The end of summer is upon us, and that means it is officially back-to-school time. With college students, particularly college freshman, heading off to school leads to a surge in consumerism across America. Students need new clothes to keep up with the latest trends, the newest electronics to help them in class, and all of the dorm room essentials that every college student can’t wait to buy. With this in mind, the National Retail Foundation took a look at the top trends emerging amongst college students during this back-to-school period. Therefore, it is important to see what these trends mean for the advertising industry.
- Surge in Electronics and School Supplies – With the rise in technology in our world it makes sense that spending money on computers, tablets, and other electronics is up 20% from 2009. There is also an expected 19% increase in spending on school supplies. Many people like to go back to school with a fresh start, meaning it’s time for new notebooks, pencils, and even new computers. This illustrates that it is important for advertisers to jump on this bandwagon and increase advertising for these specific categories during the back to school period; this could lead to increased success of their campaign.
- More Searching, Shopping Online and Mobile Usage – In today’s society almost everyone seems to have a smartphone or a tablet. There is an 8% increase in smartphone ownership and a 6% increase in tablet ownership of back-to-school shoppers since 2013. Inevitably this means that more people will be using these tablets for back-to-school shopping and research. In fact 57% of people will use their smart phones for this very purpose. What this means for advertisers, is that you should jump on the new advertising trends and start using IP targeting, mobile and online advertising to reach your target audience. Especially during the chaos that is back-to-school when the majority of the shoppers are from the younger technologically driven generation.
- Consumer Holidays: Back-to-School –While winter holiday’s take the cake in terms of holiday spending ($602.1 Billion), back-to-school time comes in second among total spending over the year ($74.9 Billion) . However, this time of year is still significantly above holidays such as Mother’s Day ($19.9 Billion) and Valentine’s Day (17.3 Billion). Advertisers should treat back-to-school time as a holiday in itself and capitalize on the increased spending, by increasing their advertising presences to teens and parents.
Back-to-school shopping is prime time for advertisers to increase their advertising presence and target teens and parents across the country in order to have a successful campaign. So much money is being spent, so why shouldn’t it be spent on your product? At On Campus Advertising, we can help you target these incoming freshmen and returning students through many different forms of advertising including mobile, IP, print, and more! Take advantage, advertisers; this is the Christmas of college marketing.
