June 20, 2011

In a time when the typical person is exposed to 5,000 advertisements per day, it’s hard to sort out which ones are relevant. Search engines remember your browsing history to try to give you results that are relevant to you and entire industries have been built on targeting users based on their purchase history. But let’s face it, ads are ads. What you really want is for someone you know and trust to recommend something to you; people that know you, have had real conversations with you, and have even met you for that matter! Word of mouth is by far the most powerful form of marketing. This is the reason that Bing is showing which of your Facebook friends ‘like’ links in their search results and the reason Google has invented the +1 button. But, we’re not all Bing or Google, are we?

Viral marketing refers to marketing that encourages word of mouth spreading of marketing messages. If you can get your audience excited about your message or properly incentivize them to share your message, the message “goes viral”. Viral marketing to students and youth can be extremely effective. They have a ton of friends and love sharing.

It’s all about the sweepstakes

Wait, so you want your users to do your job for you, effectively, and you want to give them what for it?! Offering students and youth a compelling reward for sharing your message is key. The good news is you don’t need to give something to everyone. You just need to give them a chance to win something awesome. That’s what sweepstakes are all about – entering to win a prize. Here’s the kicker though: you need to give them some control over their chances of winning that prize to motivate them to work for it. In fact, if a user has a chance of winning a prize, why would they want their friends entering to win it as well? That would only decrease their chances of winning, wouldn’t it?

Full disclosure: This is where we plug our services, but we think you’ll like them.

StudentUniverse has developed viral marketing software that rewards students and youth for sharing a sweepstakes with their friends by giving them additional entries into the sweepstakes. When sharing a sweepstakes can actually increase your chances of winning it, students and youth are incentivized to spread the word, and the sweepstakes goes viral.

Your marketing message spreads rapidly through the social graph. Relevant consumers learn about your brand from people they know and trust. Students and youth get excited about your brand and build an affinity towards it. And all the while, you’re gaining new leads.

Contact us today to get viral with your marketing!

June 17, 2011

How does your brand market to college students, and what sets it apart? Many of us are looking back on college, and trying to figure out how to capture these elusive, busy students. It can be difficult; but we’d like to suggest putting yourself in their shoes.

Meet Katie. She’s peppy, smart, and involved on campus. She attends a university just outside Boston with 7,000 undergrads. Together we will explore a day in her life. Pay attention to all the marketing outlets she is exposed to today. You might be surprised.

Let’s dive into Katie’s day. She rolls out of bed at 7:30 am, just in time to shower, grab a coffee, and head to class. Right here, she’s been exposed to multiple brands. First, over twenty beauty products, all of which are “roommate approved”. Each of her three roommates has five shower products which she is free to sample as she pleases. On her way to class she stops by Dunkin Donuts and grabs a large iced latte. Despite being from New York, she is forced to tote around a cup with a Red Sox logo on it simply because she’s in Boston. Katie strolls into class and opens up her laptop (with a Burton sticker decorating the lid). First she checks Facebook, then her student e-mail, and finally her personal e-mail. She is bombarded with e-mails from her sorority, the literary society, retail stores, the university police, and her mother. Her best friend forwarded a link to a contest, which she enters and then shares across her social media outlets. While on Facebook, she sees that her crush updated his status to the lyrics from his favorite song. Katie pops them in Google to see what her next iTunes download will be. She sees an Anthropology banner ad featuring the hottest new looks for Spring. She’s forwards a link of a dress to her sister to gain approval before buying.

After two more classes, Katie heads down to the dining hall for lunch. She grabs a copy of the campus paper while she waits for five of her sorority sisters. A tanning salon minutes from campus is offering an exclusive package for college students; she rips the coupon out, throws the paper in her tote and finds a table with the girls.

The tanning salon knows that 82% of college students have read their campus paper in the past three months. Pepsi knows that most students will visit the dining hall daily, so Pepsi provides fountain soda for the school. A college student is in the beginning of their customer life cycle. If advertisers don’t target this market now, it will be difficult to gain their business once they are loyal to a competitor.

While they eat, Katie mentions that coupon she grabbed earlier and asks the sisters if they wanted to join. Three of them jump up and grab a copy of the paper immediately. Katie notices her sisters’ clothing choices. Two are wearing the sorority sweatshirt, one is wearing a JCrew top, one is sporting an Underarmour jacket, and the last, a Boston Red Sox t-shirt. She compliments the JCrew top, and the sister explains when she bought it and the additional colors it came in.

