[quote=“TaipieNewbie”]Passing out of flyers should not be illegal. I cringe in the county when I see the same box on the ground 40 times for a house for sale or the same flyers on the electric posts in a walk to the MRT. But to date I have not seen the handing out of flyers by the foreign teachers yet. If you are asked to hand out flyers that is a red flag - the school has a bad reputation and desperate for some new students.
As for how do the large corporate schools get their students? TV adverts right before semester sign up. I get the “Joy to the world” song stuck in my head every semester start or “In my dream I was Harry Potter” speech.[/quote]
So how does a small but good school get students? Why does it automatically mean that they have a bad reputation if they pass out flyers at a local elementary school once or twice a year?
Yea WTF people, since when is forumosa so full of capitalists! If these statements were true, then all small businesses are bad because they cant afford to advertise on TV. Or is it just english schools that are bad if they are they aren’t big enough to have a TV advertising budget?
Yep, I agree with you on this one. Since when is passing out fliers illegal in Taiwan? Since when is using a foreigner to pass out fliers illegal in Taiwan?
Please show me the penal code (IN CHINESE, MIND YOU!!!) and I’ll shut up.
[quote=“Abacus”][quote=“TaipieNewbie”]Passing out of flyers should not be illegal. I cringe in the county when I see the same box on the ground 40 times for a house for sale or the same flyers on the electric posts in a walk to the MRT. But to date I have not seen the handing out of flyers by the foreign teachers yet. If you are asked to hand out flyers that is a red flag - the school has a bad reputation and desperate for some new students.
As for how do the large corporate schools get their students? TV adverts right before semester sign up. I get the “Joy to the world” song stuck in my head every semester start or “In my dream I was Harry Potter” speech.[/quote]
So how does a small but good school get students? Why does it automatically mean that they have a bad reputation if they pass out flyers at a local elementary school once or twice a year?[/quote]
The same way any small business does. Either get a loan for an advertising budget (bank or relative). OR start slowly and just build up clientele, just like any business does, if they suck in performance it will be obvious before the 8th month of classes. I meant that I would be suspicious if the foreign teacher were out handing out flyers. Honestly how many of us have seen foreign teachers handing out flyers? You use flyers to pique curiosity not drive a new client to your business. I always remember the Chinese teachers going and doing the PR work because what if the foreign teacher does not speak Chinese well or even at all. If a foreign teacher is only worried about the signup bonus, which is nice to get in my opinion, and hands out flyers that is another story. But does that make you a teacher or a retail commission employee?
I used to hand out flyers for my school when I first started working there 2 yrs ago. Embarrassing as hell, but nice to flirt with the hello kitty girls on Chung Hsiao East Rd. Back then our school had 2 students in each class. It now has 10, most classrooms full. This was acheived by professional teaching which helped retain students and then word of mouth through bulletin board that loads of the students read. So, handing out flyers can help a bit, but the best publicity is having a decent school which delivers the goods.
This is a complete non-answer. i’m not sure if you’re really thinking about this from a business perspective. What kind of advertising is going to attract students for a small school? By far the easiest and cheapest is going to the 1 or 2 local elementary schools and handing out flyers after school for 30 minutes a couple times a year. This is better than TV ads, radio ads and newspaper ads. This is better than junk mail. tbh I can’t think of a way that you could spend your advertising budget more efficiently.
Yes, word of mouth and building up a presence in the community is the long-term solution. but every additional student gained might be the difference between a school making it or going under. And everyone talks about how hard it is to find a job but I don’t think times are easy for buxibans either right now.
I am not interested in doing this at all. But I do want my school to succeed and add more students and potentially more classes (the real financial benefit).
It’s so competitive out there. In the building where I teach, there are at least six schools. A slick website usually does the trick. Internet marketing is what it’s all about, and like I said earlier, backing up what you say. Once the students trust you, they will only say good things about your school. I teach adults by the way. It may be different for kids school.
