Over $400 billion dollars is spent by college students in America every year. This includes $60 billion dollars that is spent on things that are not necessary like dorm essentials, school supplies, food, and video games.
A large percentage of students’ spending money comes from their parents.
Around 50% of students who are given an allowance from their parents receive approximately $2,000 a year. This equals to $17 billion annually. The majority of students spend this money on non-necessities such as food and drink outside the home, snacks and alcohol.
Parents of college students spend close to $50 billion on back-to-school expenses every summer.
For brands trying to connect with college students, attracting the attention of their parents is essential.
Why Is It Important to Understand Parents in College Marketing?
There are a few ways that parents influence the spending habits of their children:
1. Giving them money
Students whose parents have more money may have more money to spend themselves. In general, wealthier parents tend to mean college students with more money to spend.
2. Through their own habits
Most college students get their spending habits from their parents. Students typically use credit cards in the same ways, prioritize spending on similar categories, etc. Understanding how parents spend their money can give an understanding of how their children will spend theirs.
3. Shopping with them:
In relatively big ticket items like dorm furniture, TVs, and cars, parents are more likely to shop with their college students to provide advice and suggestions, and/or purchase the item for their student. A parent in this situation is just as much the customer as the college student themselves.
Marketing to College Students’ Parents: A How-To Guide
Designing a marketing strategy that takes parents into account can be an effective way to increase sales. However, moving from understanding them to marketing to them can be challenging.
1. Do your research 2. Consider using retargeting ads 3. Segment your emails 4. Create organic content 5. Use on-campus marketing
1. Leverage trials and samples.
There’s no denying that college kids love free stuff. Offering your product for free is a great way to attract young, loyal customers.
There are a few ways to get your free samples or trials in front of your audience. One way is to coordinate with residence life to have a move-in kit available for the fall semester or sponsored study break during midterms or finals. Another way is to offer a discount for first-time diners if you’re a food service on Seamless, GrubHub, or DoorDash. Once they get a taste, they’ll keep coming back for more.
2. Target parents with ads.
There are various methods of targeting likely parents of college students on online advertising platforms such as Facebook or Google.
Roughly 70% of parents are regularly active on Facebook, while all age groups prefer to use Google as their primary search engine. Therefore, these platforms would be ideal starting points for any business or individual looking to target parents.
The text is suggesting that businesses target parents aged 35 and up whose children are aged 17-22, as these parents are likely to have children who are either in college or planning to attend.
You can target parents more specifically by targeting those who like a certain school. Although it is not guaranteed that their child attends that school, it is likely.
An alternative is to use data from liquid assets. Parents of college students usually have less cash in their bank accounts than parents of non-students. This is because they have spent the last 18 years raising children and are now paying for their student’s education.
You can target college-age parents who are interested in a certain school and have less than $100,000 in liquid assets. These are likely people who have a child in college.
Further options to help you target parents include:
Lookalike audiences
- If you have data on the parents who have shopped with you before, you can instruct Facebook to show your ad to a lookalike audience, aka people who share many of the same attributes as your customer base.
Retargeting
- Show your ads to people who have visited your site before but did not complete a purchase.
- By using a Pixel on the URL of a specific landing page or blog tailored to the parents of college students (e.g., “How to Deal with Becoming an Empty Nester” or a graduation gift guide), you can retarget the people who spend time on those pages.
- Those people are highly likely to be parents of university students.
Household Extension
- This allows you to retarget any device in the household of someone who visited your site.
- Say a high school grad is checking out your products on their smartphone. With Household Extension, you can show ads for that same product to their parents.
- When the student brings up this certain thing they really need for their dorm, their parents have already been exposed to it.
3. Tailor emails to parents.
Email is a free and effective way to contact parents and stay in touch throughout the buyer journey. You should have a plan for getting parents onto your email list, and segmenting them so you can send targeted emails.
One way to market your business to college students is to offer a lead magnet, such as a graduation gift guide or a dorm essentials guide. You could also create a special discount code that parents can use to purchase your product or service for their student.
