We tend to focus on marketing and promoting safety apps to students because they are the primary users. But there’s another target audience who values campus safety just as much, or possibly more than students. You guessed it - their parents.
The importance of marketing your safety app to parents is often overlooked. Parents want to be informed about your school’s safety plans and the safety resources available to their child. Some parents download the app themselves so that they can receive safety alerts from push notifications.
Reaching Out to Parents and Families
The best way to reach parents and families is through targeted newsletters and your school website. The channels you use to promote your safety app to students are of course different, such as a higher focus on social media. But parents will want their child to download the app for the safety tools and resources. Just like the app gives a student peace of mind, it reassures parents and families that their child is safe.
Taking Advantage of Timing
The ideal time to send out newsletters to parents and families is before the September rush. This can occur at the same time as when you send out your marketing campaign to students. When students are encouraged to download the safety app by their parents, you can count on an increase in downloads.
Keeping Parents in the Loop
If a safety emergency occurs on campus, parents will want to hear about it. This presents an opportunity to show how your safety app functions in an emergency. For example, sending out push notifications to alert the campus, providing offline support resources, etc. Recounting how your safety app is used in an emergency shows the value of having a campus safety app.
Students are the primary target for marketing your safety app. But remember, communicating the benefits of your mobile safety app to parents is important as well.
Do you think marketing to parents will help get more student downloads? What other ways can you market to parents and families? Comment below and let us know what you think!
