Campus Marketing: Everything You Need to Know

Team TeachWiki

What is Campus Marketing?

Campus Marketing: These are the marketing activities carried out by companies to market their products and services to a segment of university students with the aim of meeting their needs and desires.

Companies employ university students to be brand ambassadors and promote their products and services among students, and they rely on a set of tools such as events and events that take place within the university and marketing campaigns on social networks.

The brand ambassador must have a large popular base among students and have a large following on social media as well, which allows the company to reach and influence a large target audience.

Students tend to trust another student like them who markets products and services to them indirectly, more than they trust companies that follow traditional promotional methods.

Companies use university-specific methods such as sponsoring events that take place at the university such as exhibitions, conferences, and parties, offering free samples of products and services to try, and offering special discounts and promotions to students. For example, Microsoft employs ambassadors in 300 American universities to provide explanation and assistance to students regarding the use of the Windows operating system. The motivation behind turning to the student segment is the high loyalty rate that distinguishes students compared to the straw social segments.

The company begins to formulate its marketing message, which includes a brand plan and recruiting student ambassadors, and this requires precision to choose the best candidate. The company remains in constant communication to monitor the performance and effectiveness of the marketing campaign and make the necessary adjustments.

How to advertise in college

A student is not only a “hard worker, studying”, but also a visitor to an educational institution who actively communicates, has fun and consumes a wide variety of goods and services. If your area of interest is young people aged 17 to 22 years, then we recommend that you do not ignore advertising in universities .

About the audience: profitable consumers!

Young people, the so-called generation Y , dream of achieving a lot: having high earnings, making a career, they are ambitious, strive for self-realization and independence, but they also think about a future family. This distinguishes them favorably from previous generations and is reflected in the nature of consumer preferences.

  1. For the most part, students are innovators who are the first to buy new products. According to the research company GFK, over the past five years the share of innovators in Russia has doubled (from 8% to 16%). Moreover, half of them are people under the age of 30. They like to try, to be the first, to be trendy. They play an important role in promoting new brands; the further popularity of the product will largely depend on their opinion.
  2. According to the Comcon-2 study, students demonstrate a high degree of loyalty to advertising information. On average, 60% of teenagers and students are guided by the design and appearance of a product or service when purchasing, 69% of them often purchase a product as a result of advertising.
  3. The characteristic “poor student” is not entirely correct when applied to modern youth, especially those living in megacities: many students demonstrate at least an average income, which is provided either by the income of their parents or their own earnings (the labor market now allows university students to earn quite good money in their free time from studying ).
  4. Young people are ready to buy expensive goods . According to a surveys Most undergraduate students (56%) have a car. Also, students do not skimp on buying mobile phones: a mobile phone is a very personal item that reflects their character, behavior, lifestyle and even mood.
  5. Any student has a fairly wide social circle , which, combined with the high susceptibility of advertising, makes young people attractive carriers of word of mouth. With all the variety of interests and hobbies, almost any young person is an active visitor to cafes, nightclubs and a consumer of fashion goods (see the diagram “Spending free time (per day)). In these areas, young people are the best experts.
  6. Most often, young people pay attention to advertising of products from their area of interest: cosmetics - 64%, soft drinks - 58%, household chemicals - 48%, personal care products - 40%*.
  7. The main source of information about goods and services is the Internet: it is more popular than TV, magazines, and family opinion in matters related to the choice of hobbies.
About advertising opportunities

Most often, posters, light panels, distribution of leaflets and flyers are used for advertising in universities , which is typical for indoor advertising in general. Printed products are usually distributed on the street, or at the entrances to buildings, and left on window sills, tables in classrooms and libraries.