You could also include a question in your email sign-up form, for example, “Do you have any children who are currently attending college?”
After you figure out what content parents respond to, aim for email subject lines, headers, images, video, and CTAs that speak directly to their interests, concerns, and pain points.
If you want to reach parents effectively, you can use their email addresses to retarget them on the web. You can even track which parents open your emails or click on the links, and segment your audience further into those who are “engaged” with your content.
4. Offer targeted discounts.
Discounts tailored to your audience are a great way to engage them. For example, “For a limited time, Villanova students get free fries with every cheeseburger.”
If you want to attract students as customers, offer discounts if they provide their student ID at the time of purchase. You can often find these types of deals in a coupon catalog handed out at Student Unions or during Move-In Day. This is a free way to advertise your business.
5. Write clever copy.
If you haven’t been hanging out with college kids recently, you’re missing out. You learn new words every time you’re around them. They have their own lingo for academia and partying.
Although you shouldn’t put too much emphasis on speaking the same language as your students, it is important to use creative marketing and advertising techniques to catch their attention. Make sure not to be dull or unoriginal in your approach. If you’re not sure where to start, here are some helpful tips for writing interesting copy.
6. Mind your social accounts.
Social ads are an effective way to reach out to millennials and Zillennials. When marketing to college students, take advantage of social media platforms; even if you don’t have the budget for ad campaigns.
There are several ways you can easily engage college students on social media platforms.
- Leverage user-generated content; encourage your customers to tag your products in their posts so you can easily re-post.
- Spend time liking and commenting on related posts; this will help the algorithms show your account to more potential customers.
- Announce new products or releases on your social accounts; if you’re a big, national brand, think about making an account specifically for the college crowd you’re serving, e.g. “VillanovaDominos” or “MaybellinePHL.”
7. Host a giveaway, raffle, or competition.
If you want more social followers or email subscribers from college students, or just want to get them more engaged in your business, host a giveaway. Make the prize something they really want, so they’ll be willing to trade their contact information or money for a chance to win. Some ideas for prize-worthy items include a Sonos speaker system, free parking on campus, or free sides for life.
Encourage competition among college students by offering exclusive discounts to different schools. For example, host a 5K race and give prizes to the top runners from each school.
8. Engage student ambassadors.
Be sure to pay attention to students who are loyal to your business. Whether they come into your store or restaurant often or frequently order online, make sure you show them you appreciate their loyalty. Think of your student ambassadors as mini-influencers.
You should create ambassador kits that contain promotional items like t-shirts, bottle openers, water bottles, etc. The ambassador should be given referral discounts to incentivize them to give away the materials to their peers.
While it is not limited to college students, Aerie does a great job of utilizing user generated content on their social media accounts. Customers regularly post content with the hashtag #regram, which makes it easy to fill up your social media calendar!
9. Consider social causes.
I was in college when KONY 2012 was taking place. It was a big movement and everyone was talking about it. Even professors, students, school administrators, and food service employees were talking about it. It was the social justice cause of the year.
College students are ambitious and care about social justice, so businesses should contribute to causes that students are passionate about like reducing plastic waste or supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. This will make students more likely to support the business in the future.
10. Look for college media sources.
The best way to reach college students is by targeting the publications that they already read. Most college students are involved with a student-run newspaper, weekly newsletter, or popular online student forum or app. You can reach out to these publications to sponsor a post or display an advertisement.
Reach out to student ambassadors and look for student-run social media accounts to offer sponsored posts. Most schools will have an instagram account for their mascots or an “overheard at *school name*”. TikTok is taking over the world; reach out to student organizations (believe me, the dance team definitely has a TikTok account) and ask to be featured in a video.
Although it may be difficult to do everything mentioned above, it is possible. If you are not experienced in college marketing, it might seem daunting.
College Marketing Group was founded in order to connect brands and advertisers with college students and their parents. The company has extensive experience in this area.
If you would like to target this valuable demographic but are unsure of how to get started, we can assist you.
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