How to do a good job of campus promotion

College campus is a large market of 17 million people, in 2010, this number will grow to 25 million people, they are distributed in various provinces and cities in the country, among which Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Chengdu, Wuhan, Xi'an, Shenyang and other cities are the most centralized distribution, and some cities, such as Langfang, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and other cities to build a university city, but also concentrated in the number of college students. Overall, it is a large and decentralized market, and at the same time, it has considerable individuality in terms of both media characteristics and audience characteristics.

Ordinary advertising and public relations campaigns, the common media are radio, television, newspapers, magazines, the network, and most of these media are blocked outside the walls of the university, in general, the campus has the influence of the media include:

1, network media. Not subject to the distribution of the campus in the geographical limitations of the network media, can be said to be the campus promotion of the most effective mass media. Currently in the country's nearly 2,000 colleges and universities, more than 90% of colleges and universities have established a campus network. College students account for nearly one-third of the nation's Internet users. The latest survey results of China Education Informatization Development Status released by Education Management Information Center of the Ministry of Education and College of Education of Peking University show that college students are more and more capable of applying the network, and as many as 73% of them often use the Internet search engine rather than the library to look for all kinds of information, 66.3% of them spend more than 3 to 4 hours on the Internet on an average every day at school, and more than half of the time is used for chatting, watching movies, playing games, and so on. used to engage in chatting, watching movies, playing games and so on.

In the college network media, the schools run their own, used as a platform for student life and communication BBS plays an important role, once the largest college BBS a mess, was shut down before the total account of more than 400,000, an average of more than 30,000 people online, the daily landing volume of more than 600,000 people, second only to a mess of water and wood clearing BBS, the total account of more than 290,000, an average of more than 18,000, 44,000 daily landing volume. More than 18,000, the daily landing volume of more than 440,000 people. Not long ago the BBS restructuring storm, so that most of the country's famous BBS, such as water wood Qinghua, the size of the South Lily, Fudan Sun and Moonlight, etc. a time in paralysis, followed by a large number of commercial or independently operated BBS instead, still continues to influence the students. Initiated by some polytechnic colleges and universities, on the basis of BBS developed Blog, wiki and so on in the development of campus network culture, forming a small local network environment. The specific development trend and influence is receiving more and more attention.

In terms of network application, socialization and entertainment, which are denounced as "not doing their job" by some management organizations, are precisely what constitute the main body of college students' network application. That's why so many instant messaging platforms and Internet service providers are moving into campuses and launching campus marketing campaigns.

Overall, college students have an advantageous position in network application and network knowledge, and they are active creators and participants in the network society, so any campus promotion activities that ignore this part of the network promotion, I am afraid that the effect will be greatly reduced. In particular, all kinds of online product promotion, through the network of ways to realize the user's direct knowledge and trial, I think we should call this "network roadshow", huh?

There is a negative example in this regard, there was a website with a touring roadshow in the form of campus promotion, went to 10 cities and 38 colleges and universities, the scope of the publicity is even greater than this, but basically put the energy on the site to promote the distribution of gifts in exchange for a registration form, the gifts are sent out to the registry has recovered a lot of, but the real fill out the form after you can remember their own name and password, and run to log in! However, very few students actually remembered their registration name and password after filling out the form and ran to log in. Roadshows are supposed to promote the experience and make a big impact, but if they don't promote the use of users, then everything is empty. Now if there are still companies that want to rely solely on this form of promotion, we will certainly strongly discourage.

We are in the process of customer service, every time we will recommend the application of network media, the specific way can be divided into the following kinds:

a: BBS publicity ordinary version. With a variety of products and services into the campus, most of the BBS and student forums provide advertising and agency pages to publish all kinds of commercial information. At the same time, music, film and television, games and other important entertainment projects, there are special discussion forums that can be used for targeted publicity. The most commonly used form of publicity and the least cost (money), is to send a few posts, or to start a discussion topic, the limit of the effect is that this topic or this post should be gathered, through the BBS automatic statistical system called "Top Ten Hot Topics", the attention will rise significantly. However, this is also a skill, I have tracked a well-known portal of a search engine products in the BBS hype, the nationalism of these things into the topic, the intention is to drive the attention, but unfortunately overdo it, a time to provoke public anger, the group attacked :)

