Finding a Niche

Just when you thought marketing to college students was difficult, it gets a little harder. In our quest to find out the latest in marketing trends we did a little literature review and found a place where we could find out five top ads in a college bound magazine. It was a great resource and we thought by looking at the top five ads we were sure to find some trends right? Wrong.

Basically we found some big rocks that we can hang our new design on. Photography is important and a majority of the page dedicated to photography seems to work. However in type style, amount of information, number of photos, etc. we saw few trends. The students this organization chose seemed to pick the ads almost at random. Three of them I would have guessed would do well and two of them I wouldn’t have put out in a million years. Our current ad coincidentally landed somewhere right in the middle.

My working hypothesis is that this is a natural outgrowth of the increase in niche’markets and indicative of this generation’s diversity and worldview. The lesson I’m figuring out is that it is more important than ever to find something and stick to it despite what winds might blow. The campus that dedicates themselves to being unique and knowing their market well is the one that will grow and attract a core that is loyal.