The main placements of advertising media are determined based on the maximum traffic of the points. In any university, the most crowded places are:

Media locations Peculiarities
Entrance and exit areas from the building
  • They have maximum coverage, but it must be taken into account that due to the large flow, the time of contact with advertising is short;
  • places are oversaturated with advertising, so the effectiveness of perception of printed materials is reduced;
  • BTL campaigns for distributing leaflets and flyers work best.
Halls
  • Halls are meeting places that provide long-term contact with advertising, good opportunities for indoor TV, large stands, BTL promotions
Transitions between buildings
  • short contact;
  • if the transitions are wide, then there are opportunities for large carriers
Large continuous classrooms
  • It is optimal to place posters and lightboxes near streaming classrooms, as students can be near the audio room for a long time waiting for lectures.
Information complexes (class schedule, bulletin boards near departments and deans)
  • Carriers placed near information boards provide long-term contact with advertising plus a high frequency of contacts;
  • The coverage is small, but the interest in such advertisements is higher.
Sports and assembly halls
  • Places for placing large banners
Toilets
  • Stickers on booths and posters placed near mirrors work best here;
  • there is not such an abundance of advertising materials as at the entrances and exits, so advertising attracts more attention;
  • high coverage of both student and teaching audiences;
  •  good opportunities for advertising hygiene products
Buffets
  • Students’ favorite places to live (they go there often and stay for a long time);
  • Advertising on TV monitors and laying out leaflets on trays work well.
Libraries
  • Libraries are declining in popularity due to the growing influence of the Internet, but libraries are still one of the main meeting places for students.
Dorms
  • Advertising media in dormitories, similarly to advertising media in residential buildings, cover a permanent audience of students living in them, so the frequency of contacts with advertising is high;
  • In addition to advertising on stands, distributing leaflets is popular.

Along with standard advertising media, some advertising agencies specializing in advertising in universities offer unusual ways of communicating with the student audience:

  • benches with the client’s brand (advertising is placed on the back);
  • sponsorship of major university events (Birthdays, First of September, New Year), sports teams and KVN teams;
  • establishment of prizes and gifts based on the results of the session;
  • placement of banner advertising on university websites;
  • placement of advertisements in magazines and university newspapers;
  • placement on a student television channel and radio station.

Advantages of advertising in universities:

  • Ability to quantify audience size: number of students and teachers - available information. In addition, you can calculate how many students attend a particular building to estimate the number of contacts with advertising. If you want to reach only a female or only a male audience, you can be puzzled by studying the schedule of classes of “purely female” or “purely male” groups (for example, the Automotive Faculty is probably 99% male).
  • High frequency of contacts with advertising: students visit the university almost every day, the routes for moving around the building are approximately the same and are determined by the schedule and habits of the students.
  • Unsaturated advertising space: But let us note that in an effort to create effective advertising that actually works, it is not enough to rely solely on the attractive qualities of the advertising media themselves. When developing any advertising message, it is important to take into account the specifics of audience perception. Thus, when working for a student audience, it is necessary to remember that young people like everything fashionable and modern, they are loyal to advertising, but are especially attracted to unusual, and even better, shocking advertising messages and images. But, of course, within the bounds of decency, otherwise advertising at the university will be denied. Thus, to increase the effectiveness of advertising on media in universities, creative solutions will definitely be required!
About the cost

An advertising campaign at a university may look like this:

Type of accommodation Placement options Average cost of placement, rub.
Video on screens, 20 sec. A network of 70 screens in 11 universities. 6 rentals per hour, 72 rentals per day, interval – every 10 minutes. Duration of placement – ​​1 month 88 819
Light box, A1 format 11 pieces, within 1 month 77,000
Poster on an information stand, A2 format 4 pcs. in 11 universities, within 1 month 50 600
  TOTAL: 216 419
Tell them yes

According to UNDP PAKISTAN, 60% of our country’s population is young people, a third of whom are students. By placing advertisements in universities , you get 100% exposure to this attractive, active consumer audience. But most importantly, by winning someone's love for your product at a young age, you are almost guaranteed to have a loyal customer throughout their life.

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