Ordinary advertising and public relations propaganda, the commonly used media are nothing more than radio, television, newspapers, magazines and the internet, and most of these media are blocked outside the walls of colleges and universities. Generally speaking, the influential media on campus include:
1, online media. The online media, which is not limited by the geographical distribution of the campus, can be said to be the most effective mass media for campus publicity at present. At present, more than 90% of the nearly 2000 colleges and universities in China have established campus networks. College students account for nearly one-third of the national netizens. The latest "Investigation Results on the Development of Education Informatization in China" issued by the Education Management Information Center of the Ministry of Education and Peking University Institute of Education shows that at present, college students' ability to use the Internet is getting stronger and stronger. As many as 73% people often use online search engines instead of libraries to find various materials, and 66.3% people spend more than 3 to 4 hours online at school every day, of which more than half of the time is spent chatting, watching movies and playing games.
In the network media of colleges and universities, BBS, established by various schools as a platform for students' life and communication, plays an important role. The biggest BBS in colleges and universities used to be a mess. Before closing, the total account number was more than 400,000, with an average online user of more than 30,000 and a daily login volume of more than 600,000, second only to the messy Shuimu Tsinghua BBS, with a total account number of more than 290,000 and an average online account number of18,000. 4 Not long ago, the turmoil of BBS reorganization paralyzed most well-known BBS in China, such as Tsinghua and Nanda in Shui Mu, and then many commercial or independent forums replaced them and continued to impose on students. The development of Blog and wiki, initiated by some universities of science and engineering and developed on the basis of BBS in campus network culture, has formed a local network environment. The specific development trend and influence have attracted more and more attention.
In the network application, social activities and entertainment, which are dismissed as "doing nothing" by some management organizations, are exactly the contents that constitute the main body of network application for college students. This is also an important reason for many instant messaging platforms and network service providers to enter the campus and carry out campus marketing.
Generally speaking, college students have advantages in network application and knowledge. They are active founders and participants in the network society. Any campus promotion activities that ignore this part of network promotion will probably have a greatly reduced effect. Especially for the promotion of various online products, users can realize direct cognition and trial through the network. I think it should be called "network roadshow", hehe.
There is a negative example in this regard. Once, a website used roadshows to promote the campus and visited 38 universities in the city of 10. The scope of publicity is even larger than this, but it is basically based on on-site publicity and distribution, and the application form is exchanged for gifts. Gifts were sent out and a lot of registration forms were collected. However, few students really remembered their registered name and password after filling out the form and ran to log in. Roadshows should enhance the experience and expand the momentum, but if users can't use them, then everything is empty. Now, if there are companies that want to rely solely on this form, we will definitely try our best to discourage them. Ha ha.
In the process of serving customers, we recommend the application of online media every time. Specific ways can be divided into the following:
A: BBS promotes regular edition. With all kinds of products and services entering the campus, most BBS and student forums provide advertisements and proxy pages to publish all kinds of business information. At the same time, music, movies, games and other important entertainment projects have special discussion pages, which can be targeted for publicity. The most commonly used and cheapest form of this kind of publicity is to send a few posts or initiate a discussion topic. The limit of the effect is that this topic or this post is crowded and called "Top Ten Hot Topics" by BBS's automatic statistical system, and the attention will increase obviously. However, this is also a skill. I once tracked the hype of a search engine product of a well-known portal website on BBS, and put nationalism into the topic with the intention of attracting attention. Unfortunately, I went too far, aroused public anger and attacked it ...:)
This kind of publicity, which is impressive, is our publicity for an SP on the bbs of Beijing 10 university, pushing discounted air tickets. Every winter and summer vacation, BBS's "traffic" and "ticketing" pages will become temporary hot spots, so simple posting and constant attention to students' inquiries and feedback will get good results. Simply making an advertisement and then ignoring it, or the commercial flavor of the advertisement post is too strong, will be ignored. (Hehe, college students are not smart and difficult to serve ...)
B: BBS promotes the upgraded version. Unlike official website in various schools, BBS does not refuse commercial promotion, but promotes it on a large scale. As far as I know, there are not many cases at present. One is platoon. Promote the homepage logo and battern on BBS such as Shui Mu Tsinghua and Agricultural University Colorful Soil, and set up a homepage text column.
Judging from the duration of this promotion, the effect should be good. The other is China Unicom, which promoted BBS after a shoot, also in the form of battern graphic advertisement, but then there was an incident that BBS was rectified ... During that time, I was in contact with some big BBS and signed an advertising agency agreement, and something unexpected happened as a result, so I won't say anything angry.
