Ask Silver Bullet: February 2016

With over 50,000 full time students at Newcastle (23,000) and Northumbria (30,000) Universities, including around 9,000 international students, the student market represents a huge opportunity and, given the city’s total population of around 315,000, a significant proportion of the local market.

For the property developers this group of people has come as a huge boom with student accommodation blocks now forming a massive proportion of the construction sector within the City whilst leisure operators, taxi companies and other specialist consumer goods suppliers have cause to be more than grateful for Newcastle’s reputation as a great city for students.

So, dependent on what services or goods you wish to market to this transient population, are there any general guidelines to student marketing?

The first point is actually not to generalise (although this short article will, due to space constraints!) – the student population is not a homogeneous group but rather a group of different people with different tastes and aspirations – the old stereotype of white, middle class 18-21 year olds who drink a lot, live on baked beans, do no work until deadlines loom and spend all Summer out of their minds in Ibiza simply isn’t true. You need to understand their behaviour, spending patterns (which vary greatly depending on the time of year and state of their finances) and ethos – these are bright young people, full of ideals (a recent survey revealed 97% of students interviewed said ethics were important to their purchase decisions, resulting in students being 51% more likely than other adults to purchase products with ethical credentials).

So ditch the spin, they will see straight through anything that isn’t 100% truthful and be creative rather than trot out the same old hackneyed campaigns – it’s been proven that the quality of your creative work is the single biggest driver of advertising profitability (Top 10 Drivers of Profitable Advertising, Data2Decisions for Admap, 01/09/2014). Campaigns need to be creative, clever or entertaining if you want to engage with this audience with unsolicited or valueless messaging easily filtered out by this tech-savvy audience. Also, don’t try to be ‘cool’ if it’s not an inherent part of your organisation – you’ll just end up looking like ‘Dad at a disco’…

Reaching these groups isn’t all about social media either, although this is great for promotional offers, with more traditional channels such as TV and outdoor advertising also being an important part of the marketing mix. The majority of students actually list email as their preferred channel to link to brands but most are also opposed to direct marketing messages – again, campaigns have to be clever.

Whilst price is just as important to students as it is to other groups, this isn’t at the expense of quality – students like the finer things in life but will compromise over the year as money gets increasingly tight often switching from brands to own brands for consumer goods. They are also more likely to make purchases online with most progressively using smart phones over laptops as their weapon of choice.

So, be truthful, be creative and remember that this huge sector represents not only your present market, but also potentially your future market if you can retain them as increasingly higher earning customers over the years to come.

Do you need to some assistance with your marketing? Do you need to review your strategy or do you have another marketing question we can help with? Talk to us. Email your questions anonymously to us today hello@silverbulletmarketing.co.uk  or Tweet us (not so anonymously) @SilverBulletPR and use the hash tag #AskSB