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.

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