Student marketing

Student marketing refers to the promotion of products, brands and ideas to the 3 million+ higher and further education student population. Student marketing is generally realised through student media or ambient marketing on campuses.

Student marketing is not the same as Student Union Marketing which concentrates on marketing opportunities only through Student Union, Association and Guild media. This type of media is powered through companies who provide media services for student union bodies as well as the production of their newspapers and website systems. Youth marketing companies that influence student buying behaviour and motivate student spending utilise a variety of mediums and marketing channels to effectively talk to the youth.

Marketing material directed at students must overcome several problems: they have little money; they are a transient population who will soon graduate, cease to be students, and possibly move away; and they tend to be a skeptical audience critical towards marketing messages and fake attempts to be cool.

However students are also an attractive market: while they do have a restricted budget many are living away from home and are therefore making independent choices over which brands to buy for the very first time. Hence they are often excited about making purchases that would be mundane for older consumers. Attracting students at this time has huge long run brand loyalty effects. University students also make an ideal target market for internet-based companies. Over 99% of students are comfortable using the internet, going online at least once a week, although usually every day. They also don’t have the same fear of the internet as much of the general population, particularly when it comes to purchasing goods online – average online spend is 7 times higher than that of the general population. Finally, whilst the working population uses the internet predominantly for work purposes, two-thirds of the time that students spend online is general surfing.

When it comes to targeting, students have in the past been considered an elusive group, with much of their time taken up on campus and through socialising. Traditional forms of advertising, such as mainstream radio, TV and billboard advertising campaigns, are not ideal channels for reaching today’s students. Therefore, other media are targeted, such as smartphone advertising and social media. Equally, marketers can take advantage of students' concentration at geographical locations (colleges) and use techniques such as campus visits and college street teams.

...
Wikipedia