Student behavior has radically changed with the mobile era. Instant relationships are a thing. Tinder and texting make relationships easy to start or drop. Mobile devices have made the social economy efficient, value-based, and disposable.
Have your campus marketing recruitment and campaigns kept up with these changes in student behavior? Millennials won’t gush over your brand—they’re more concerned with their own brand. And if you fit into it then they might “swipe right” and start talking to you. Otherwise, they’ll “swipe left” and move on.
Traditional Campus Marketing Doesn’t Fit Today’s Students
In the traditional method of recruiting student brand ambassadors, brands vet and then onboard their reps. But during the onboarding process, the student is also vetting you, your brand, and your campaign. If they’re not excited about your brand, they might walk away while you’re getting ready to start using them for your big campus marketing campaign.
5 Tips to Win Loyal Student Reps
Don’t get stood up by prospective student brand ambassadors. Use these top 5 tips for winning over your next batch of student reps.
- Be clear and open about who your brand is, what you want done, and how much and when they will be paid.
- Never hoodwink a student to accept a job, and then change the task on them. That’s the quickest way to make them and all of their friends turn on you. That’s like using a fake profile photo on a dating app. Not cool bro.
- “If I wanted to talk I would have texted—why are you calling me?” Conference calls are great in the workplace, but not with college students. They really do want to do the task, they want to get paid, and they want to communicate—but not by phone conversation. Students communicate almost entirely by text, so make it rewarding for them to communicate with you.
- Make tasks quick, be clear, and give specific steps to complete. You don’t like vague directions and neither do college students. Take a little extra time to make sure your instructions are as clear as can be. You’ll be impressed with the results you get.
- Have a digital brand presence that students relate to. If they don’t know your brand, they won’t immediately take the task. Instead, they’ll take a quick few minutes to check you out online. If your brand resonates with their brand, they’ll accept your task. But if they can’t see how your brand matches to theirs, they’ll swipe left on you.
It’s All About Them
Getting the the best campus reps to swipe right on your brand boils down to being honest, helping them understand how your brand meshes with their personal brand, and communicating the way they want to communicate. Make it easy for them to love you, and they’ll stick with you longer than their next romance.
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