Katie continues her day, tennis practice at 3pm, group meeting at 7, and finally reruns of Jersey Shore at 10. She encounters hundreds, even thousands of marketing outlets throughout her afternoon. CBS News tells us a person typically is exposed to 5,000 advertisements per day. It’s likely Katie exceeds that; she reads magazines at the gym, she watches TV while surfing the Internet, and relies on her friends for fashion advice and the hottest new trends.

The first step to marketing to college students is understanding them. The best way to get your product in their hands starts with knowing your customer. Lesson # 4 from Dale Carnegie’s, How to Win Friends and Influence People is, “Become genuinely interested in other people. Take a sincere interest in them. Don’t just pretend you’re interested. Everybody has something interesting about them. Find out what it is.” This means finding out what motivates them, why they do things, and how they do things. Having this insight will help you as a marketer know where and how you fit into their lives.

Advice or questions? Get the conversation started below.

June 1, 2011

Today’s college students are one of the most ad-savvy generations ever. By the age of 18, today’s teen has seen, on average, 300,000 ads. And that’s just on television! So how do you cut through the clutter and get them to engage with your brand? Here are some insights from a recent study by e-Dialog, which looked at what motivates someone to make a connection with a brand via email, social or mobile opt-in.

It’s probably no surprise that the number one driver of opt-ins to email was a discount or offer. Giving a percentage or dollar amount off a purchase for a new email subscriber has shown to be pretty effective, and what consumers have become accustomed to. But think about what else would be valuable to your audience. How about exclusive info, like early access to this season’s looks or a preview of the next version of your game? Some of the top reasons survey takers told us they signed up for emails were to get original content not found elsewhere, and because the brand related to their lifestyle. They were motivated by curiosity about the brand, so think about the types of content you can share that educate or entertain to build an affinity for your brand.

If your goal is to gain fans or followers in social media channels, the good news is that the motivation is the pretty much the same. On Facebook or Twitter, consumers we surveyed said they were looking for discounts from brands, but also stuff they couldn’t find elsewhere. That includes videos, games, and other interactive content. One interesting finding was that for people who subscribed to email and followed a company on social sites, they said they signed up for email first. So it’s a good idea to include links to your social profiles in your emails, or even promote why someone might want to become a fan to your email subscribers.

For mobile marketing (SMS), it was very clear from the responses to our survey that consumers are generally not ready to be marketed to via text message. For today’s youth, their phone is an extension of themselves and goes with them everywhere, even to bed! So marketers really need to have something of value other than ads if they want access to a consumer’s cell phone. Things like reminders or alerts ranked high on list of the types of content people want to get on their phone. The good news is, once you convince someone to opt in to mobile marketing, they are not likely to unsubscribe.

These are just a few of the insights gleaned from the survey of consumers and their marketing preferences. We will be releasing a full report in the near future. Check www.e-Dialog.com for updates.

May 18, 2011

Gen Y (born 1977-1994) is now estimated to be the largest consumer group in US history. At 70 to 80 million, the generation accounts for 25% of the US population. Their annual spending power already exceeds $200B and that is expected to eclipse Boomers by 2017. But how are they different from other generations? Why do you as a marketer need to treat them differently? A lot of it comes down to expectations, high expectations.

If you grew up B.I. (Before Internet), you’re likely to find today’s most popular services impressive for very different reasons than the early adopters of those services. Chances are they are not even impressed. Someone studying abroad in the 90’s could only call home a few times a month because it was too expensive. Gen Y takes Skype, Google Talk and instant messaging for granted – “what do you mean you couldn’t call home?” Finding an old recording of your favorite show would be a big deal 15 years ago. Gen Y expects 1 million results in 0.11 seconds and you’ll get a “WTF?” if YouTube or Hulu can’t return what they’re looking for. But that’s not the kicker – they want it for free and they want it fast.