However, the newly-opened BBS no longer depends on the school background, or operates independently or is purely commercialized, so the commercial promotion space of BBS should be said to be growing.
Another upgraded version of the publicity was initiated by Sohu. The game "Sword" has set up special pages on some BBS, and I admire this move. :)。 Of course, companies like Glorious Company do not need to operate by themselves. Students will spontaneously set up a special edition and hold a whole station activity to celebrate the birth of another new game. This is because other people's products are well-made and influential, and they can only be jealous and cannot be compared. Ha ha.
C: the publicity of mass online media. At present, all major portals have set up campus channels, and search engines, alumni records and some college students' talent websites are also network strongholds frequented by students. We will recommend relevant publicity according to the situation. What impressed me the most was what a colleague inadvertently said to me: "Many people are there to analyze why Paradise is well promoted. Isn't heaven obviously supported by Sina? " Ha ha.
2. broadcast. Not long ago, I read a report that the broadcasting media has regained its potential in the advertising market after a period of low tide. This may be related to the increasing number of people with cars. But campus radio, to be honest, on the whole, I don't like it.
Campus broadcasting has only two effective periods, noon and evening. At other times, students are in class, and broadcasting disturbs people. These two periods are precisely the time when there are the most people in the school and the noise is the biggest. If there are people watching the TV broadcast in the canteen, it can be said that no students are listening to the broadcast. Except for some special moments, such as Qiu Qingfeng's incident at Peking University, I once stood in the triangle and listened to Xu Zhihong's speech on the radio.
But this incident also gave me a revelation. At that time, Xu Zhihong's speech had been notified by the BBS of the whole school in advance, so everyone paid attention to broadcasting spontaneously at that time. If a company wants to achieve a certain publicity effect through campus broadcasting, it can carefully plan an activity and publicize it in advance, and it may receive unexpected results.
We once recommended the campus broadcast special column "CRBT" to Tencent, because the funding problem has not been implemented. I believe it will be a valuable experience if there is an opportunity to run this plan well.
But for us, the important role of campus radio is not the specific publicity effect, but the radio itself. As a popular official media in colleges and universities, all the students who enter the radio station are elite students (I also entered the school radio station through fierce competition and PPP), and as a student organization, there are many people and enough energy. Now there is a radio alliance organization in colleges and universities all over the country, which has great activity energy. If we regard them as campus promotion partners, our influence should not be underestimated.
Another example to prove the power of radio station is that when we promoted "Bright Sword" to Sohu in Shenyang, we found two hosts to meet a group of students from university radio stations. Many of them took part in the live competition of this activity. They are really versatile and talented. Among the students who participated in the live activities in five cities, they performed the best and their cheerleading team was the best.
But generally speaking, we don't recommend campus radio stations, and spending money has no effect. Of course, if the decision-maker or boss of any enterprise is optimistic about this piece, we will not object. Ha ha.
3. School newspaper. It can be regarded as "print media". Probably there are only school newspapers and school magazines in the school. TOM once held a "National College Media Forum", which gave me a chance to get close to these media workers on campus. I was deeply impressed by the newspaper groups of NPC and HKU. The series "Youth of the National People's Congress" published by the National People's Congress has a high publishing rate and pays more attention to hot spots and campus life in content, which is a model for students to run their own journals.
The shortcomings of the school newspaper are obvious. Most of the official publications of the school are rigid, the distribution is not fixed, and the quantity and influence are limited, which makes the community publications more short-lived. It is still a few people who really become a climate.
For the campus promotion of enterprises, the school newspaper is a chicken rib. Unless it is a long-term promotion, there is generally no need to advertise.
Another option is campus magazines or DM magazines run by some companies. Students have limited purchasing power, so they are very cautious about buying magazines. Therefore, DM magazines appear more and are distributed directly. When I was in xys, the company also had problems, but the financial resources and production standards could not keep up, and it ended hastily. Single DM is more feasible. For example, Samsung anycall once made the Graduate Handbook, which was distributed in major universities in Beijing. According to some students' feedback, they like it very much.
I haven't read the influential DM magazine on campus. If investors are interested in this, we will be very happy to cooperate.
4. Outdoor media and TV media. Colleges and universities are a treasure, so they also have considerable capital to build a media platform. At present, outdoor media such as Century Harbor and Dingken Media operate outdoor media in colleges and universities. I have dealt with them before, and now outdoor media are mainly concentrated in Beijing and other cities, but the number is small and scattered. The main forms are outdoor light boxes and advertising columns. There is nothing special to say. The effect is certainly better than the poster, but the cost is much higher. Ha ha.
