By Tony Attwood
I have a rather bonkers hobby which involves running a blog about Arsenal football club.
It’s bonkers because it brings in abuse from those who disagree with my views. It’s not quite so bonkers in that it earns money and has allowed me to influence the club a little.
Now I mention this because before the recent World Cup thing that was on TV a lot, Goldman Sachs, a leading investment management firm, predicted who would win the event.
They used a whole load of statistical models which I didn’t understand and predicted that Brazil would beat Germany in the final. In fact France beat Croatia, while Germany went out in the group stages and Brazil in the quarter finals. Not such a good prediction.
On the other hand I didn’t predict the tournament winners on my site but I did predict the score and results of four England matches. I got three results right out of four, and also the number of goals England would score correct in three games out of four.
My model was much simpler than Goldman Sachs’ and involved looking at recent results for the two sides. Most of the time it works. Not always, but most of the time.
Now in case you are getting excited and want to use my great ability in this field to make a fortune with the bookies, I would urge you not to waste your time. The odds available on predicting that one team will win, lose, or draw are not big enough to make it worth placing the bet – although if you really want to know my simple system, email me at Tony@schools.co.uk and I’ll send you the summary. It’s only half a page long.
“But what has this got to do with selling to schools or are you just trying to show what a clever chap you are?” I hear you cry.
Well, I can’t predict exactly what you need to write in an advert to make it work, but what I can do is tell you that the way you write the advert affects how many sales you get.
Which is why Schools.co.uk has this website with articles on it which tell you how to write adverts to teachers, how to bring them to the teachers’ attention, and other things just like that.
On the site there is a section that is called “The way the message is written affects the level of sales”, and in that section you’ll find a regularly changing array of articles which tell you pretty much what you need to know.
You’ll find an index to our articles on the home page.
If you have five minutes it might well be worth a look around this site. It’s probably a better use of your time than reading my football blog. But just in case you want to wonder about my sanity, it is here.
Alternatively, if you want to get my opinion on an advert just send a copy to Stephen@schools.co.uk and we’ll do a review, letting you know if we think anything might be improved, and if so how. We did hundreds of these in the last academic year, and the best result was that our re-write of one advert took up response rate ten fold.
Since the service is free it might be worth a try.
If you want to know more please do email Steve at the address above or call 01604 880 927. Or visit www.schools.co.uk
Tony Attwood