Student Advertising - College Newspaper Search Engine

Recent studies have revealed student spending to top $145 billion this year with nearly $30 billion of that being discretionary. Student spending is on the rise as baby boomers' children and their children are in, or will be in an institute of higher education over the next few decades.

The importance of college in this country is quite universal. The population of collegiate students is at the highest it has ever been and this trend shows no sign in slowing down. The following is a list of the top 3 reasons why marketing professionals are seeking ways to improve their exposure to students.

Reason 1 As stated in the above paragraph, student spending is projected to top $145 billion (that's billion with a 'B'!) this year. The highest it has ever been. This works out to roughly $14,000 per student. Let's say a company could penetrate that market and convert your marketing efforts into a chunk of 1/1000th of a percent (0.00001%). This works out to $1,450,000. Even if this speculation is half wrong ($725,000) or half wrong again ($362,500), this is still not a market that should be ignored.

Reason 2 Word-of-Mouth advertising is very important in today's marketing environment. Take a look at the performance of Myspace and Facebook. These companies did not rely on enormous marketing campaigns to generate their success. They did it by supplying a service that people can respect and appreciate. Once the word was out, the snowball effect took over. Now they are the most commonly visited websites among young adults. This is a ton of business that was built on word-of-mouth advertising.

Students are very impressionable and listed to their friends when making purchases and decisions. They are busy with school and homework but most students have an abundance of free time where they socialize and could be talking about your product.

Reason 3 Brand Loyalty could be the most important benefit of student advertising.

Question: Why is a student in school?

Answer: To get and education which will lead to a good job earning them more money and success than if they hadn't gone to school.

Not only does the company benefit from instant sales generated from their marketing efforts, if they provide a good product and customer service, they can also benefit from the following:

Customers for life
A personal experience is with me and Jeep. In school I purchased a used Jeep. Once I graduated and make more money, I treated myself to a brand new Jeep. Free Word-of-Mouth advertising: Once the loyalty has been established with a student, a company can reap the benefits of years of free word-of-mouth advertising

In conclusion, all the above will not be appreciated if the initiative to market to students is not pursued. So do your research and try a test market. A great place to start is at www.campuspitch.com. Here campuses can be researched based on a company's target customer demographics. Student marketing should play a big part in many companies' marketing plans for 2008.