This year, I contacted a university TV media platform that imitated Focus Media. It is said that the capital construction of more than 300 colleges and universities in China has been completed, but the TV media has a shortcoming, that is, effective time. At present, the TV of this company is basically distributed in the canteen, and the effective time of the canteen is only noon and evening. Considering the high cost of advertising, I am afraid that enterprises should think twice about this advertisement.
5.DM and posters, etc. Hehe, talk about DM and posters that excite me. I remember when I first joined the campus promotion team, someone once said to me angrily, "When someone talks about the company's business, we can send DM and posters at the beginning, which is underestimated." I was very impressed at that time, but it was impossible to do it one by one. It could only be distributed. Without distribution, it was absolutely impossible.
Let's start with DM. At present, I can't remember how many times we have distributed DM. I have done it for Sohu and pushed "Sword"; I have already done it for Tom, and I have also pushed a free email; I have done it for Hawa and pushed it to ICU for almost every promotion, whether it is combined with roadshows or cultural and sports activities, as a form of publicity and notification, distribution occupies an important position. According to the needs of customers, there are point-to-point distribution of feedback forms that need to be recycled in the dormitory, and there are also centralized distribution to passing students at the activity site. It can be said that in order to ensure the coverage of publicity, it is still an indispensable way to distribute publicity materials, especially to promote games or software, or to promote fast-moving consumer goods. DM plus physical objects (client or product) can directly promote students' use or trial, so that the audience can achieve the shortest distance contact with the product.
The distribution of DM is specific to implementation, and a sentence is quoted to explain that "big implementation is big creativity". Just like TV advertisements, everyone makes and puts advertisements, and the effect depends on the details and quality.
The details involve many factors, the first is the design of DM. I have seen a planning scheme, and there is nothing particularly brilliant in the whole, but there is one detail that has impressed me so far. They designed DM into a five-ring shape and folded it into a flower shape, which took good care of product characteristics and brand connotation. It is conceivable that this DM will make people shine, rather than being caught in the hand and thrown into the trash can at a glance. Another case is the DM designed by Sohu for "Fairy Sword" with a number printed on it. Students can scrape this password in the game to get a treasure, which is not only a way to stimulate users to use it, but also a way to evaluate the distribution effect. I think this is an ingenious design, although it didn't play its due role because of other factors at that time. Let's talk about this.
The second detail is the choice of quantity and distribution form. In retrospect, Sohu's DM suffered in this respect at that time. Considering the cost, only 1-2 DM sheets were printed in each dormitory. We later concluded that DM is usually difficult to circulate. After a person has finished reading it, rub it or throw it aside, and the life of this DM is over. So although DM was sent to the dormitory, it did not actually affect the number of people estimated according to the number of people in the dormitory. If the quantity can be increased a little or distributed in two rounds, the effect will be much better. Tom is fierce in this respect. 150,000 copies of DM hit six schools, so that students could know what it was at first sight when they distributed it in the third round. Later, Tom also felt that this was enough. In the fourth round, he transferred the original distribution to other schools. Ha ha.
Formally, it is generally recommended to assign to the dormitory, and the effect is controllable. You can count how many dormitories are actually distributed and how many people are affected, and you can monitor and collect feedback. Of course, centralized distribution also has its advantages. Tom once suggested showing "cartoon dolls" in schools and distributing leaflets everywhere. This is really a good idea. By the same token, sending a pair of roller skaters to school to distribute leaflets will definitely attract attention.
The third detail is the timing of delivery and the training of delivery staff. For centralized distribution, the best time is of course noon and evening, in the main roads of campus, canteens and other places where people are concentrated. For dormitory allocation, the best time is at night, when the students are "back to their nests". A lot of distribution is carried out at any time, whether there are people or not, DM or leaflets are stuffed under the dormitory door. If most of the distribution is like this, I dare say that the effect is less than one-third of what it should be. Except for things under the door, they are usually thrown away. It is very important that the delivery staff's explanation and word-of-mouth publicity have an impact on the delivery effect. When we promoted Sohu, we didn't train the dispatcher well in the early stage and were severely reprimanded. I think we benefited a lot from that time. Facts have proved that after training, the distribution effect is obviously different. After listening to the explanation, the students began to have a real interest in DM.
In this regard, I think one of our partners in Shenyang has done the best so far. They are regional companies, so they intensively cultivate campus resources and implement standards, have a well-selected distribution implementation team and a perfect training system. I once exchanged some ideas with them in this regard, and I was deeply impressed. We will continue to work hard in this regard.