There’s a scene in “The Social Network” where ‘Mark Zuckerberg’ is on the phone with ‘Eduardo Saverin’: “Okay, let me tell you the difference between Facebook and everyone else; we don’t crash EVER! If those servers are down for even a day, our entire reputation is irreversibly destroyed! Users are fickle, Friendster has proved that. Even a few people leaving would reverberate through the entire userbase. The users are interconnected: that is the whole point. College kids are online because their friends are online, and if one domino goes, the other dominos go, don’t you get that?”
The dialog is probably exaggerated, but the writers have recognized Mark Zuckberg’s understanding of two important facts:

1)expectations are enormous

There’s truly no mercy, so when you have their interest make sure you work hard to keep things that way.

2) Gen Y is uber-connected

Gen Y is exponentially more connected than any previous generation. Processes that used to take years now take weeks. The new web has given social interactions a solid injection of steroids.

So how do you keep up with this? How do you make it work in your favor? We certainly don’t have all the answers, but here are some things to think about:

1) Change your marketing distribution

Go digital. Are you still spending a lot of money offline? Come on! The trends speak for themselves. Savvy brands are switching their marketing funds to where people interact – online.

2) Enable users to share and interact

Your online marketing needs to get smarter. Make sure your users can interact with you and around your brand. Ask yourself this: If someone really loved my brand – how do I help them tell people about it? It starts with social share buttons, marketing campaigns that use Facebook, Twitter campaigns and perhaps a few widgets on key landing pages.

3) Content is important

You may have heard this for years already, but Gen Y wants more than just transactions and confirmation emails. How about some helpful articles, videos or even webinars? You need to be the expert and help them with more than buying something.

4) Listen

B.I. companies could get away with poor service and adequate products. They could stay alive for years without changing or innovating. Gen Y and the new web is leading the revolution. Successful businesses now need to listen first and then act. Your marketing needs to engage your users. It’s not all about how fantastic you are. It’s all about how you can do something fantastic for the user. Take NetFlix – first they changed the game (movie rentals) and brought down Blockbuster in the process. Then, unlike an “old” company they continued to deliver what users wanted – online streaming of content. They spent millions of dollars optimizing their rating systems – because expectations are high, very high.

April 22, 2011

Your business has an online presence and you want to reach young consumers. You’ve thought long and hard about your marketing strategy and you’ve allocated a budget. But do you have a strategy for reaching youngsters? Should the 16-25 year-olds be treated differently? We think so. Here are five tips that hopefully will make you think and perhaps even act.

Go online

There are a lot of great tools out there. These tools can help you learn more about your demo and what they like, search for, and want. Take Google Trends, for example, or Google Insights for Search. Both of these tools are great for understanding which search terms are important, what is hot, and what is not.

But most importantly, don’t market far from your purchase path. What do we mean? Well, try to spend your marketing dollars online – where young people spend time. Newspaper, magazine and TV ads might help you build a brand, but they will most likely not drive clicks/traffic to your site. Think of it this way; your for sale sign needs to be close to your house, not four blocks away (not even if your sign has the address on it).

Put your benefits front and center

Attention span = hyper short. Tell them what they need to know, keep it shorter than what you think is short and tell them immediately. You have seconds to convince them to click, so think fast. No one reads, and any nested information is useless. Why should I care about you?

Don’t be everything to everyone

Hot tips; for your search engine marketing efforts – create a landing page that has younger language, images and services. Chances are all your customers are not the same. Remember if they have to look for the part that is relevant to them, they are gone before you even knew they were there.

Partner

You’ll get by with a little help from your friends. The art of partnering should be taken very seriously. Find other trusted sites, blogs, videos and marketers that can drive traffic to your site. This is nothing new, but you might not have a qualified traffic strategy. Do you partner for general traffic or traffic for a specific reason?

Take it easy

Don’t try too hard! Sites that only sell and never listen aren’t any fun. Young users are all about free, fun, fast. Think about it, they grew up with free fantastic services everywhere. If you can’t solve a problem for free, then offer them a taste of your magic for free. Also, keep in mind that these guys have very well developed filters. So go easy on the over-selling banners and “smart” distractions.

March 4, 2011

Students live via their smart phones. Ever heard anyone say, “I feel naked without my phone?” If a student doesn’t have his/her phone in an easily accessible location, something just isn’t right. They don’t turn their phones off at night, or even during class. In fact, they don’t even consider it.