Great, so you’ve got your loan, then what? Unless you are Joy, Kojen, and the like you are not going on national television with commercials. Most small schools in a city are looking at reaching people within a radius of a few km of their place of business. I can’t see how we would have reached as many people when we opened shop if we had not been handing flyers out. I dreaded it, but what other way to let people know there is something new in town? Word of mouth is working for me now, but when you start at zero word of mouth isn’t going to get you far. If you know some more effective way of getting a message out to your target group I would love to know all about it.
I have to agree with navillus here, nearly every landscaping/construction/food delivery business in America starts out by putting fliers in mailboxes or handing them out on the street. I can not think of any reason why a school in Taiwan would be any different.
The dilemna if I remember was the foreign teacher handing out flyers. Then the tangent discussion was the large corporate schools getting business. I really did not see any posts on a viable solution.
I guess everyone who responded works at a fortune 500 company in the marketing department. But as always all forumosa respondents are able to have an opinion. Never fails we have so many Wharton B.S. or Cambridge applied linguistic PhD candidates that the lines get meshed.
[quote=“TaipieNewbie”]The dilemna if I remember was the foreign teacher handing out flyers. Then the tangent discussion was the large corporate schools getting business. I really did not see any posts on a viable solution.
I guess everyone who responded works at a fortune 500 company in the marketing department. But as always all forumosa respondents are able to have an opinion. Never fails we have so many Wharton B.S. or Cambridge applied linguistic PhD candidates that the lines get meshed.[/quote]
wtf kind of response is this? You suggested that it was awful marketing for a foreign teacher to hand out flyers. And that was the original dilemna. You mentioned that they should get a loan for an advertising budget but you have no clue what kind of advertising would be effective.
I still want to know why having a foreign teacher pass out flyers a couple times a year at a local elementary implies that the school has a bad reputation and shitty ESL program?
[quote=“Abacus”][quote=“TaipieNewbie”]The dilemna if I remember was the foreign teacher handing out flyers. Then the tangent discussion was the large corporate schools getting business. I really did not see any posts on a viable solution.
I guess everyone who responded works at a fortune 500 company in the marketing department. But as always all forumosa respondents are able to have an opinion. Never fails we have so many Wharton B.S. or Cambridge applied linguistic PhD candidates that the lines get meshed.[/quote]
wtf kind of response is this? You suggested that it was awful marketing for a foreign teacher to hand out flyers. And that was the original dilemna. You mentioned that they should get a loan for an advertising budget but you have no clue what kind of advertising would be effective.
I still want to know why having a foreign teacher pass out flyers a couple times a year at a local elementary implies that the school has a bad reputation and shitty ESL program?[/quote]
Why would such a highly qualified teacher lower him/herself passing out fliers on the street twice a year?
The question was not if passing out fliers is a bad idea rather, is it a bad idea for the foreign teacher, who is advertised as being highly qualified, to pass out these fliers?
Also for an initial business debut, everything that makes the dead fish move should be ok. In some cases even negative advertising can be better than doing nothing.
[quote=“TaipieNewbie”]The dilemna if I remember was the foreign teacher handing out flyers. Then the tangent discussion was the large corporate schools getting business. I really did not see any posts on a viable solution.
I guess everyone who responded works at a fortune 500 company in the marketing department. But as always all forumosa respondents are able to have an opinion. Never fails we have so many Wharton B.S. or Cambridge applied linguistic PhD candidates that the lines get meshed.[/quote]
Yes exactly! I find the whole thing quite offensive. People are basically saying unless you start up a large school with a number of locations that can cater to a large number of students you shouldn’t be in business.
[quote=“Hamletintaiwan”][quote=“Abacus”][quote=“TaipieNewbie”]The dilemna if I remember was the foreign teacher handing out flyers. Then the tangent discussion was the large corporate schools getting business. I really did not see any posts on a viable solution.
I guess everyone who responded works at a fortune 500 company in the marketing department. But as always all forumosa respondents are able to have an opinion. Never fails we have so many Wharton B.S. or Cambridge applied linguistic PhD candidates that the lines get meshed.[/quote]
wtf kind of response is this? You suggested that it was awful marketing for a foreign teacher to hand out flyers. And that was the original dilemna. You mentioned that they should get a loan for an advertising budget but you have no clue what kind of advertising would be effective.