Impression of this kind of publicity, is that we have given a SP in Beijing, 10 colleges and universities on the bbs to do! The first time I've seen this, I've seen a lot of it, and I've seen a lot of it in the past. Every year during the summer and winter vacations, the "transportation" and "ticketing" sections of each BBS become a hotspot, so a simple posting, and paying attention to the students' inquiries and feedback, can receive very good results. Simply posting an advertisement and then leaving it alone, or posting an advertisement with too much of a commercial atmosphere, will not get anyone's attention. (Oh, college students are not not smart, hard to serve ah)

b: BBS publicity upgraded version. With the official website of each school is different, BBS does not refuse commercial promotion, relatively large-scale commercial promotion, the current case as far as I know is not much, one is a shot network, in the BBS of Shuimu Qinghua, Agricultural University of the five-color soil and other BBS for the home page logo and battern advertisement, and opened the home page of the text column,

From the duration of this promotion from the effect of the duration of the point of view should be good. Another is China Unicom, in a shot after the BBS publicity, also with battern graphic advertising form, but immediately after the BBS was rectified event that time I am and some of the larger BBS contact, signed an advertising agency agreement, the results of the sky is not a good thing, angry words will not say.

But now the new BBS, no longer rely on the school background, or independent operation, or simply commercial operation, so the BBS commercial promotion space should be said to be more and more big.

Another upgraded version of the promotion was pioneered by Sohu, the game "Sword and Sworcery" in some BBS set up a special forum, I admire such an initiative. :). Of course, such as the glorious company, does not require the company's own operation, the students will set up a special edition of their own accord, and spontaneous station-wide activities to celebrate the birth of another new game, which is still the product of others to do a good job, the influence of the big, can only be jealous, can not be compared. I'm not sure if you're going to be able to do that.

c: mass network media publicity. At present, the major portals have opened a campus channel, search engines, alumni directories and some college students talent sites are often patronized by students network strongholds, we will recommend the relevant publicity according to the situation put. The deepest feeling is a colleague inadvertently said to me: "Many people are there to analyze why "Paradise" pushed well, it is not obvious, "Paradise" has Sina backing ah." Oh.

2, radio. Not long ago, I read a report, pointed out that the broadcast media after a period of low tide, rejuvenated in the advertising market potential. It probably has something to do with the fact that more and more people have cars. But campus radio, to be honest generally speaking I'm not a big fan.

There are only two effective time slots for campus radio, midday and early evening, and the rest of the time students are in class and the radio is a nuisance. These two hours happen to be the most crowded and noisy time in the school, if the TV broadcast in the cafeteria, there are still people to look at a couple of words, the radio can be said to be no students to listen to. Except for some very special moments: for example, during the Qiu Qingfeng incident at Peking University that year, I once stood in the triangle and listened to Xu Zhihong finish his speech on the radio.

But this incident also gave me a revelation: Xu Zhihong's speech had already been publicized in advance through the university's BBS, so people spontaneously paid attention to the radio at that time, and if a company wanted to achieve some kind of publicity through the campus radio, and was able to carefully plan an event and publicize it well in advance, it might receive unexpected results.

We once recommended to Tencent a campus radio program called "Color Ringing Fun", but it was not carried out because of funding problems. If you have the opportunity to run this program properly, I believe it will be a valuable experience.

But for us, the important role of the campus radio station is not in the specific publicity effect, but in the radio station itself. As a popular college official media, into the radio station are elite students, (I was also through a fierce competition into the school radio station, :PPP), and as a student organization in terms of the number of people, energy, and now there is a national college radio station alliance organization, has a lot of activity energy, if they as a campus promotional partner, the impact can not be underestimated.

Another example of the energy of radio stations is that when we pushed the "Sword and Sword" to sohu in Shenyang, we found two hosts who knew a group of college radio students, many of whom entered the live competition of this activity, really multi-talented, a group of heroes, in the five cities of the live activities of the participating students, they are the best performance, and their cheerleading squad is also the most qualified. caliber.

But the general promotion, we do not recommend the campus radio station, spend money and no benefit, of course, if any business decision makers or bosses optimistic about this piece, we do not oppose. Oh.

3, the school newspaper and magazine. Can be regarded as "print media", probably in the school only school newspapers and magazines, TOM has organized a "National College Media Forum", so that I have the opportunity to get in touch with these campus media workers. I was y impressed by the school newspapers of NPC and Jilin University. NPC's "NPC Youth" series has a high publication rate, focuses on hot topics and campus life, and is a model for student-run publications.

The shortcomings of school newspapers and magazines are obvious: most official school publications are rigid, irregularly distributed, limited in number and impact, and club publications are even more short-lived. There are still a few that have made a real climate.

As far as corporate campus promotion is concerned, school newspapers and magazines are a piece of chicken ribs, and there is generally no need for advertising unless it is a long-term promotion.

