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 16, 2011

Please join us for the first Student Marketing Meet-Up in Boston, MA. Our goal is to get marketing, advertising, and business development professionals that target the student and youth market in the same room. There will be a chance to mingle, exchange best practices and have a drink or two with some interesting people. We are not giving any presentations or selling anything and it is completely free.

Join us at The Wine Room at Sonsie on Newbury Street

To RSVP, join the event on Linkedin or fill out the form at the right

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.

April 1, 2011

• They have money to spend

Nearly half of all college students work. With tuition often covered by loans or parents, the money they do make is theirs to spend. They also carry plastic. 78% of students have at least one credit card. According to Sallie Mae, they are using it for more than just books: 84% of students use credit cards for food, 70% of students use cards for clothing, and 69% of students use cards for cosmetics.

• They spend a lot prepping for college

Back to school spending is expected to reach $33.7 billion according to the National Retail Federation. This may not be considered discretionary spending, but if you sell electronics, dorm supplies, apparel, shoes or school supplies you know how important this time of year is to the bottom line. Make sure you are top of mind going into this shopping blitz.

• They have time to waste

A full course load at most colleges can take up less than 15 hours a week. Even with a part time job, this still leaves students with a lot of flexibility. They are looking for ways to fill their time. They online shop, go out with their friends, and travel. In short, they have fun and spend money.

• They document every moment of their lives

Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare… the list goes on. This generation loves to talk about themselves and share their experiences. Make a good impressionand they will share it. Give them a great deal, they will share it. Sure, word of mouth is nothing new, but the word has never traveled this fast before.

• They are in the beginning of their customer-life-cycle

They are away from home, making their own purchase decisions. Whether it is which brand of spaghetti sauce to buy, which coffee shop or energy drink will get them through 4 years of mid terms and finals, what type of car they will drive or what clothes they will wear, these choices could shape spending habits for the rest of their lives. Create valuable lifelong brand loyalists by getting your brand in their decision set now.

The Point

These emerging adults have the money and freedom to start choosing which brands will lead them through college and into adulthood. Attract them now or risk losing out on a lifelong customer.

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

Give them what they want

Guess what? When someone clicks that little like button, they actually make a connection with your brand. They’re telling you that they like your page, your brand, and what you give them. So, your job now is to give them what they want, not what you want. Don’t fill your page with marketing. Remember, that’s what you want, not what they want. The more you know about why someone likes your page, the easier it will be for you to please them.

Don’t be something you’re not

Culture is like language, you can only participate if you get it. Students and youth are different. You can’t read an article about slang in the Wall Street Journal. It doesn’t qualify. If you’re old, don’t try to be young. Work with someone that speaks their language and that knows what they’re interested in. Then, (and this is the hard part) trust them!

Have a plan

The best posts and the best pages are not nearly as random as most people think. Great marketing starts with a smart plan. How do you get users to hit the like button? Can we get people to tag themselves? What are we willing to give away? What’s a new fan worth to us? Make sure your message is consistent and in line with what you stand for as a brand. Remember, they like you. They like you.

Update

Things need to happen. Make sure someone’s in charge of the page and make sure they update it often. You should also make use of Facebook’s excellent tools as often as possible. You can review your “Insights” to follow active users, new likes, post views and more, but most importantly, learn. Under your posts, you will find two important stats: 1) Impressions and 2) Feedback. Impressions is fairly self-explanatory but keeping an eye on it can teach you when to post to get the most impressions (i.e. Sunday morning is good for a church, not so good for a vodka brand). Feedback is king. It tells you how many people had some kind of interaction with this post. Go through your posts and find common denominators for posts that got a high percentage feedback. Then, do posts like those more often.

Keep it simple

Messages should be short. Only pose one question at a time. Avoid complicated instructions.

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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