Speaking of today's posters, there is not much knowledge in posting posters, just three words: comprehensive, frequent and beautiful. The poster column of the school is basically accessible to everyone, so it will be covered at any time. I have some pictures here for comparison. Some posters are posted in an unknown corner in disorder, while others, 10 or more, together, occupy the whole poster column neatly. The difference in effect is self-evident. In fact, there are many places where schools can put up posters, such as public bulletin boards, canteen bulletin boards and dormitory bulletin boards. Considering the coverage of posters, the more posters appear, the more comprehensive the coverage, and the better the effect of posters. When we discuss this issue with our customers, many customers have questions about the number of posters we put forward. In fact, this is because the posters posted at noon yesterday may be covered or torn off at night, and few of them can last until the next day. However, posters are indeed a striking form of publicity.
In addition to DM and posters mentioned above, gifts and physical distribution are also common. This is basically the truth, so I won't say much. Free drinks are a separate part and will be discussed later.
Some Summaries on Campus Promotion (2)
After posting the first article last time, many colleagues and friends gave me valuable opinions, which made me very excited and strengthened our confidence in this field. Thank you all here. J
After reading the last article, a friend in Shanghai asked me, "You listed all the problems, but you didn't give a solution." . I didn't quite understand this sentence at that time. Looking back at the last article these days, I found that I really didn't talk about a key point, that is, the types of campus media, although they all have their own strengths or advantages, can be creatively and comprehensively used to promote products or brands, but overall, compared with the complete mass media system, they all have serious defects:
1、
The relatively monotonous media combination can't carry rich communication demands and meet the propaganda needs of some enterprises: there are fewer types of campus media, and the mainstream media is still limited to DM and network; In the mass media system, the TV media with the largest amount of advertising has encountered bottlenecks on campus;
2、
It is difficult to achieve a large-scale and particularly sustained advertising bombing effect, and the breadth and depth of communication are also limited: in addition to online media, other campus media, especially campus media, are scattered in colleges and universities across the country, lacking a unified and formal media platform; The commercial outdoor light boxes and other media in colleges and universities have a big gap with customers' expectations in terms of cost performance;
Therefore, as Eric sang pointed out in his reply to the last article, the promotion of products or brands in the campus market needs to be combined with more ways to achieve results.
First, the life form circle of colleges and universities
The uniqueness of media environment in colleges and universities is caused by the relatively closed campus. Most of the time, students live in the dormitory-classroom-canteen line. We can build a college student life circle based on this, and roughly outline the marketing methods attached to this circle (the division between static and dynamic is not strict, and all communication is interactive anyway):
In the above picture, the indoor environment includes dormitories, canteens, classrooms and various indoor cultural and sports venues. Every school will have a lecture hall and a lecture hall. In addition to all kinds of stadiums and gymnasiums, the outdoor environment mainly includes campus main roads and campus squares.
We can see that the important content of college students outside their study and daily life is all kinds of literary, artistic, sports and cultural activities on campus. More than 70% of college students have participated in various school associations, and more than 90% of students have participated in various school cultural festivals, departmental evenings and other activities. I don't think it is necessary to use more data to explain the influence of activities on students, curiosity, more spare time, youth's desire for expression, entertainment and knowledge, so that college students can not only become participants in many campus activities, but also become active participants. Even an ordinary business roadshow moving to the campus will attract very enthusiastic attention.
Second, the common forms of activities
1, roadshow
The most conventional dynamic marketing method on campus is probably a roadshow or a simple tour. 10 Every March, April and September, students return to campus with the expenses of the new semester at home or a little income from working during holidays. Many merchants seized the opportunity and extended attractive hands to them. After May Day, I don't know how many businesses have been baptized by universities all over the country, hehe.
The advantages of doing roadshows on campus have been heard as jokes: doing roadshows in computer city is to enrich the spare time of migrant workers and idlers, while doing roadshows on campus attracts students and consumers who are really interested in products. Although exaggerated, it is also true.