Another alternative form is some company-operated campus magazines or DM magazines, students' purchasing power is limited, the purchase of magazines is very cautious, so the current DM magazines appear more, direct issue, I was in the xys when the company also made an issue, but the financial resources and production standards are not able to keep up with the hasty end. The more feasible is a single DM, for example, samsung anycall once did a "graduate manual", in Beijing's major colleges and universities, according to the feedback of some students they very much like this booklet.

Now I haven't seen a DM magazine that has an impact on campuses, if there is an investor interested in this, we will be very happy to cooperate.

4, outdoor media and TV media. Colleges and universities are a piece of treasure, so there is considerable capital to build media platforms, currently in front of the outdoor media, such as Century Haven, Dinkum Media, etc. There are colleges and universities outdoor media business, I have dealt with them, outdoor media is still mainly focused on this piece of Beijing, other cities also have a small number of but scattered. The main form of outdoor light boxes and advertising columns, there is nothing special to say, the effect is certainly better than the poster, but the cost is also much higher. Oh.

This year I came into contact with a copy of Focus Media for college TV media platform, said to have completed the basic construction in more than 300 colleges and universities across the country, but the TV media has a shortcoming, that is, its effective time. Now this company's TV is basically distributed in the cafeteria, the effective time of the cafeteria is only noon and night. Considering the high cost of advertising, I'm afraid that companies will have to reconsider when making this advertisement.

5, DM and posters and others. Oh, speaking of DMs and posters that excite me. I remember when I first joined the campus promotion team, there was someone who said to me indignantly, "Whoever talks about the company's business, the opening is that we can send out DMs and posters, calling for people to underestimate." At that time thought y, but a single single do down, only distribution is not, no distribution is never.

First of all, we have done how many times of DM distribution, I can not remember, to sohu did, push "sword"; to Tom did, push the free mailbox; to hawa did, push the ICU; almost every promotion, whether it is combined with the roadshow or combined with the sports and cultural activities, as a form of publicity and information, the distribution of an important position. According to the customer's needs, there are in-depth to the dormitory, need to recover the feedback form of point-to-point distribution, but also in the activities of the scene to the students passing through the centralized distribution. It can be said that if you want to ensure the coverage of publicity, distribution of promotional materials is still indispensable, especially, for example, the promotion of games or software, or the promotion of fast-moving consumer goods, DM coupled with the physical (client or product) directly to the dormitory distribution, can directly lead to the use of the students or trial, so that the audience and the product to achieve the shortest distance contact.

DM distribution is specific to the implementation, to quote a phrase to illustrate, "the big implementation is a big idea". As with TV commercials, everyone produces and places ads, and the size of the results depends on the details and quality.

The details involve many factors, the first being the design of the DM. I once saw a planning program, the whole is not particularly colorful place, but there is a detail so far impressed me, they designed the DM into the shape of the five rings, folded up is a flower type, well in accordance with the product characteristics and brand connotation, you can imagine that, compared with the large and small sheet of paper, this DM is a bright spot in front of your eyes, rather than being to get in the hands of the hand roughly swept into the trash can. The DM will not be taken into the hands and thrown into the garbage after a cursory glance. Another case is the DM designed by sohu for the promotion of "Sword and Blade", in which a number was printed on it, and students could scratch the code to get a treasure in the game, which was not only to stimulate the users to use it, but also a way of evaluating the effect of the distribution. I think this was a clever design, although at the time, due to other factors, the design did not work as well as it should have. More on this below.

The second detail is the choice of quantity and form of distribution. In retrospect, sohu's DM was at a disadvantage in this regard. Considering the cost, each dormitory only printed 1-2 pieces of DM, and we later concluded that it is usually difficult to circulate DMs, and after a person reads it, rubs it or throws it aside, the life of the DM will be over. Therefore, although the DMs were distributed to the dormitories, they did not actually affect the number of people estimated by the number of students in the dormitories. It would have been much better to increase the number of copies a little more, or to use two rounds of distribution. 150,000 copies of DMs were distributed to 6 schools so aggressively that by the time the 3rd round of distribution took place, the students knew what it was, and TOM decided that this was enough, and shifted the distribution to other schools for the scheduled 4th round. Oh.

In terms of format, we generally recommend distribution to dormitories for controlled results. The actual number of dormitories distributed, how many people affected, this can be counted, and can be monitored and feedback can be collected. Of course, centralized distribution has its advantages, TOM once proposed to let the "cartoon dolls" to the school waving, everywhere to distribute their leaflets, really a good idea. The same could be said for sending a pair of roller skaters to the school to hand out flyers, which would certainly be eye-catching.

