If you’re not using your student brand reps for summer marketing, you should be. But even if you aren’t, you can still make good use of your summer by preparing for your fall campus marketing campaigns.
Now is the time to start preparing for your fall campus marketing campaigns. Get your students in line, figure out which campuses make the most sense, and conduct some vital research during the summer. So when students arrive back on campus at the end of August, you’ll drop a well-oiled campus rep program that’s executed flawlessly.
Here are your major summer priorities for prepping for fall marketing.
Recruit and Vet Brand Ambassadors
Identify your rock star student reps during the summer. All of our student reps are thoroughly vetted, but some rise to the top—they’re more trustworthy and more driven than others. Summer is a great time to find these students and get to know them so that you can make good use of them from the start of the school year.
Communicating with your reps and developing relationships during the summer will pay off in spades in the fall. Get students’ phone numbers and use text messaging. Get to know the students and let them know what you’re trying to do—get them excited and onboarded. Texting is the best form of communication with students. They often won’t answer a phone call, especially if they don’t recognize the number. But they’ll always pay attention to your texts.
Here’s a pro tip: when you’re hiring a student in the summer for the fall, pay attention to the year they’re going into. Will they be a sophomore or a senior? Their course load and commitments will vary from year to year. So be sure to hire several students on each campus.
Train Student Brand Reps
We’ve been working with a large international beverage company to vet and recruit students. During the summer, we’re sending the student reps to a large three-day training seminar. They’ll be trained in company culture and social media so they can hit the ground running in the fall. Go Commando is providing the talent pool with pre-vetted, high-quality student reps, and we’re also compensating the students.
Do Your Research
Discover which campuses to target in the fall. Conduct market research by asking students from various campuses a set of questions that will help identify which campuses make the most sense to focus your marketing efforts. It’s an easy and inexpensive way to get a lay of the land before investing into any particular campus.
Plan for the Pulse of College Life
Make sure you plan your fall campaign with realistic expectations. Understand the academic calendar—know when students are moving back, when classes start. Use the campus calendar to guide your marketing strategy. When classes get tough, understand you’ll be the first one to get dropped.
You can be more successful during the school year if you prepare in the summertime, and Go Commando is the best tool for that because we directly connect you with students. There isn’t another good way to have that much access.
What’s Next
- Discover more great marketing content—subscribe to our blog.
- Check out this case study to find out how to do campus market research.
- Ready to get better results with campus marketing? Contact us!
