| Ask Apryl: Targeting the Student Demographic | |
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Q: I'm looking at starting a company to target the student market. It is aimed at student travel.
I'd be interested to hear any cost effective suggestions. The product is mainly sold offline actually, but a student sales force.
A: Several low-cost, highly-effective advertising methods are available for you:
COLLEGE NEWSPAPERS FLIERS You can even tap into other colleges and universities this way. You'll find many college students across the nation who are willing to pass out fliers for your company.
Most are honest but you can check references from former employees just for peace of mind. This is a great low-cost way to get national exposure for your company.
Even though you said the product is actually sold offline, still make very good use of your Web site. People like to gather all the information they can about a company and its products or services before they fork over their money.
Lots of companies don't actually do business from their Web site. But they do have a presence on the Web and use it for the information gathering process.
It really is a turnoff to prospective customers if they can't find out more about your company online. Especially college students.
ONLINE You could appoint some of your staff to visit these Web sites. Most have message boards.
Roam these boards, start posting in a discussion and when you sign your name at the end of the message, include a link to your Web site. It's an effective way to reach millions of prospective customers.
When you're participating in the boards, make sure you're actually contributing to the discussion. On a wide variety of topics. This just helps establish your credibility.
A majority of message board moderators don't mind if you post in their boards as long as you're not blatantly advertising your company. Make sure your post is relevant to the conversation and useful to the average visitor.
You can also contact other student associated Web sites and ask that they include your site in their library of links. So many people check out those links and this is a great way to improve your presence on the Web.
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If you're really wanting to target college students, take out an ad in any college newspaper. Ad rates for college publications are extremely cheap and you can even tap into college newspapers all over the country.
You can arrange for someone (perhaps on your student staff) to put fliers on cars or post them on bulletin boards on college campuses. With that one page, you can tell people about your company and also point them to your Web site for additional information.
Marketing your company online is very beneficial. There are thousands of Web sites dedicated to college students and even travel for students.