Beta Testing Gen Z Story on Campus
You probably just finally started to get the hang of marketing to “Gen Y” college students on campus. Well, guess what? There is a new generation of consumers at their heels.
Picture a group of “Gen Y” college students being pushed out of the front gates of campus by a younger, larger, even more tech-savvy group of students. That’s what will be happening over the next several years. (Have a great college marketing campaign? Enter it in the 2016 PRO Awards by March 18 in the Best Age-targeted Category).
You’ll hear that members of “Gen Z” hate living in the shadows of the generation that preceded them. But who can really blame them? For several years, conversations about Millennials focused largely on how difficult it was to engage with them in the workplace and also how frustrating it has been to market to them.
You’ll read lots of research and opinions about how different this “Gen Z” is from “those Millennials.” This is always said with a bit of a clip in people’s voices now—almost like “Millennial” is a four-letter word. This is probably because many marketers, it seems, never figured them out, simply gave up, and just kind of ended up hating them in the end.
Many college marketers might be hoping for a reprieve from trying to understand what makes college students tick. Brands might expect that since a new generation is on campus, they can fall back on old ways of marketing to them. There is already a boatload of consumer research and psychographic tidbits about “Gen Z.” You can spend days reading this stuff after a quick search on the Googs.
The thing is, all the sociology you can soak in about “Gen Z” is useless unless you actually have a decent brand to market. The number of brands that are doing it right and sharing a genuine story with consumers is rising, and with it, the collective volume of their voices just got louder. The fake-it-’til-you-make-it approach to engagement—which you may have gotten away with last semester—will just be drowned out today.
If you want to reach college students on campus over the next several years, you need to keep three things in mind:
- Craft your story. Perpetuating the same marketing message year after year is just wrongheaded. College students remember great stories and use them to draw parallels to their own lives. “Gen Z” is on a continual treasure hunt for the next best piece of content. A story that evokes emotion and is shareable is basically showing them an X on the treasure map.
- Always be in BETA. Beta testers are your most passionate customers. They are your early adopters. They are valuable because they will identify weak points in your products or services that cause consumer friction. They will tell you how to speak to them and when. Listen to what they have to say, and test out different marketing on campus all the time.
- Observe and listen to your campuses. Your college marketing strategy should outline the key campuses you are focusing on. Once you have identified them, start taking the pulse of each one and write down and store your observations. Each campus has its own vibe, its own challenges, traditions and news. Honing in on these things will absolutely provide you with unique opportunities to create a relatable brand message to those students.
Campuses are an ever-changing landscape that requires individualized approaches to student marketing. “Gen Z” should not be generalized as just another faction of Millennials—they will blaze their own path. The key thing to remember is not to overthink them. Work on your story. Work on making your brand remarkable. “Gen Z” will respond to this and reward you for it.
Jason Bakker is COO at Campus Media Group. He can be reached at [email protected].