Herein lies a potential gold mine to marketers. Students’ constant need to feel connected means they will see any message sent to them instantly, and in that same instant they will make a decision about the message and the brand. A student will subconsciously ask him/herself a series of questions; “Does this warrant a reply? Should I follow the suggested hyperlink right now? Shall I save it to re-read later? Should it be deleted, or worse, should I request to unsubscribe?” After considering each of these reactions in the time it takes to blink, you have either missed out on a potential customer or have gained a new impression. Your goal as a marketer is to secure this impression.

Managing this relationship is tricky. You can make it or break it in a second. The rewards have potential to be huge, but with that comes risk. Here are some tips to guide you:

Send SMS Messages to Students With Caution

We mentioned that students are pretty intimate with their cells. They keep them close to their body, and they even sleep with them very close by. Coming between these two can have serious consequences. Not only are they offended by your abrupt impersonal message, but they will also associate negative emotions, fueled by unfulfilled expectations, with your brand. Kim was expecting for Ian to ask her on a date, instead she got a text about a last minute sale. What a let down! There is a way to wiggle into this relationship. To carefully navigate this relationship, Michael Becker, North America managing director for the Mobile Marketing Association, recommends encouraging a reply that will generate a conversation. “Each interaction allows a marketer to learn more about the consumer, what they want and need and the value you can deliver to them.” Although marketers should strive to deliver messages that are targeted to the user across all verticals, SMS may be the most important. If you don’t have something relevant and timely to say, then SMS is not your channel.

Facebook them some discounts

Facebook can be a great tool. Companies like Victoria’s Secret Pink (7 million fans), Starbucks (20 million fans), and even Spongebob Squarepants (17 million fans) have harnessed the viral power of social media on Facebook. According to a focus group conducted by StudentUniverse Media, comprised of college students aged 19-22, many feel that Facebook is a place to connect with friends and would prefer to keep in touch with businesses on Twitter, where messages are easier to navigate. However, many admit to following businesses on Facebook when they feel there is an opportunity to get discounts. Students do claim to check both Facebook and Twitter from their mobile phones regularly.

Tweet often

Twitter is easy, convenient, and student approved. Students will get your message shortly after you tweet it since they voluntarily check Twitter all day via their iPhone, Blackberry, or Droid. Best of all, Twitter facilitates an interactive conversation and gets always opinionated students directly engaged. Lastly, tweets are short and sweet. When working with the attention span of a student, conciseness is vital.

Do you have an app for that?

Apps are fun. They keep students engaged and are always just a touch away. Whether your company has an app, or chooses to advertise on one, apps are a great place to be these days. According to Juniper Research, revenue from mobile content and apps are expected to reach $10 billion by 2015.

Send Mobile-Optimized Emails

Students like to see emails once a week or every other week. As long as the content is relevant to them, they will open them. Remember to keep the subject line simple. Don’t try to personalize a subject line with the user’s name. Students see through mass customization. Instead, try to catch their attention with a relevant subject. Most students have smart phones or feature phones, so they will see the email from their mobile right away. QA your emails before sending and make sure they look as smart as the phones they are read on.

Reaching students through their cell phones can be a golden opportunity. Be careful how you approach this tactic though. You are reaching them through a very personal method of communication, and managing this requires careful planning.

January 26, 2011

There are certainly numerous reasons for Apple’s staggering success over the past few years. Great design, smart marketing, and a larger product line are merely a few. According to numbers from Student Monitor and Fortune Apple has gone from a college market share in the teens to almost thirty percent, all in five years. Among students planning to buy a new computer, 47% plan to buy a Mac.

Needless to say, these are staggering numbers, but how did they do this? Apple understands the value of the college market. They have been committed to the idea that today’s savvy college students are tomorrow’s business men and women. They have also understood the importance of price differentiation. The Apple Store for Education provides college students with a discount on Apple products. Apple gets it. If the product is right and the perceived benefit is greater than the cost, well then student budgets are suddenly more flexible. Apple’s computers are significantly more expensive than Dell’s, yet they now have a greater market share.

Apple has had a loyal following for decades, but breaking into the college market is not solely a result of more accessible products, it is also a great example of smart marketing. Steve Jobs and his team understand the value of their illuminated logos. Think about it. What other group of adults spends as much time together as students? Somewhere between a 10% market share and a 27% market share there is a tipping point. Macs are all of a sudden “everywhere” and students need one. Word of mouth is crucial.

