Students Currently Have Little Brand Affection
According to a recent piece of research from The Student Room, as reported on by Marketing Week, current students tend to have little brand loyalty, meaning that marketers have the opportunity to tap into this highly resourceful demographic if they manage and target their campaigns effectively.
A survey of The Student Room’s user base found that the only brand students tended to be loyal to was Apple in the technology sector, but other than that most other sectors were up for grabs in terms of the most popular brands and businesses. Some specific businesses did come top of their specialisms – Topshop for fashion, and Simple for skincare – but neither scored highly in a more comprehensive sense.
Jack Wallington, the community director for The Student Room, stated at an event at the Olympia Central in London: “There is a lot of room to win the hearts and minds of young people” and continued to hammer home the point that this is a fantastic opportunity for marketers, if they approach the demographic in the correct manner.
And the correct manner, it seems, is to not be patronising to these young people; useful information should be the main point of focus when trying to connect with this group. Wallington noted that students are “a lot more serious than many people think. […] They want the facts and the detail that will allow them to make an informed decision.”
One example highlighted by The Student Room as a brand approaching students effectively was NatWest – the bank created a hub on the site and provided students with a lot of information regarding their student account and the benefits it offers. This is because the bank realised that once people choose a student account, most then stay with that same bank for the rest of their lives; it was therefore vital for them to give the students as much information as possible to encourage them to become lifelong customers.