Students offer a rare marketing medium that gives the potential to boost sales when your overall marketing strategy aligns effectively around them. With the current digital age in full swing, virtually all students are connected. A brand’s message is given the best platform via the internet to target this specific group. Conventional marketing methods are effective in dealing with any age group. Still, when dealing with goods and services tailored for the younger generation, specifically, there is a range of things that may need to be specialized.
Millennials are the target audience for brands in the marketing world, with many student marketing agencies popping up, such as Seed Marketing Agency. Agencies of this type employ the young generation with a clear vision of how to cater to the student audience and how to get a brand’s message to appeal to them. Hence, the money they receive by whatever means goes for those products to which they’re being introduced.
How To Appeal To The Student Audience
The university student is a sought after niche and a diverse target market. It can prove challenging to find what works for what is a continually changing demographic. There’s no particular right or wrong answer, but there are strategies that you can incorporate to market to the younger student demographic.
- Talk to them: This audience is an intelligent, productive group of people who should be spoken to like adults. Speak to them as such so that you don’t lose business by treating your customers as if they are somehow insignificant to the older generation. The novelty of having someone reach out to them in an adult capacity will grab their attention, making them remember the interaction and draw them to what you have to say and the things you have to offer. Not having respect for them or any audience will result in their not doing business with you now or in the future. There should be no focus on age or appearance; it should be intellect to intellect.
- Some marketers tend to generalize populations into one specific group as opposed to marketing to a particular demographic. Not every college student has the same mindset. There will be completely different outlooks depending on the majors they are taking and who they are as a person. Someone creative is not going to interpret an advertisement the same way a chemist would view it. You can be a generalist in marketing, but the effect will not be as great. Try to be more personal in your approach to the audience that you want to reach.
- It would help if you took into consideration student income. It can be challenging knowing how to market to a student population when you’re not clear on their spending habits. Stereotypically, college students are known to have very little if any money, which is true of a majority of this population. With their need to buy textbooks, pay for housing, various miscellaneous fees, and overall tuition, leftover funds are null. Find advice on marketing your business here https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2015/08/10/10-tips-for-marketing-your-startup-to-college-students/.
The lack of money means that anything above a specific price point is going to be out of the question, and when they do make purchases, they’re very selective for which they spend their money. Anyone who offers goods and services on the lower end of the price point should promote those. Overly expensive items won’t stand a chance. Not all students have a job that pays them well or parents that offer them support.
- A majority of college students fall on the younger side with the trend creation coming from them. It’s left up to them to determine what is cool and what no longer will be popular. It’s up to businesses to try to decipher the trends and learn ways to use them. The risk that you face is coming off as if you’re making fun of them in some way with their fads because you weren’t able to carry the trend off in the right direction. Check out how they interact with other businesses so you can see what to do or not do. With students, there will be specific colors that stand out more for them and graphics that are more appealing. Something that you like may deter them.
- Your ads should appear online for the student demographic, which is the ideal way to market to students. Millennials are the largest group online, as are Gen Z and the most significant on the college campus with an active social media presence from which they scroll through massive sponsored posts. It’s not likely that they will purchase from you initially, but you must remain consistent. You want them to recognize your brand.
Generally, when a student is browsing through their feed, it’s not a conscious effort, But when they recognize a business that continually pops up, they pay attention. At a time when they have a need, they will remember and buy from you. That is why design, graphics, and color are so essential to draw their attention. Without those aspects, they’ll pass you by with no further thought. Read here for why credit card companies love college students.
College campuses are vast arenas of young people interacting with each other regularly and sharing information about everything that they do, wear, use, need, want, from person to person. They connect to friends and network with new connections regularly in an effort to reach their goals and become successful. In so doing, they share more word-of-mouth dialogue. In these casual or business conversations, this can include the slight mention of a product that caught their eye online. And if you market, correctly it could be yours.
If they aren’t talking about your business, then they’re telling each other about how high your competition is. Young people will talk, good or bad, and if you do everything the right way with your marketing, they’ll be telling friends, family, and new network connections about a great product they saw on your website. It’s a matter of knowing how to cater to the student audience.