The third detail is the timing of the distribution and the training of the distributors. For the centralized distribution, the best time is of course at noon and evening, in the main road of the campus, the cafeteria and other places where the flow of people is concentrated. For dormitory distribution, the best time is in the evening, when students are "back to the nest". A lot of distributors pick a random time, regardless of whether there are people or not, the DM or flyers to the dormitory door under the slit of a stuff, if most of the distribution of this kind of words, I dare say that the effect is less than one-third of what it should be. Putting aside the fact that the stuff under the door is usually thrown away, the most important thing that influences the effectiveness of the distribution is the explanation and word-of-mouth publicity of the distributors. When we were promoting for Sohu, we didn't train our handouts well enough in the early stages and were severely reprimanded. I think we benefited a lot from that. The training proved to make a significant difference in the effectiveness of the handouts. Students began to take a real interest in DM after hearing the explanation.

In this regard, so far in the industry I think the best is one of our partners in Shenyang, they are regional companies, so in the campus resources and implementation of the standards of meticulous cultivation, has a selected distribution implementation team and perfect training system. I have exchanged ideas with them in this area, and I am y impressed. We will continue to work on this.

Now when it comes to posters, there's not much to learn about putting up posters, it's just three words: comprehensive, frequent, and good looking. The school's poster board is basically for anyone who wants to put it up, so it's just as likely to be covered at any time. I have some pictures here that can be used for comparison. Some posters, scruffily pasted in an obscure corner, and some posters, 10 or more in a row, neatly occupy an entire poster board. The difference in effect speaks for itself. In fact, there are many places where posters can be put up in schools, including public bulletin boards, cafeteria bulletin boards and dormitory bulletin boards. Considering the coverage of posters, the more posters that appear on large poster boards and the more comprehensively they are covered during the peak hours of pedestrian flow, the more effective the posters are. When we talk to our clients about this, many of them have questions about the number of posters we put up. In fact, this is because posters put up at noon yesterday may be covered or torn down in the evening, and very few last until the next day, and yet posters are really an eye-catching form of publicity.

In addition to the DM and posters mentioned above, things like gift distribution and physical distribution are also common. It's basically the same thing, so I won't go into that. Drink giveaways are a separate piece, more on that later.

Some summaries on campus promotion (2)

After the first one was posted last time, a lot of peers and friends gave me valuable advice, which made me very excited and strengthened our confidence in doing this field. I would like to thank you all.J

A friend in Shanghai, after reading the last post, suggested to me, "You listed the problems, but did not give the solutions". At that time I didn't understand this statement very well. In the past few days, I revisited the previous post and realized that I really didn't get to a key point, which is that the types of media on campuses, although they all also have their own strengths or advantages, and can be used creatively and comprehensively to promote a product or brand, on the whole, compared to the complete mass media system, they are seriously flawed:

1.

Relatively Monotonous media mix is not able to carry a rich content of the communication appeal, not able to meet some of the needs of the enterprise publicity: campus media types are fewer, and the mainstream media is still limited to DM and the network of the two major categories; mass media system in the advertising volume of the largest media in the campus of the television bottleneck;

2,

Difficult to achieve a wide range of especially sustained Advertising bombardment effect, there are limitations in the breadth and depth of dissemination: in addition to the network media, other campus media, especially campus-owned media dispersed in various colleges and universities across the country, the lack of a unified, formal media platform; and has emerged in the commercial operation of colleges and universities such as outdoor light boxes and other media, the cost-effective and the customer's expectations of the existence of a large gap;

One of the college life style circle<

The uniqueness of the media environment in colleges and universities is due to the relative closure of the university campus, most of the time, students live in the dormitory - classroom - cafeteria in a three-point line, we can accordingly construct a college student's life form circle, roughly outlined the existence of the form of this circle dependent on the marketing approach (about the division of static and dynamic is not strict, anyways, all communications are Interactive):

In the above figure, constitute the indoor environment, including dormitories, cafeterias, classrooms and all kinds of indoor cultural and sports venues, each school will have a lecture hall, lecture halls, etc.; constitute the outdoor environment, in addition to all kinds of stadiums, including the main campus roads and campus plaza.

Second, commonly used forms of activities

1, RoadShow

The most conventional dynamic marketing in the campus is probably the roadshow, or a simple exhibition. Every year in March and April, as well as in September and October, students with a new semester's expenses given by their families, or with a little income from holiday jobs back to campus, many businesses see the opportunity to reach out to them to temptation. After May 1, I wonder how many merchants have been baptized by the nation's colleges and universities, huh?

The advantages of doing roadshows on campus, I once heard someone jokingly say: in the computer city roadshow, is to enrich the spare time of the workers and idlers, while doing roadshows on campus, attracted to the actual product is interested in student consumers. Although not free from exaggeration, but also the truth.