I still want to know why having a foreign teacher pass out flyers a couple times a year at a local elementary implies that the school has a bad reputation and shitty ESL program?[/quote]
Why would such a highly qualified teacher lower him/herself passing out fliers on the street twice a year?
[/quote]
Puh-leese…“highly qualified”?
So what’s the point of having lovely girls with huge knockers showing off the beer that they’re trying to sell when they could be working for Victoria’s Secret? They’re just as “highly qualified” to be fashion models rather than beer girls?
It’s advertisement and I don’t see anything wrong with this…highly qualified or not.
Passing out fliers works wonders for a school and even more so when the foreign teachers help. Parents don’t always sign up their kids at the time, but they do often remember the school for a later time. I hand out fliers a couple of times a year alongside the Chinese staff and generally the parents are more receptive taking the fliers from me then them, probably because I stand out.
With advertising, it’s not about good or bad, it’s about being remembered.
Why would such a highly qualified teacher lower him/herself passing out fliers on the street twice a year?
The question was not if passing out fliers is a bad idea rather, is it a bad idea for the foreign teacher, who is advertised as being highly qualified, to pass out these fliers?
Also for an initial business debut, everything that makes the dead fish move should be ok. In some cases even negative advertising can be better than doing nothing.[/quote]
You’re not a newb so why are you asking newb questions. Parents (in general) don’t have a damn clue who is a good English teacher or what school has a good English program. Even if their student has been in the school for years. And they typically aren’t able to see the foreign teachers outside of the school. But they can see a well dressed teacher interacting with students after school and maybe they will at least check out the school when they want to enroll their kid.
yes, it’s bad for an English teacher to randomly go canvassing a neighborhood in his flip flops and ratty T-shirts. Is this what you are talking about?
Why would such a highly qualified teacher lower him/herself passing out fliers on the street twice a year?
The question was not if passing out fliers is a bad idea rather, is it a bad idea for the foreign teacher, who is advertised as being highly qualified, to pass out these fliers?
Also for an initial business debut, everything that makes the dead fish move should be ok. In some cases even negative advertising can be better than doing nothing.[/quote]
You’re not a newb so why are you asking newb questions. Parents (in general) don’t have a damn clue who is a good English teacher or what school has a good English program. Even if their student has been in the school for years. And they typically aren’t able to see the foreign teachers outside of the school. But they can see a well dressed teacher interacting with students after school and maybe they will at least check out the school when they want to enroll their kid.
yes, it’s bad for an English teacher to randomly go canvassing a neighborhood in his flip flops and ratty T-shirts. Is this what you are talking about?[/quote]
It’s a matter of reasoning one way or the other.
If a doctor passed me a flier on the street, he’d never see me in his office. I’d assume that he is a terrible doctor.
Maybe Taiwanese people think what a nice doctor, let’s go there next time.
When I see teachers passing out fliers, I right away think, they are not top of the line. Why else would they take a job that makes them do such things.
Taiwanese people might think, Oh! What nice foreign teachers, so friendly and outgoing.
[quote=“Abacus”]I truly cannot understand your logic.
an analogy comparing teachers to doctors?
saying that a good teacher wouldn’t have accepted an otherwise good job because he has to pass out fliers once or twice a year? this is pretty weak.[/quote]
Everyone has his way of comparing things and people I guess.
So what’s the point of having lovely girls with huge knockers showing off the beer that they’re trying to sell when they could be working for Victoria’s Secret? They’re just as “highly qualified” to be fashion models rather than beer girls?
It’s advertisement and I don’t see anything wrong with this…highly qualified or not.[/quote]
[quote=“Hamletintaiwan”][quote=“Abacus”]I truly cannot understand your logic.
an analogy comparing teachers to doctors?
saying that a good teacher wouldn’t have accepted an otherwise good job because he has to pass out fliers once or twice a year? this is pretty weak.[/quote]
Everyone has his way of comparing things and people I guess.
[/quote]
Perhaps it sounds absurd to compare a professional that needed 10 yrs of schooling and residency with a professional that required a university degree in anything.
Imo you’re are looking at this from the perspective of a foreigner that has no interest in passing out fliers and I agree with you there. But I highly doubt that Taiwanese parents see it that way.
