s) may be members of.
• Reach out to your network (e.g. family, friends, and work colleagues) and ask them to refer a friend.

Social Media Advertising:

• Check out the social media templates within the Marketing Resource Toolkits in your RLSS UK Account to help you get started.
• Create a content calendar to help you plan, create, and schedule/post your social media content – check out our helpful content ideas list below for specific posts you can create and share.
• Reply to all the comments on your posts and answer all Direct Messages (DMs) – try to do this at least once daily.
• If you have an advertising budget, you can pay to promote one of your social media posts or create a specific advertisement for your target market(s) within your local area radius.

Email Advertising:

• Set up your email footer to display a text or banner advert for your course (email banner templates are available within the Marketing Resource Toolkits within your RLSS UK Account).
• Reply to all email enquiries for more information and send follow-up emails to anyone who has contacted you about signing up but hasn’t done so yet.
• Encourage people to sign up for a course waitlist and send them regular content to keep informed of when your next course is running. Check out our helpful content ideas list below for specific emails you can create and send.

Social Media and Email Content Ideas:

• New course available. Book now.
• Calling all [add your target market name here. e.g. students]! Sign up now to [enter a benefit or the course name here, e.g. want a job with flexible work hours?]
• Everything you need to know about [enter the course name].
• Share the benefits of the course (e.g., start a career, progress a career, get back into work, have flexible working hours, give back to your community, etc).
• What it’s like to be a [enter the qualification achievement, e.g. lifeguard] (You want to show rather than tell the benefits of the course achievements with this type of content piece).
• Spaces are filling up quickly for…
• Reminder: The course is happening soon.
• Frequently asked questions (FAQs) about…
• Reminder: Don’t forget to book your place on…
• Limited spaces left!
• There are only a few places remaining! Book now.
• Only two/one more week(s) until…
• Fully booked! The next course runs on…
• Behind the scenes (Share what happens on the day of the course)
• Recap of the day. Sign up for the next course on…
• Testimonials/Reviews/Messages from your course
• Congratulations to our newly trained [enter qualification achievement, e.g. first aiders]