For the roadshow, many advertising colleagues are experts in this field, and should be much more professional than us in the field layout, promotional programs, on-site interaction, etc. I do not need to show off here. Roughly mention some with the school some need to pay attention to the place:

1) the choice of venue: the choice of venue is nothing special need to pay attention to the place, each school will have the most foot traffic, the most suitable for roadshow venues, but usually supporting facilities and even including power supply access are incomplete, in some schools too much commercialized publicity and exhibition is limited, therefore, in the consideration of The scale and form of the roadshow needs to be integrated into these special factors; at the same time, the approval process in the college site is not very formal, and even temporary requisition of space, a week or so in advance of the approval is more appropriate, it is best to leave a spare site;

3) the combination of roadshow and sales: a number of customers have proposed to us, whether it can be combined with on-site sales in the roadshow, or simply give us a roadshow, or simply give us a roadshow. We have raised an expectation that a certain amount of sales will be realized in a campus roadshow. What we need to emphasize is that people go to the computer city to buy, but not on campus, unless the price is really competitive compared to similar products, or low-priced fast-moving consumer goods, we do not recommend doing on-site sales for general products. Especially education, training, service products, students need to be compared and experience before they can make a choice to buy, rather than spend energy in the rush to the scene on the sales pitch, it is better to honestly show the characteristics and strength of the product, and at the same time to consider the auxiliary marketing methods or follow-up marketing program.

2, lectures

Compared with roadshows, lectures are a common form of promotion of university characteristics, can also be regarded as a soft roadshow, lectures can carry a wealth of content and forms of expression, if the application of the right, resulting in the depth of dissemination of roadshows can not be compared. If you can successfully keep 200 students on the lecture until the end of the lecture, you have at least 200 on the product depth of knowledge and has a fairly good sense of potential consumers, and these people will become spontaneous word-of-mouth spreaders. When Lei Jun in the national university lecture tour, really put Kingsoft's "Swordsman" hard to push a hand. Many colleagues in the game industry take this as a classic case. The most ruthless in this regard is still the New Oriental, how many people have not listened to Yu Minhong's lecture? Xu Xiaoping even spoke on TV, huh?

One of the advantages of making lectures is that there are many selling points, you can find a theme to attract students to speak, such as playing the domestic card, the national brand, the recruitment card; you can use the celebrity effect and fashionable topics, for example, Canon last year asked Lu Chuan and a group of emerging directors to the school to make a lecture on the DV shooting; you can also be combined with the teaching activities of the school to the classroom of the students to talk about the TOM pushed Skype to do such an attempt. The company has made such an attempt when it pushed Skype.

Another advantage of lectures is that they can be large or small in scale, cost more or less, and are easy to pilot. You can rent a classroom with one or two hundred people to give a talk, or you can give a talk in a lecture hall with nearly a thousand people. You can do small lectures on a continuous basis, such as beauty salons of this type, deep plowing, slowly expanding the influence; you can also do a high-level, luxury version of the big lecture. Specifically how to operate, or depending on the specific needs of the promotion.

Additionally, the effect of the lecture and the roadshow is not exclusive. It should be emphasized that we can put up posters and distribute samples all over the lecture site, or simply take advantage of the popularity of the lecture outside the venue to do a small roadshow, but do not penetrate too much in the content of the lecture of the commercial demands, into most of the time in the advertisement. The consequence of this is not only to speak in the middle of the no one listening, and students will spare no effort to spread to their classmates, "so-and-so company's bad lecture", huh.

3, singer contests, dance contests, etc.

Philip Kotler pointed out that "marketers sometimes get windfalls from subcultural target groups. For example, marketers often like to target teenagers because they represent trends in fashion, music, entertainment, creativity, and attitudes in society." (Marketing Management, 10th Edition)

We refer to music and sports as timeless themes for campus events. With the concept of music, promotional content and format can be infinitely varied, offering greater flexibility in terms of operational difficulty and cost compared to sporting events. Unified's Shining Star Campus Singers Competition, Master Kong's Campus Dance Competition, Dynamic Band's Street Dance Competition, HDFS-MTV Campus New Voice Competition, Star Dance Dance Competition (sponsored by Panasonic Mobile Phones and Unicom's UP New Power), and Mengniu's Lactic Acid Super Girls' Voice Competition have all become events rooted in campuses and have social influence.

However, because of this, the theme is a bit of a cliché, and if we continue to promote it with the help of music, how can we push the boundaries and maximize its effect in the current situation of many events and well-known manufacturers? We have some superficial ideas: