Reaching Students – At Their Student Home…
In previous guides, we have discussed the options of reaching Students around their chosen university or college campus, but what about when they are not at lectures? What about reaching students in the early evening or weekends? This new guide looks at the options of reaching students when they are at their student house and accommodation.
Where to go…
Student Halls of Residence
A question we hear almost every week is: can we reach students with leaflets at their halls of residence? Unlike some agencies we look to be honest about this and admit that it is close to impossible to have tactical activity on halls of residence. After years of student event promoters taking advantage of originally lenient policies, halls of residences across the country have built up quite strict policies to deter promotional activity. This can mean to have tactical activity is to risk legal action and expensive fines, that many halls of residences will pursue to their conclusion. So always be careful when an agency can offer halls of residence activity, and investigate the permissions have been organised as it is your brand at risk, not theirs.
Private Student Housing
Generally the first experience of renting a home, these are properties that have been organised through student letting agents and landlords. These can be large 4 to 8 bedroom houses located in residential areas with a good commuter/walking distance to the university or college (more on this below). These are easier to reach with activity from experiential brand experience, to simpler leafleting activity. Though as rental prices have decreased, a number of students now reside in city centre apartments which similar to halls of residences throw up issues in terms of private property permissions. But being based within the city centre, this does quickly offer more options with the ability of promotional space and major commuter links in the area.
What to do…
The main activity that people look to when organising a campaign reaching students at their student home is door to door leafleting. But as a general rule, we do not believe door to door leafleting provides the return that our clients’ budgets deserve. We believe that there are a number of campaign strategies out there that can reach students in a more direct and innovative way. Why not try an experiential and brand experience approach? Such as a branded ice cream van driving through the residential areas, playing relevant music to gain attention and providing product samples rather than your traditional ice cream sales. Whatever it is, always try to think of more fun and interactive ways to reach students at home, as they will receive 1000’s of takeaway menus through the door, your leaflet may not even be looked at before it is thrown in the bin!
When to do it…
The answer is when they are at home. This seems like a very obvious answer, but that is not always the case, and we see a number of campaigns being run when students are actually at university or college sat in lectures. So whatever the campaign, wait until they are at home or in the area, increasing the reach of any campaign and allowing students to be able to respond immediately to your promotion.
Handy hint…
“Don’t be intrusive! Students can be more relaxed about the positioning of any marketing towards them (compare to what you would expect from a more mature target audience). There is still a thin line from providing fun and engaging promotion, to disrupting and intruding on the home lives of these students. So think about the timings and the promotion as a whole before barging in through the front door!”
