This month, I have some tips for marketing to the local student population and a little news about Google. First, a quick update: Canine College is continuing to fill it’s board and train program. If you missed last month’s story about their SEO and Pay-Per-Click campaigns, you can read it on my blog. I’ll try to tone down the internet marketing and talk about strategies you can put to work today.
School is winding back up, and the local economy is breathing a collective sigh of relief. Around here many markets are kept above water by the steady influx of cash brought in by all the students. Just counting the three largest universities here in the Triangle, there are suddenly 70,757 students around. Hopefully, we’ve seen the worst of this recession, and we’ll see the horizon by the new year.
What can you do right now to help your cash flow? Promote.
Attract that student crowd with student discounts, free wi-fi, eco-friendliness, and, of course, sex. (Go turn on MTV for 30 seconds if you’re scoffing at that last one.)
Get the message out with Twitter, Facebook, and e-mail. You are e-mailing your customer base aren’t you?
Keep new promotions rolling. Keep yourself relevant and fresh. If you haven’t already, go sit down and map out a calendar of promotions to cover from now through New Year’s. Each one doesn’t have to be the most clever thing you’ve ever done. Just try to map it all out, and worry about fine tuning later.
Okay, back to attraction.
Student discounts appeal to all students. You don’t even have to give much away. The psychological impact of the simple fact that you have a special just for them is tremendous. They will automatically identify with it, and feel welcomed. It doesn’t have to be a flat student discount, just do something special that requires a student ID.
Free wi-fi will bring you students. It will also bring you low spenders who hang around for a long time. You’ll have to figure out if it works for you. Simply having it available, even for a price, can be a valuable selling proposition. Maybe make it free to students only.
Eco-friendliness just makes sense. Go green and don’t look back. Just make sure your customers know what you’re doing to help! You can even figure out a way to get them involved in your eco-efforts. They’ll engage, and you’ll build lasting relationships with your customers.
Sex sells. I’m not inclined to elaborate much on that one here. If you’re really interested, check out this conference. One of the speakers will be the Senior Marketing Manager for Men’s Care at Unilever, makers of Axe body spray.
It’s not enough to just make the promotion though. You have to get the word out too. Don’t forget that the college crowd is very internet oriented. Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and blogs are all great places to reach this audience. So is the college newspaper and its website.
The social web is where the college demographic congregates now. The worldwide majority of Facebook users are in the 18 to 25 age range. Oddly enough, the 18 to 24 age group is less likely to visit Twitter than the 55+ age brackets!
And now, News of Google.
The search giant has announced a revised algorithm — that’s a series of rules and steps to carry out a function, in this case the indexing the the Web for its search results. They have codenamed it Caffeine, and you can preview it now. Initial tests seem to show that it returns many more results than the old algorithm in half the time.
It’s also supposed to be better with relevancy, but that’s more subjective. Personally, I’d say they did great with it. My sites rank even better. Canine College even makes it onto the first page for the search [dog training raleigh]!
Well, get the fall started right and I hope you have a great September. The Better Half and I are planning a trip to the Outer Banks to do some hang gliding. Hopefully I’ll have pictures in next month’s issue!
Cheers,
Peter
www.PeterGrandstaff.com – SEO Web Marketing & Design