There was a time when you could hear words like “Digital marketing is the future of marketing”. Those words are far less frequent nowadays, as the future is here. And it’s not only marketing. A lot of things metamorphosed thanks to digitalization. It’s hard to find any kind of activity that, at least partly, isn’t done online.
- Business
- Education
- Connections with Family and Friends
Those are just three things that embrace digitalization to their benefit. The business was embracing digitalization slowly, while education was figuring out its online possibilities at a snail’s pace. But the COVID-19 pandemic made everyone discover how many things can be done online almost instantly.
And as everything functions fully or partly online, ignoring digital marketing would be the greatest mistake one can make. And that’s the mistake that occurs rarely. If you want to create a marketing campaign for an essay writing service, you know that students google “college paper writing services for me” to find services like that. So, it’s logical to place the campaign online.
Things look easy at first glance. Just make sure that people online see the campaign and there you have it. But, knowing that your marketing campaign targeted at students should embrace digitalization doesn’t mean that you can’t make mistakes with it. So, let’s check out how you can fail your marketing campaign targeted at students.
Relying Only On Paid Ads
You may think that paid ads are guaranteed to attract people to your service. And they are a quick way to drive more traffic to the website. But this strategy is quite costly and challenging. It is challenging because you can’t be sure that they will reach the target audience. It’s quite possible that 50% of those seeing the ads are not interested in what you offer.
This, in turn, makes the paid ads strategy costly. In many ways, paid ads work like gambling. There’s a chance that the ads are going to be spotted by the target audience, but there’s an equal chance that you’re going to lose money with quite diminishing results. No one tells you to ditch paid ads completely, but you need to consider other options, especially if it’s a marketing campaign targeting students.
Students are more likely to google what they need, thus search engine optimization is a better option. Okay, the reason you didn’t pick SEO in the first place is obvious. Lead generation through organic searching takes more time for your service to rank on the search results page. But your service will rank there, albeit at a slower pace.
Picking the Wrong Social Media Platform
To be fair, there is zero possibility that you weren’t considering using social media platforms for a marketing campaign targeting students. Students are using social media platforms almost constantly. If you want to target students, social media platforms — that’s where your marketing campaign should be. And you know that. But you can make a few mistakes here.
When you think about social media platforms, Facebook pops up almost instantly. But that’s not the right platform to target students. In 2015, more than 70% of teenagers and people in their early twenties (average age for students) were using Facebook. But by 2022, only 32% of the said demographic is using the platform. You should consider other options.
Instagram, for example, is still on the rise. And if in 2015, 52% of your targeted demographic was using it, it’s 62% now. And that number continues to grow. Besides, Instagram, unlike Facebook, is more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses. But even if you’re a giant corporation targeting students (hello, conspiracy theorists!) Facebook is the wrong place to look for them.
Not Using Videos
Yes, if you’re trying to promote an essay writing service, it’s all about the text. And it’s logical for your marketing campaign to be text-focused. But ask yourself what will catch the attention of a student better: a video or text? With all the textbooks and homework, text is probably the last thing that a student would want to encounter. It’s easier to grab their attention with a video.
There are so many ways to attract students to your product or services with video across various social media platforms. Videos on Facebook – not that popular, but there are still 32% of your target demographic using it -, reels on Instagram, and videos on YouTube. Speaking of the last one, 95% of your target demographic is using the platform. So, don’t disregard it.
There’s one problem with the videos, however. You need good script ideas as well as actors, directors, and photographers. Which will obviously balloon your marketing budget. But, unlike paid ads, it won’t be a waste of money. After all, video marketing has a 21% share of all digital marketing, and that number will only grow.
Dismissing Mobile Users
How can you? Or, quoting Greta Thunberg, how dare you? How dare you dismiss mobile users when you’re targeting students? You expect your target demographic to come across your service or product when what? Browsing, scrolling through social media feeds, watching videos, and playing games, right? Now, what are the chances they are doing all that on the laptop? Close to zero.
Browsing can be done via smartphone. While you can open Instagram in a browser, it’s a mobile-oriented app. You can watch YouTube via smartphone. David Lynch once said “If you’re playing the movie on a telephone, you will never in a trillion years experience the film”, and he’s right about it. There’s no point in watching art films on your smartphone. But no one says that about the Netflix series.
So, where were we? Oh, yes, when you’re making a marketing campaign targeting students, make sure that it’s optimized for mobile users. Your campaign must be catchy for those whose smartphones became an extension of an arm.
Disregarding Competition
Last but not least on the list of mistakes that you can make is disregarding the competition. It’s a marketing campaign targeting students, that should be easy, you may think. But it’s far from that. Regardless of the service or product that you’re trying to offer to students, you need to understand that it’s a competitive market. The only ad campaigns that don’t target students are those of retirement homes. So, make sure that your campaign stands out.
Final Thoughts
So, here you have five ways in which you can fail your marketing campaign targeting students. While all five points are important, the last one is probably the most crucial. So, when you start developing the campaign make sure that you’re about to put out something outstanding. Then you can move to figure out ways for it to reach the target audience.
