Spring break is the time of the year that gets every college student excited. It is the opportunity for them to travel away from home for the first time without their families – a time to let loose and have fun with friends.
And targeted advertising to students during spring break is very important. It is your one chance to connect with this elusive demographic. During this period, it is important for your business to creatively include college experiential and event marketing in social campaigns in order for you to have a successful spring break.
Before you jump into the social media content marketing, here are the few things that you need to do in readiness for spring break marketing:
Most companies create a social media strategy yearly. This is not bad, but when you have specialised holidays such as spring break, one content-type does not fit all. It is therefore important that you review your strategy to see what will work for spring break marketing or what needs to be added. Evaluate the strategy and see whether it aligns with the goals that you are trying to accomplish. Ask yourself if the existing tactics will help you achieve your spring break marketing goals.
Just as with your strategy, you should also evaluate your social profiles and update them to reflect your spring break marketing theme. Go through all your profiles and update your visual branding across all social platforms. This includes changing profile pics and cover photos, as well as putting up spring break marketing visuals that give details about your campaigns.
Not every platform that you have will be appropriate for spring break marketing, and there could also be new platforms that you have not explored before that could be more useful. Conduct research on which platforms college students prefer most and leverage such platforms. If there are any new platforms that you come across, ensure that you include them in your updated social media strategy.
College students are a unique target audience with different marketing needs. It is important that you thoroughly understand their characteristics if you want to succeed in reaching out to them. The first thing that you need to know is that college students are very social. They are always looking for a way to expand their social circles, and they are more interested in building relationships. For this reason, you should ensure that you develop your marketing messages in such a way that college students feel connected to them. Resonate the view that you are a ‘friend’ instead of a brand trying to get their money. Let your messages promote your brand as genuine, sociable and trustworthy. This way, the students will be inclined to engage with your brand.
College students are inclined to use certain social media platforms. So let’s take a look at these platforms that will let you towards success.
More than half of college students today use Snapchat daily. So, you cannot afford to ignore this mobilesocial platform, especially during spring break. Snapchat enables you to send mass media messages that can reach thousands of students at a go. You can use Snapchat to marketing promotions, sponsored events, and so on. The biggest advantage of Snapchat is that it is more visual than Facebook and Twitter in which making it popular among students who are attracted to visuals. So, make sure you utilise this platform to share visuals of your products and services.
Instagram is a perfect way to share images that will capture the attention of students. Instagram is also quite popular with students. If you are looking to increase your fans online, Instagram is a great way to do so. Remember to share high quality visuals of your products and services.
Facebook is still quite popular even among college students, so it is one of the platforms that you should spend effort on during spring break. Besides sharing content and spring break specials, Facebook is also great for finding traffic for your website and blog posts. If you are sponsoring a spring break event, be sure to create an event linked to your Facebook page and promote it for more publicity.
What better way than to have students engaging with their fellow students on your behalf. You can collaborate with a popular student blogger to blog relevant issues related to your industry and work with them to sell your brand and endorse your spring break promotions.
Twitter is a great avenue for reaching out to students, especially when you come up with a personalised hashtag that the students can identify with. Providing students with an interesting spring break hashtag that they can use on Twitter will allow them to stay connected with each other and engage with your brand.
Spring break is a perfect way to engage with college students who are normally quite an elusive target audience. So get your social media right and make sure that you capitalise on spring break this year.