Bottom line

Apple has successfully taken a big bite of the college market. They have done it with great products, smart marketing, price differentiation, but most importantly, by recognizing the importance of the college market. It’s different and it needs its own strategy. So what’s your college marketing strategy? Are students talking about your products? Let us help you start a fire.

January 26, 2011

At StudentUniverse Media we are all for making new technologies part of your marketing mix. College students are without a doubt early adopters and certainly trend setters when it comes to how social technology is used. But we asked ourselves; what’s hyped up and what’s real? Here’s a select handful of what we have found. We asked college students how likely they were to do the following:

Buy a product from their mobile phone

With every trend-watcher and marketer in the world constantly reminding us how the world is going mobile, it is easy to forget what a small part it still plays in commerce. Don’t get us wrong, if you’re targeting students, mobile should (soon) be part of your marketing mix. But as you can see, the majority of our respondents actually said it is ‘very unlikely’ (41%) or ‘unlikely’ (27%) that they will buy a product from their phone. Only 4.5% of our respondents indicated that it would be ‘very likely’. What does this tell us? Though the vast majority of data shows how mobile is becoming increasingly important it’s still early.

Submit a text to vote during a TV program

College students sure text a lot, but it seems like the whole ‘text to vote’ hype is primarily driven by high school students, or at least the younger-than-college crowd. Still, as much as 28% of college students said they are either ‘somewhat likely’ or ‘very likely’ to vote by text.

Use maps to find a place to shop

Whether it’s on their phones, laptop or at the library computer – college students will look it up before they shop. Major search engines have known this for years and built great map services. Recently location-based services have become popular, such as SCVNGR and Foursquare. Such services let you ‘check-in’ at a physical locations, either to earn points or simply show people that you were there. Facebook Places also gives you the option to check in at your favorite places. More than 70% of our respondents said it was ‘somewhat likely’ or ‘very likely’ that they will use maps to find a place to shop.

Download an app (application)

The Apple ITunes store just reached 10 billion downloads – a lot of those downloads are apps. Students use apps for everything from internet radio to silly games. 38% of college students surveyed said it is ‘very likely’ that they will download an app. Do you have one?

Check in somewhere (Scvngr, Foursquare, etc)

This is where things get interesting, it seems like the audience more-or-less splits in two. On one side, we have the 60% that do not use these kinds of services. On the other side, we have the 35% that do. Are we looking at a bell-curve picture here? Are we simply dealing with a classic case of early vs late adopters? We are certainly not going to speculate in the future of location-based services (at least not in this thread), but regardless of what your take is – they’re growing fast and participating is relatively easy.

Bottom line

It’s sometimes hard to keep up with the latest trends. What’s my Twitter strategy? How do I get more Facebook fans? Reaching students online can be challenging, but the good news is that, though hype is good, it’s very often just that. Don’t put all your eggs in the “new” basket just because it’s the latest buzz-word. At StudentUniverse Media, we believe in a healthy marketing mix, one where we focus on what works and not just what sounds good. Email marketing, if done right, is still great. TV advertising is not dead, it just needs to be handled differently (that’s why we work with Google TV). Send us an email if you want to chat more about what we can do for you.

Want to know more?

January 25, 2011

WALTHAM, Mass., Jan. 19, 2011 — Leading student and youth travel agency StudentUniverse.com announced today the launch of StudentUniverse Media, a digital advertising and marketing agency focused on the college and youth markets. StudentUniverse will leverage its expertise and reach to college students and youth to deliver targeted marketing campaigns.

“For ten years, we have built both a knowledge base and proprietary tools for reaching college students and youth,” said Paul Jacobs, head of business development for the new agency. “StudentUniverse Media offers brands the opportunity to connect with these savvy trend-setters early in their customer life cycle.”

StudentUniverse Media’s services include placing digital advertisements online and in emails through its parent site, StudentUniverse.com, as well as through its network of partner sites targeted to college students and youth. StudentUniverse Media also offers viral marketing solutions and youth marketing consulting services.

For more information, please visit www.StudentUniverseMedia.com, or contact the StudentUniverse Media team at sumedia@studentuniverse.com.

About StudentUniverse.com

Launched online in 2000, StudentUniverse.com is now the largest online travel agency for college students and youth. Millions of verified college students and youth rely on StudentUniverse for exclusive discounts making “student universe” the most relevant keyword in Google for “student”.

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