For roadshows, many advertising peers are experts in this field, and they should be much more professional than us in terms of on-site layout, promotion scheme and on-site interaction. I don't teach fish to swim. In general, the points to be noted are related to the school:
1) site selection: there is nothing special to pay attention to in site selection. Every school will have the most crowded and suitable venue for roadshows, but usually the supporting facilities and even the power supply are not complete, and the over-commercialized publicity and display of some schools are limited, so it is necessary to integrate these special factors when considering the scale and form of roadshows; At the same time, the approval process of university venues is not very formal, and there may even be temporary requisition of venues. The amount of approval about one week in advance is more appropriate, and it is best to leave a spare venue;
2) On-site content: Basically, we think that campus roadshows do not need to add too much entertainment or performance content. On the one hand, time is precious, and the effective time of campus roadshows is only noon and evening. On the other hand, cost saving is also considered, mainly depending on whether there is a combination with the product. When we made a roadshow of digital cameras and video cameras for Sony in North China universities, the interaction on the spot was mainly to explain the products, without fancy song and dance performances, which was more in line with the positioning of products and brands. Of course, if it is the peak season, many roadshows are held in the venue at the same time, or similar products are displayed, more means may be needed to attract attention, but the most practical means are the most effective, such as reducing prices and sending gifts.
3) Combining roadshows with sales: Many customers ask us whether we can combine on-site sales in roadshows, or simply give us an expectation, hoping to achieve certain sales in a campus roadshow. In this regard, we need to emphasize that people who go to the computer city just want to buy, not on campus, unless the price is really competitive with homogenized products, or low-priced fast-moving consumer goods. We don't recommend on-site sales of general products. Especially for education, training and service products, students need to make purchase choices after comparison and experience. Instead of spending energy on quick success and instant benefit on-site promotion, it is better to honestly show the characteristics and strength of products, and at the same time consider auxiliary marketing methods or follow-up marketing programs.
Step 2 give a speech
Compared with roadshows, lectures are a common promotion form with university characteristics and can also be regarded as soft roadshows. Lectures can carry rich contents and forms of expression, and if properly used, the depth of communication generated is incomparable to roadshows. If you can successfully keep 200 students in the lecture until the end of the lecture, you will have at least 200 potential consumers who have a deep understanding of the product and have a good impression, and these people will become spontaneous word-of-mouth communicators. At that time, Lei Jun's lecture tour in colleges and universities all over the country really pushed Jinshan's chivalrous love to the extreme. Many peers in the game industry regard this as a classic case. The most difficult thing in this respect is New Oriental. How many people haven't heard Yu's lecture? Xu Xiaoping even talked about TV, hehe.
One advantage of lectures is that they sell more. You can find a theme that attracts students, such as playing domestic brands, domestic brands, and recruitment cards. With the help of celebrity effect and fashion topics, for example, Canon invited a bunch of cutting-edge directors such as Lu Chuan to the school to give lectures on DV shooting last year. It can also be combined with school teaching activities and students' classroom lectures. Tom tried this when he pushed Skype.
Another advantage of the lecture is that the scale can be large or small, the cost can be more or less, and it is easy to pilot. You can rent a classroom for one or two hundred students, or you can give a speech in the lecture hall of nearly a thousand students. You can continue to give small lectures, such as beauty salons, and strive to gradually expand your influence; You can also give a high-level and luxurious lecture. How to operate specifically depends on the specific promotion needs.
In addition, the effects of lectures and roadshows are not exclusive. It should be emphasized that we can put up posters and distribute samples at the lecture site, or simply make a small roadshow outside the lecture site by making use of popularity, but don't infiltrate too many commercial demands into the lecture content and become advertisements most of the time. The consequence of this is not only that no one listens to the lecture, but also that the students will spare no effort to spread the "bad lecture of a company" to the students, hehe.
In the past two years, the clients who held lectures were mainly education, training and service enterprises, and another class of lectures was the recruitment presentation held by major enterprises in schools every year. In the past two years, more customers have begun to pay attention to the promotion form of lectures. Our view is that the lecture is a very simple form of promotion in practice, but it is a form that can be discussed in depth in content. I suggest the marketing manager think about it. :)
3, singer contest, dance contest, etc.
Philip kotler pointed out, "Marketers sometimes get unexpected gains from subculture target groups. For example, marketers usually like to target teenagers because they represent the trend of fashion, music, entertainment, creativity and attitude in society. " (tenth edition of marketing management)
We call music and sports the eternal theme of campus activities. With the help of the concept of music, the contents and forms of promotion can be endless, and it is more flexible than sports events in terms of operation difficulty and cost. Unified Shining Star Campus Singer Competition, Master Kong Campus Dance Competition, Hip-hop Competition in M-Zone, Head & Shoulders -MTV Campus New Voice Competition, Star Dance Champion Dance Competition (sponsored by Panasonic Mobile and Unicom UP New Force) and Mengniu Yogurt Super Girl Competition ... have all become events rooted in campus and having social influence.
However, because of this, this theme is quite trite. If we continue to promote it in the form of music, how can we bring forth the old and bring forth the new to play the greatest role in the current situation of numerous competitions and well-known manufacturers? We have some simple ideas: