For businesses that market their product throughout colleges and universities, every new school year presents opportunities to reach out to thousands of freshmen and transfer students as they enter the market for the very first time. However, selling to college students is no easy A since they are often transient, skeptical to new products, and cash-strapped. Here are some tips help you market your product better to the college crowd.
Tip 1: Make Sure the Product Meets Their Needs
The first tip is to always get your product right before bragging to freshmen about it. Your product should be similar to what you market them. College students can either be a marketer’s dream –or nightmare. Since college is a big word-of-mouth community, you don’t need to do much to market your product since they will do it for you. For this particular reason, we encourage focusing on product development long before the marketing, making your product so good that they have to tell their whole floor about it.
Tip 2: Don’t Forget the Parents
The second tip is to win over their mom and dad in their freshmen week. As individuals, they don’t have much income. College students are incredibly price sensitive and you need to come up with a great product at a price that doesn’t cut into their “party” fund. Therefore, when selling your product to the college crowd, you should be selling the product to the student as well as the parent, who has the money.
Tip 3: Mobile Marketing Is the Key
According to the National Retail Federation, students prefer to live at home while going to college, in order to cut down costs. More than 58 percent of students are living at home this year, up from 47 percent in 2007. That means direct marketing will be tough since you can’t reach the study as easily on campus. However, this is the digital age and every student owns a smartphone and they are heavily dependent on it to keep their connections, especially if they live at home. Therefore, marketing your product through mobile devices like smart phones and tablets are a strong way to make sure your product reach college students.
