Tips to ensure your student promotion is a success
With the rapid rise of ecommerce, many of the tools and tactics used to promote student offers in store have moved online. Although students are web savvy and know their way around an ecommerce website, they will still take the path of least resistance to get a deal. As most products are now available for purchase online along with an increase in choice and alternatives, it is increasingly important that merchants take care with their student promotions.
Here are a few tips and things to be mindful of to ensure that your student promotion meets your goals.
1. Put the student promotion front and center
Far too often merchants will bury student promotions deep within product or support pages. Student deals shouldn’t turn into a game of hide and seek. Students like quick and smooth experiences and will go elsewhere if they have to spend too much time on your site.
Some merchants feel like showing off a student discount might diminish the value of an offering or product to other groups. This isn’t true. Consumers recognize that being a university or college students in today’s economic climate is challenging and will appreciate merchants that go the extra mile for students.
We recommend displaying student promotions alongside products or subscription pricing options. This will keep the student promotion top-level and easy to find, but without any risk of interfering with main brand messaging. Another benefit of displaying a student promotion on pricing pages is that some students may choose to forgo a student discount and purchase a higher tiered product or subscription if there are added benefits and value to them.
2. Setup custom landing pages to promote products and promotions to students
Unless you already sell to a younger audience it is important to tailor messaging and content for students. The value of your products or services give to consumers will be different whether they are professionals, retirees, or students. It’s important to recognize and highlight students.
Landing pages are great place to send traffic from marketing campaigns that target students. Use these pages to highlight products that are part of the student promotion
If done right, these pages will help boost your organic traffic as students will be searching for specific terms as they apply to how they normally would use your products or even if they search for “{brandname} student discount”. It’s better that this traffic comes directly to you rather than competitors or affiliates.
3. Leverage marketing channels your students use
It’s unlikely that students are reading trade publications or closely following industries that your products or brand solves problems for. If you aren’t leveraging social media, it might be a good time to start. Using social media to promote your brand and products has many benefits even beyond its ability to drive traffic to a student promotion.
Students are the biggest users of social media and embrace the widest variety of social platforms. This doesn’t mean you need to go all out and promote your student offerings on each one. You likely already have corporate pages and accounts on Facebook and Twitter, and really those are great places to start.
Another great place to engage students is Reddit. You would be surprised to find out how often students make posts asking peers if they know of where to get student discounts for your brand or products. Seriously. Go check it out!
One word of caution when using social media, specifically platforms like Reddit, to engage with student audiences. Students will often expect there to be a back-and-forth dialogue. But really this is a good thing. You’ll be able to answer their questions about your products, ask them about what they expect out of a student promotion from your company, and build trust with your brand. A little here can go a long way.
4. Give student the best experience possible
Students are influencers and will give their opinion about your student promotion and brand to their friends and peers. It’s important that you make the experience of taking advantage of a student offer as smooth as possible. Students hold brands to a higher standard when it comes to messaging, content, and user experience. What might be good enough for your current customers might fall short for students.
Students are more privacy aware than any other group. Asking them to give more personal information than necessary to access a student offer is asking for trouble. Be careful when selecting a method to verify student status. Manual verification methods can open up compliance concerns with data protection laws and can become costly as the success and popularity of your student offer increases. If you’re in the market for a student verification service be careful that they don’t ask for things like social insurance numbers, excess personal information, and academic records. If the student verification service you are evaluating asks users to create accounts and stores your customers you should keep looking.