Advertising/sponsorship targeting students / graduates

riveratom

Hi guys,

I currently own and run a website in a particular area focused / catering to students and graduates here in Ireland, and I wanted to bounce an idea I have for the site off you guys.

I am looking to promote and market the site a lot more in 2013, and I want to increase activity on the site. One way I am considering doing this is creating a 'special student offers' or 'student and graduate deals' page, where businesses with an offer could upload relevant deals or offers they may be running.

The idea is that this would be free of charge for a trial period of 3 months. At the end of this period we would review, and if you felt it was providing a return and wanted to continue, a fair fee would apply for posting an offer / ad.

The ad or offer would consist of an image and some text with a link redirecting to your site.

The site currently has page 1 ranking on Google for various terms relating to the service, including a number 2 ranking for one of my most important terms - and with 1k+ followers and likes across Facebook and Twitter. This will grow significantly this year.

In any case, is this a good idea, and something that businesses would be interested in? I realise other sites may be doing the same, but this could be a good way of invigorating the site whilst providing value to advertisers.

All thoughts and feedback welcome!

The Apprentice

As a current student myself and in this space -

I Forsee a few problems as listed-

- Im a student, I dont care about anything in the world only food & beer and how cheaply i can get them
- My disposable grant/budget has been decreased by over 60% in 3yrs.
- I care little about special offer sites, and if undated with offers i,ll quickly bounce off it swiftly.
- I believe personally there is no added value in this business model, i would rather it take a different direction. Groupon and other models 50+ in ireland are struggling in areas with it being so competitive, boards has also its own and it gets annoying fast.

+ It may work well if very localised (UCC) Free 2 for 1 nightclub entry in cubans every tuesday night and would want to market accordingly. Deli shop right around the corner, cheap ass tuesdays Breakfast roll €2 .. You,d be surprised how far we would walk to get a food deal..
+Weekly News FOOD letter, or beer. Beer you may have problems as its in a drink responsibly space. "Centra comes to mind"
+May indeed seperate you from your competitors to have a niche following to get a specific food beer offer weekly, again start annoying me with special offers with €1000 off a €1100 laptop and i would personally delete you.. I have got money to eat sometimes.


So again to reiterate, its grand as long as im getting what im interested in - 99% of the time i dont get anything evenly remotely interesting because of financial situation. Business may indeed be interested but i feel with the bad kind "Hyundai dealers selling €30k cars" you will quickly start to become annoying. If you can get ultra focused and start turning away advertisers you feel would not be suited. Im not saying students dont buy cars but im sure you get what im saying.

Also you need to be a little more proactive in how this can turn into a money making exercise, companies want stats, bounce rate, time on site, really demographics, psychograhics that you can gleam from analytics. Free for 3 months is fab but when you ask someone to pay and they say no you need to be on the ball as to why not.. Again, the redirect simply from your site banner may not do it, i would have to ask a resident geek how it works etc !!

I would suggest focus more on the Seo side and capitolise on ALL your keywords with some great relevant blog posts to drive awareness of the brand.
Whats it like to be a student today -
Future Top 10 Emigration Destinations for students
How has the government failed students since the recession
Student President John whats his face Interviews etc !!!
USI Media and Communications Executive, Ronan Costello, on 085-1164263 or email media@usi.ie
Hatred for Ruari Quinn the Lying bastard etc !!

Dont be afraid at all to be controversial, if you fear reprisal put my name down under it as a guest post, and you can distance the owner/site from any repercussions etc. The more revelant the content towards how students feel and not how the government tell us how to feel you will get picked up quicker by Media /journal which will bring much better awareness/Pr and untimely again help seo.
I think i know the site already, as you had already advertised last week or so for a blogger that could help- Good call


Hmm i think im rambling now and going over the same stuff - If i can think of anything i,ll let you know
Best of luck with the venture

riveratom

The Apprentice wrote: »

As a current student myself and in this space -

I Forsee a few problems as listed-

- Im a student, I dont care about anything in the world only food & beer and how cheaply i can get them
- My disposable grant/budget has been decreased by over 60% in 3yrs.
- I care little about special offer sites, and if undated with offers i,ll quickly bounce off it swiftly.
- I believe personally there is no added value in this business model, i would rather it take a different direction. Groupon and other models 50+ in ireland are struggling in areas with it being so competitive, boards has also its own and it gets annoying fast.

