Marketing & College Students: It’s Not About Where, But When
When you plan a marketing campaign, there are several different routes you can take according to what your future goals are for your brand. For advertising, don’t just think of WHERE your product will be according to the placement of the product on a shelf, the location of your business, or at what street or highway your place the billboard, but timing and planning WHEN your target will see the advertisement. WHEN your target market sees your advertisement is especially an important criterion for a social media campaign and timing online is everything.
Social media & college students - Shutterstock
News Feed Advantage
It may take some time to gather enough information from your social media networks to analyze and determine at what time of the day and which days of the week work best to target your audience online. In general, but not for every target, the best times of the day include the early morning when everyone is up, the hours between getting home from work and dinner (otherwise most everyone is preoccupied with 9 to 5 jobs), and around bedtime during the week. Forget the weekend when people will most likely be out and about.
College and Social Media
If weekends are slow for social media promotion, then you can bet the summer will be as well. Especially for college kids who are preoccupied with work or internships during the day and spending time with friends and family at night. Targeting college students during the academic year with social media tends to be better during the day when students are in between classes with a flexible schedule compared to targeting other adults who work all day. A social media campaign is perfect to target college students because they have more time to be online to read about the latest updates with friends or what upcoming social events are being planned, making the mid-day the perfect opportunity to share your next sale or special known online.
Based on their weekly class schedule, college students will get into a routine and create a habit of when they check social media sites on a laptop, tablet, or smartphone. 56% of the 1 billion student Facebook users check it on a daily basis and 12% check it every couple of hours including 32% of them at meal times. College students don’t just spend a couple of minutes on these social media sites either. On average per month, student Facebook users spend a whopping 405 minutes or almost 7 hours and 89 minutes for both Pinterest and Tumblr! What about on a daily basis? The average daily Facebook time is one hour and 40 minutes and that’s just as an excuse to take a break from the real world and exams.
So besides seeing that so and so is now in a Facebook official relationship, checking out the latest photos from last weekend’s party or bar scene, or the latest scandalous celebrity Tweet; what else are students doing on social media outlets? They may like, follow, or pin your brand, but they will not be online just to check out your latest update. Students are interested in what products and services their friends are interested in and pay more attention to what they post online because it comes from a person, not a direct brand and a friendly face is more relatable than a logo. If your message does create enough interest amongst a couple of students, then it will further spread with word-of-mouth to their classmates and friends both online and offline. Again, your timing has to be right and the promotion has to really grab their attention to stand out from the constant updates from their friends and other brands.
If you cannot reach your college audience where they are most of the weekday offline, then social media gives you the best market entry for students to learn about your brand. For most of their day, students will either be on campus, work, or at their residence with few opportunities to see advertisements outside of the online world. Especially on campus, it is difficult to reach out to college students unless you have built a partnership with the university such as purchasing ad space in student planners that are handed out each year to new students. Fortunately, because they are connected to your account and brand, chances are they will see your promotions online no matter where they physically are at that time.
Targeting college students on social media - Shutterstock
How Should You Format Your Message?
College students are busy either always on the go, spending time with friends or in the library studying for midterm exams. They will not want to read something long and detailed so be sure to keep it simple and short. Be sure not to repeat the same message. Change up your online marketing strategy by sharing different information or links relating to your brand because everyone is interested in what the next product or service offer will be, not what the best was on repetition.
Students and Brands Can’t Escape Social Media
More and more colleges and universities are utilizing social media platforms to connect and share what is happening on campus with current and prospective students. Social media is even being used by high school students as far as showing how interested they are in attending a certain university by uploading videos of them sharing their school spirit with the administration office. Colin Huber, a writer and social media coordinator, of Oregon State University stated that if they see a video of a prospective student wearing a beaver suit (the school’s mascot), that the office would immediately take note of it and would reach out to that person. For Division 1 college sports, an athlete will send footage of them from a race or game to share their schools with college recruiters across the internet, not just their best times and performances statistics.
So what are you waiting for? If you are struggling with your current social media plan to reach out to college students, work on your game plan because during the school year, online is where they are at.
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