Have you ever created a product sampling campaign aimed at students? It’s the end of the summer: the holiday tan has faded, the kids have gone back to school, and thousands of teenagers across the country have left home for the first time to begin their adventures at university.
The university network is home to some 2.4m students – who tend to be forward-thinking individuals with expendable income, which is a huge opportunity for marketers. But as a cohesive unit, they remain largely untapped.
Students try new products (and especially technologies) before any other target group, and they spend their money on things they WANT. They also take full advantage of social media and have all important social clout.
Product sampling opportunities
There are plenty of opportunities to get your product samples in front of students, but it’s worth bearing in mind that product sampling in this environment can often lead to queues as word spreads fast through student social networks, so you need to be prepared!
Product sampling at Freshers’ Fairs
You can sample your products during fresher’s week and at fresher’s fairs. This allows your samples to be one of the very first items to be presented to the new wave of students in their first week of term. This is a great opportunity for early adoption and peer to peer approval of your brand.
Sampling to students throughout the academic year
Many brands assume that the only time for sampling to students is at Freshers’ Fairs, but this is not the case. Sampling at various points throughout the year will help you determine the seasonality of your product. It also means that your samples and brand ambassadors won’t have to compete with twenty other brands all clambering for students’ attention at the fresher’s fair, but take pride of place as the only activity happening on campus that day/week/month.
Student events
Targeting students at events can be an amazing way to spread the word about your brand, introduce new concepts, engage with them and leave a lasting impression.
There are several options. Sponsorship of existing, successful events – “plug-ins” – are ideal for companies who do not have a huge budget and want to target students in a specific area. Plug-ins work because the students are already guaranteed to be coming to the event and your sponsorship enables you to run experiential campaigns to a targeted audience. Sampling, gaming, competitions or just cool awareness campaigns all work very well in this environment.
Hotcow is a non-traditional creative agency that specialises in experiential marketing that goes viral. Our campaigns generate buzz through crowd participation, PR and content sharing. Contact us on 0207 50 30442 or email us on info@hotcow.co.uk.
