Lessons learned from marketing to college students
It still amazes me after three years of running a student organization and doing on-campus marketing for the entrepreneurship program how difficult it is to get students' attention. Here are some things I've learned about college students:
Free food
Generally free food will guarantee at least a small crowd but these people will not be interested in the event and will leave once the food is gone. It's a good hook and will definitely convince some students to miss a meal at the caf to attend your event. If you schedule an event around dinner or lunch time you're pretty much required to provide food to get anyone to come. Warning: Don't rely on free food as your only marketing hook because even just a little bit of rain can be enough to keep people away.
Raffles + Giveaways
Again, these things are never the main reason for an event and students know that they are mostly a marketing stunt. I've been to some events where they had some expensive prizes and moved the drawing of the winners to the end of the event to make sure students sit through all of the lecture. It is not very satifactory as a host to know that people really just came for the raffle.
Cool speakers
You would think this would do it! Bringing Johnny Cupcakes to campus to talk about his story is cool. Everyone who attended loved it. All 80 of the 240 who said they would be attending on Facebook loved it. It is absolutely nervewrecking if after a crazy marketing campaign on campus with flyers, emails, powerpoint slides, and over 240 attending on Facebook and something like 300 maybes only about 80 people show up. The week after the event I ran into a ton of students who told they had forgotten about the event even though we had sent out emails the day before reminding everyone. Even though I'm convinced that getting interesting speakers is the best way to drive traffic to your event, it will still surprise you how many students just forget.
Two years ago Facebook events was a far better way to market your event than it is today. Really none of the settings or things you can do with Facebook events has changed, there are just many many more of them now. People start events for all sorts of reasons today and students get flooded with invitations all the time. The way to gauge possible attendance has also gotten far worse. Selecting "Attending" really doesn't mean much today. Students will not think about whether you need a good approximation to buy the right amout of food and will say they are attending if they are interested. I want to argue that for a large portion of Facebook users selecting attending is almost like "digging" an event with a slight chance of attendence. Maybes are pretty much no's with a 10% success rate from my experience.
This might be the best way to get in touch with students even though email inboxes get flooded with administrative stuff daily. Most students will not write themselves a note after they read your email so you better email them again right before the event. And be prepared for plenty of "i didn't get that email" excuses even though you know that your university's spam folder does not block emails from addresses connected to the same nameserver.
In-Class Announcements
This stuff works. Professors, for the most part, have some influence on students and if they recommend an event it is very likely that some of those students will show up. Make sure the professor actually likes the event, too, otherwise it will sound like another marketing message that the professor was asked to deliver.
Marketing to college students is like being in marketing boot camp. You deal with one of the most distracted audiences and if you get them to do stuff you're good.
