In neighbourhoods across Canada, Our Kids is the central platform families use for private school research. In fact, more than 200,000 families use Our Kids every month with the explicit purpose of researching and choosing schools.
What do we give parents that they can’t get elsewhere?
Mainly, we give families a view of their options in context; we help families analyze, compare, and shortlist their school choices within a structured framework. This gives parents a sense of confidence they don’t get from looking at schools in isolation.
Beyond giving families a macro-view of their options, we also give them a deeper understanding of their individual choices. (In our annual survey, 53% of our website visitors told us they already had a school in mind as they used our site. These visitors are using our site to do more thorough research.)
Finally, we guide parents through each step of the school-choice process. Choosing a school is a significant decision for most families—financially, intellectually, and emotionally. We give families the information they need to conduct an effective search.
What makes our platforms so successful at capturing parents?
If a family is considering private schools in Canada, it’s likely they’ll use Our Kids in their research. We reach the majority of families interested in Canadian private schools. In fact, 2.4 million families use Our Kids every year to research schools.
Families find us as soon as they turn to a search engine to research private schools online. We dominate search engine results pages—meaning our website is the #1 to #3 result for thousands of school-related search-phrases. Families navigate to our website 2.4 million times annually. When families land on our website, they learn about all our platforms.
We’ve also built a brand name with families. 14% of our traffic is in the form of families navigating directly to our site—meaning they type “OurKids.net” into their browser or navigate to us through a bookmark in their browser. More than 10,080,208 families have used OurKids.net since 2007.
Offline, 200,000 copies of our printed school guide are distributed annually, with 4 million copies distributed since 1998.
Moreover, families learn about us through third-party advertising. Each year we advertise our school expos to a combined audience of 5.5 million, through newspapers, radio, and other media.
"We receive a significant number of inquiries and emails through Our Kids. We’ve been advertising with them for the past few years now and it has proven to be a worthwhile investment for us."
What do we know about the people using our platforms?
They’re parents of school-aged children, and they’re interested in private schools.
We have around 200,000 monthly visitors, who come from neighbourhoods across Canada.
About half come to our website with a specific school already in mind.
Some use our site to learn about curricula and school types.
What makes our network such a cost-effective way to generate inquiries, shape perceptions, and build awareness?
Consider that only 22% of Canadians are parents of school-aged children—children under 18 (Statistics Canada). Then consider that, of the children attending school in Canada, only 6% attend a private school. Roughly speaking, then, in any given region, your target market will be about 1-2% of the population. It’s a narrow market.
Yet that market constitutes our entire user-base. Essentially everyone using our platforms comes from this market. This enables us to provide content targeted to our specific audience.
Members confirm this when they look at our local reach and compare us with other advertising options. With other options, only a fraction of the local audience represents potential leads.
In addition to targeting the right families, we also deliver your message to parents in an ideal context—one where they pay attention to what you’re saying. Here’s why our audience is so receptive:
It’s one thing to reach families with a message they’re interested in. It’s another to time the delivery of that message to when families are forming their thoughts and opinions. That’s what we do: we present you to families when they are most impressionable.
The mere fact that your information is presented on an authoritative school-choice platform instantly gives it added weight. Likewise, your absence from it is conspicuous.
It warrants repeating: families don’t take choosing a school lightly. They do their research. If a family is considering your school, you can be sure they are searching for what others say about you. They want to see you on Our Kids—Canada’s private school guide. They want to learn about you within our structured framework. The more available your information is—particularly if it’s available on a valuable and authoritative platform like Our Kids—the more comfortable parents are with enrolling. Being on Our Kids helps instill confidence in families considering your school—in a way that your website or traditional advertisements don’t.
How confident are we that an Our Kids membership will work for you?
We guarantee that at least 800 qualified families will view your school profile annually, or we’ll reimburse your membership fees.
To find out more about an Our Kids membership, please call 1-877-272-1845 or email us.
On this website, you can also learn about membership basics and which schools are current members. You can also register for an Our Kids marketing membership now.
See why over 330+ private schools choose Our Kids as their #1 advertising partner.
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