Offline marketing that reaches college students

Stop focusing solely on online marketing. It is true that our generation spends a lot of time online but from time to time we do leave our dorm rooms. When we do we attend events, go to bars, house parties, clubs, etc. On-campus events are the least utilized but extremely effective marketing opportunities that exist for the college student market. These opportunities are so easy to tap into it’s surprising more companies aren’t doing this. Let’s say you wrote an iPhone game and college students are your target market. All you need to do is

1. go to a university website of your choice
2. find the student organization directory
3. find an organization that sounds relevant to you (i.e. video game club, entrepreneurship club)
4. search for them on Facebook
5. see if they have a group/page
6. look for the kinds of events they organize
7. email the president asking if you could sponsor one of their future events

Offline advertising doesn’t have to stay offline. As part of the sponsorship deal you might end up with a mention on their Facebook page, or have your company name in the event title. To understand how good this opportunity is let me tell you about how clubs work:

• they get a limited budget from student council
• if they have a good fan base on Facebook they have figured out how to market themselves
• they get to use campus resources that you can’t use (i.e. power point slide show in the cafeteria)
• they know what students want to see at events
• it is cool to have corporate sponsors, it adds to the credibility of the event

All you have to do is sponsor some food, or send them some free products and they will love you.

image credit: saparksfoundation.org

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