Planning a Student Campaign: A Guide

Check the offer suits students

Students are a large audience and a crowded one. Before choosing dates or cities, test the offer against how students actually live: tight budgets, shared houses, irregular timetables and a phone in every hand.

A first year in halls, a final year in a shared house and a postgraduate renting a city flat want different things. Name the group you are after, then look at what they already buy and where they buy it.

Loyalty is harder to win than the “customers for life” line suggests. Most people do not shop where they shopped at university, so judge the campaign on what it sells or signs up this year, not on a promise of lifetime value.

Do the homework early

The summer before term is the time to plan. Universities are quiet from June to September, which leaves room to research properly before freshers arrives at the end of September.

The answers decide almost everything that follows: which cities make the list, which days the team works and whether the activity belongs on campus, on the streets around it or in the evening.

Fewer places, done properly

A single brand, one table, one clear offer: easier to remember than a hall of twenty stands.

Spreading a budget across twenty universities usually buys a thin presence at each. Concentrating it on a handful of cities means the same students see you more than once, and repeat sightings are what get a brand talked about between housemates.

Pick the places where the offer fits best. A sports drink suits universities with big sports programmes; a late night food offer suits cities with a busy student nightlife.

Local detail helps a concentrated campaign land: the university name on the print, campus landmarks in the copy, and a team that knows its way around.

Choose the timing deliberately

Freshers week is the obvious slot and the most crowded. Every brand on the fair is chasing the same few days of attention from students who are handed something new every few steps.

A brand with one shot often does better a few weeks after freshers, once students have settled into routines and the fair stands have gone. Loan payment weeks, Halloween and the first weekend back after a break are other busy moments worth a look.

Give them a reason to keep it

A free treat is a reward students actually use.

Handing out leaflets still works when the leaflet is worth keeping. A strong design, a voucher that matters or a code that unlocks something online gives the paper a second life after the walk to lectures.

Match the reward to the price. A small discount on an expensive product goes straight in the bin; a free item, a meal deal or a prize draw entry gets used.

Add a mechanic that makes sharing part of the reward. Ask students to photograph the leaflet somewhere unexpected and post it for the chance of a prize, and a piece of paper becomes content on hundreds of feeds.

Branded freebies earn their cost when they are useful enough to keep: sunglasses in September sun, a tote bag that survives the term. Novelties that break within a week cost money and say the wrong thing about the brand.

Build an experience around it

An inflatable game turns a stand into something to queue for.

Experiential marketing lets students try the product instead of reading about it. A food brand can run quick cooking demos between lectures, a fashion brand can open a pop-up with a styling corner, and a drinks brand can put on its own student night.

A cooking demo can go further than a free taste: students cook a simple meal before their next lecture, short clips go on social media, and a competition offers a home-cooked dinner for the winner’s whole house. A sports brand might build a pop-up court; a beauty brand might offer quick makeovers.

An experience gives students something to film and share, and it suits a product sampling campaign where the taste or feel of the product does the selling. A well-made idea also gives local press and student media something to report.

A pop-up shop or a takeover of a students’ union venue for a branded event goes further still, turning a promotion into a place students choose to visit.

Bigger ideas need more lead time: space, power, equipment and enough people to run the day. Settle those early so the idea survives contact with the venue.

Connect it to social media

Students talk to each other on their phones, so build a reason to post into the activity itself: a photo spot, a hashtag competition, a prize for the best video.

The simplest version costs almost nothing: put your handles on every piece of print and run a competition that asks students to follow or tag a friend.

Check your own channels before launch. Logos, links and recent posts should all be current, because a student who follows the leaflet to an account that has not posted for months goes elsewhere. Once they follow, you can keep talking to them for the price of someone’s time to post.

Data capture on a tablet turns a busy stand into a list you can contact after the day, using your own questions and privacy wording.

Persistence beats one big day

Familiar faces in matching kit make a repeat visit easy to recognise.

A competitor with a huge stand on one Thursday is forgotten by Friday. Two people at the same spot every Thursday for six weeks become part of the walk to lectures.

Smaller budgets can win this way. Students recognise the brand on the second visit, ask questions on the third and act on the fourth. Student nightlife has plenty of examples of a newcomer outlasting established nights simply by being outside campus every day and letting word of mouth do the rest.

Big brands with big stands still lose to familiarity. If a competitor brings a large team for one day, a smaller team that returns every week for the rest of term can end up with the stronger name on campus.