Reaching Students – Socialising
In our last guide, we covered Reaching Students Throughout Student Areas and we touched on engaging with students through student bars, pubs and social locations. In this instalment, we delve a little deeper into student’s socialising time and provide further suggestions on reaching students at these activity locations.
Where To Go?
Student Area Bars & Pubs
These local ‘watering holes’ can be where students start their night before heading into the city centre, or where they carry out a ‘quieter’ or more dressed down night where they are not looking to head into a major bar or nightclub. The feeling of students at these locations can be much more relaxed, and you can have more time to discuss your brand or promotion with the target audience.
City Centre Bars & Nightclubs
Within every major student city, there will be a student night within the city centre bars and nightclubs from Monday right through to Sunday, every week of the academic year. This student nightlife promotion and events is an industry of its own with promoters all vying for students attention to get them into the biggest students events around. What the industry creates for your brand are high footfall events with an almost exclusive student audience, allowing you to target students in a relaxed and joyous mood ready to be approached with a brand, product or promotion that is going to match the occasion.
Gigs & Concerts
Music makes up a large part of student life, with certain acts and genres defining their three or four years at university, and this is generally catered for within a student city with gigs and concerts taking place throughout the year at a variety of larger and (relatively) smaller venues across the city. To find the right gig or concert can take some research, knowing the tastes of your target audience (this can be easily done by understanding who your brand or product would suit), knowing which artists match that target audience, then knowing when and where these gigs and concerts are taking place. But once the research has been carried out, it opens up a host of opportunities.
What Do Do?
As with all of our student-focused promotions, the main aim is to stand out from the crowd, give students a reason to listen to your brand in a very crowded marketplace. There are a variety of tools that can be utilised to reach students while they are socialising from the simplest experiential activity outside the events, where EXECUTIONAL teams would be free to roam various areas of student cities, targeting the busiest footfall with the leaflets, giveaways, competitions or social media interactions. From creating branded vehicles that would tour outside the venues to increase the impact of any distribution, right through to the more complex nature of sponsoring or creating your own student event. Sponsoring or creating a student night is a surefire way to a memorable experiential experience, and your own promotional space allows creative freedom and the chance to offer students something unconventional. Creating your own student-focused event within popular social locations such as university union bars, nearby local pubs or bars allows a totally immersive brand experience position in a non-corporate, student-friendly environment. Events do not need to happen exclusively within existing venues: why not create a pop-up store in the area close to the university or an immersive experiential roadshow visiting key student socialising areas? The possibilities when you create your own event are endless and with years of EXECUTIONAL’s experience in the student marketing and student nightlife industry, we will always be on hand to advise and help create a functional, successful event.
When To Do It?
Timing is paramount if you are planning to reach students on their nights out or at key social events. We all know that freshers’ week is the perfect time for reaching students, with thousands of new and existing students in almost every UK city pouring into city centres and clubs. This is not the only opportunity, however, with other busy periods such as Halloween, the first weekend back after an extended break and around the time that every student’s precious loan arrives. Our student marketing experience guarantees that we can help you put in the research to ensure your activity takes place at the right time.
Handy hint…
“Get creative with potential experiential activity: branded ad-bikes leading students to your own student night or sponsored event with exclusive offers and giveaways? Or, simply utilising roaming teams to reach as many students as possible before they go into their chosen night or club. There are plenty of student promoters trying to reach students via conventional means, so make your experience memorable. Utilise word of mouth and social media to get your product or brand trending – good news always travels fast!”