+ It may work well if very localised (UCC) Free 2 for 1 nightclub entry in cubans every tuesday night and would want to market accordingly. Deli shop right around the corner, cheap ass tuesdays Breakfast roll €2 .. You,d be surprised how far we would walk to get a food deal..
+Weekly News FOOD letter, or beer. Beer you may have problems as its in a drink responsibly space. "Centra comes to mind"
+May indeed seperate you from your competitors to have a niche following to get a specific food beer offer weekly, again start annoying me with special offers with €1000 off a €1100 laptop and i would personally delete you.. I have got money to eat sometimes.


So again to reiterate, its grand as long as im getting what im interested in - 99% of the time i dont get anything evenly remotely interesting because of financial situation. Business may indeed be interested but i feel with the bad kind "Hyundai dealers selling €30k cars" you will quickly start to become annoying. If you can get ultra focused and start turning away advertisers you feel would not be suited. Im not saying students dont buy cars but im sure you get what im saying.

Also you need to be a little more proactive in how this can turn into a money making exercise, companies want stats, bounce rate, time on site, really demographics, psychograhics that you can gleam from analytics. Free for 3 months is fab but when you ask someone to pay and they say no you need to be on the ball as to why not.. Again, the redirect simply from your site banner may not do it, i would have to ask a resident geek how it works etc !!

I would suggest focus more on the Seo side and capitolise on ALL your keywords with some great relevant blog posts to drive awareness of the brand.
Whats it like to be a student today -
Future Top 10 Emigration Destinations for students
How has the government failed students since the recession
Student President John whats his face Interviews etc !!!
USI Media and Communications Executive, Ronan Costello, on 085-1164263 or email media@usi.ie
Hatred for Ruari Quinn the Lying bastard etc !!

Dont be afraid at all to be controversial, if you fear reprisal put my name down under it as a guest post, and you can distance the owner/site from any repercussions etc. The more revelant the content towards how students feel and not how the government tell us how to feel you will get picked up quicker by Media /journal which will bring much better awareness/Pr and untimely again help seo.
I think i know the site already, as you had already advertised last week or so for a blogger that could help- Good call


Hmm i think im rambling now and going over the same stuff - If i can think of anything i,ll let you know
Best of luck with the venture

The Apprentice,

That is brilliant stuff, great to get a student's perspective!

Very good point re the type of offers that would / should be provided, for me this is not about '25% off HP laptop 300D', it has to be localised (in most cases), relevant and provide value for both advertiser and student. I have zero interest in being 'Groupon for student deals', I want local deals catering to students in different locations throughout Ireland. So the local restaurant, bar, nightclub, barber next door to UCC, DCU, etc.

Those are the kind of businesses I would like to hear from.

onlyup

Optimistic me:

As a former student I always looked for deals (including deal sites).

This question might help a bit: http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/9332/how-do-you-solve-the-chicken-and-the-egg-problem

You'll need students going to the site to get advertisers interested and to keep the students you'll have to have quality deals. To keep the advertisers you'll need a lot of students so a small % provide the value for each deal.

Giving the ad space free for 3 months does seem like a good idea. It takes away all the risk for the business. If you created the ad for them for free too it might be even better.

You could try team up with the student unions of colleges. It looks good for them to offer stuff to the students. They can say "we teamed up with xyz.com to give you guys some great deals"

Pessimistic me:

You're trying to recreate what is already standard for students: student cards offer discounts in a lot of local shops (news agents, clothes shops, hairdressers, transport, student nights, nightclub entry discounts). This is all organised by the student unions (I assume) and is standard every year. I doubt the businesses are paying to be on these student discount cards so you're already at a disadvantage.

I doubt you could earn enough from this to make it worth doing. The local businesses won't pay a substantial fee and won't want to be repeat customers if it involves giving away their products/service at a discount.

You have a limited amount of local businesses around college campuses to work with.

fasttalkerchat

You have a great response already. The only thing I would add is that as a final year student, I do not look at the same websites for Graduate employment as I would have looked for discounts or club VIPs last year.
Those websites are no longer of interest to me because I'm in a different frame of mind now.
I imagine most students looking for Graduate roles would be the same.