Why Marketers are Failing to Attract College Students Attention

Photo complements of Up Scale Marketing

Each and every day, increasingly higher levels of difficultly seem to arise with companies being able to effectively market their products to college students.  It appears as if their marketing efforts are running the company straight into a brick wall.  Companies are noticing that the students are no longer fazed by their marketing strategies. 

What Are Marketers Doing Wrong?

Paul Himmelfarb, the Youth Marketing Connections manager at West Virginia University, believes he knows the number one reason why marketers are failing to attract the college student.  He says, “College students are wary of old-school marketing.”  He states that it is virtually impossible for a company to target a college student if their marketing tactics are a few years old.  College students today are not like previous generations of students, if companies want to successfully market their products to this demographic they need to understand how a college student's lifestyle is and take that knowledge and apply it to their advertising strategies.

Successful marketers use social media, coupons, food, discounts, and modern electronics as their means of advertising. 

Large companies are starting to understand that college students are an essential factor if their company wants to increase profits in the long-run.  The reason for this is due to the fact that most students tend to have money to spend.  Most of this money comes directly from parents or from student loans, and if the right item catches their eye most are willing to buy the product out of impulse.  The number one targeted segment of the student demographic for these advertisements are freshman, due to the fact freshman are leaving home for the first time and have poor money management skills, they are more willing to buy products off of impulse rather than need.  According to the Alloy Media and Marketing project, during the 2012-2013 school year students spent $74 billion dollars on non-necessity items and it is projected to increase to $76 billion for the 2013-2014 school year. 

Image taken from bizreports.com

More and more companies are discovering that their marketing strategies would become useless if it were not for the peer marketing concept.  Many students would agree that they will purchase certain items so that they do not feel excluded.  Think about if there was ever a time you went out to eat with all your friends and ordered something even though you were not hungry.  That's an example of the peer marketing concept.

What Are Marketers Doing To Ensure Students Are Buying Their Product?

It’s quite simple.  They are simply advertising with the group concept in mind and each company does this in a slightly different manner.  Try to recall the last commercial you watched that was aimed towards students. All these commercials seem to have a group of students making the product look “COOL,” or they talk about how useful the product is. 

One company that does an incredible job at targeting students and making them believe that their product is essential for everyday life is Apple.  I have attached an eight minute video clip of some of Apples best commercials.  In this video clip you will see how Apple chooses to persuade the viewers into believing they need to purchase this product.  In addition, look at how most of the newer commercials show the complexity of having different colors of the same product such as the IPod.  What this does is demonstrate to the customer that they can purchase a product that is colored uniquely to them and not just buy black and white like most other electronic brands.

Another way companies market their product is by directly going to the student.  For example, this fall a senior marketing communications student at Washington University was paid to represent American Eagle throughout her campus.  In attempt to persuade students American Eagle gave her a pair of flip flops for each new student.  Her task was to make an impact on the students that would make them believe American Eagle is unique or special. She accomplished this task by giving every freshman who attended orientation a free pair of flip flops ($15 value) and a coupon for 15% off all in store purchases made within the next 30 days. 

The reason this marketing strategy works is because all the students who are wearing their flip flops are now advertising the company wherever they go.  Another reason is because the coupons inside are only good for a short period of time drawing the student into the store if they wanted to use American Eagles coupon.  This strategy makes students buy out of impulse, so they purchase a product they do not need, just to utilize the coupon.  American Eagle is not the only company who advertises this way.  

Another company that takes advantage of college campuses is Red Bull.  The company has over 250 different college campuses that they have representatives at the beginning of each school year that hand out individual samples to all students ($4 value).  By marketing this way they know that some people will never buy their product, but there will be others who become hooked on the product that might have never tried Red Bull without a free sample to begin with.   

Most marketers today are taking advantage of news feeds.  The trick to using news feeds is releasing them early in the morning or during the evening because otherwise the audience will be too distracted with everyday life, work, classes, sports, and other activities that they will not have time to pay attention to the feed. 

Another way college students are targeted by companies is through social media.  Everyday students through the entire world are checking Facebook, posting messages, looking at what their friends liked, Tweeting, surfing YouTube, and much more.  The trick to advertising on these sites is to target them during the academic year when most students have more time because they are not working or holding an internship full time and have more time to explore these advertisements or at least watch the first few seconds and see if the product interest them.  

The final example I will tell you about today is with the company Kwik Trip.  The company targets college students all the time by offering hot and ready, affordable food and gas.  They target students through mobile technology in two different ways.  They are one of the few companies that when you text them they will reply back and let you know if gas prices will increase or decrease today.  In addition, they only let you use their website coupons if they are on a mobile phone app.  With this being said these coupons are exclusively available for data phone users.  

From this we can conclude that marketers of the twenty-first century have learned to branch away from old-school marketing techniques in order to successfully market to this new generation of college students.  Companies today give out free product samples, coupons, and utilize online resources for almost all of their marketing strategies.  Lastly, companies today sell products only after they have made the consumer believe that their product is essential for everyday life.