3 ways to market your start-up to college students

Entrepreneurs and inventors now register their companies as start-ups to develop products, services and solutions. Start-ups are now one of the major employers in India. Both experienced folks and freshers find them as an opportunity to learn and grow. However, start-ups seek freshers as their prospected employees because young talents are enthusiastic to work with less pay scale.

Are you a start-up owner or hiring professional for start-ups? Here are the three tips to market your company among college students.

1. Sponsoring college events and magazine

College events and magazines are popular among students as the majority of them attend the event and purchase the magazine as a souvenir of their college days. If you sponsor the events or put your advertisements in the magazine or campus newspaper, your brand can establish a long-lasting relationship with the campus community.

In an academic year, educational institutions conduct many events including arts and sports, seminars, conferences, annual day, social work, environmental events etc. Your company can involve in these events either by sponsoring the entire event or part of the event or co-sponsoring with others. Another strategy you can experiment is initiating a program in a collaboration with the subject-wise associations or clubs. By this, you can make sure marketing your products or services or solutions with standees, posters, flyers, brochure etc.

You can find opportunities for your leaders to speak as industry experts in the subject-wise guest lectures or programs-related to your domain. Getting featured your leaders in the magazine or campus newspaper validate your authority in a particular subject.

2. Increase social media presence

Today social media play a crucial role in marketing especially among the millennials and Z generations. Tapping all social media features would help you to reach more audience. Tailored ads based on region, cohorts and economic status is helpful to target each segment from time-to-time. 

Social media giants like Instagram and Facebook are best to build loyal followers. The ‘story’ feature in these platforms attract many from the new generation. Snapchat also gives this feature and the short video and image snaps can be used to show your products and services in an interactive way. Students aiming professional gain can be connected on LinkedIn. Twitter, Pinterest, WhatsApp, Telegram etc enable opportunities to market your start-up to college students.

Featuring colleges or students or their write-ups/activities on your blogs and social media pages would drive much attention to your brands. Promoting the college events, in which your company is a sponsor, on your social media pages is another useful idea.

3. Providing training/internship/part-time job

Providing practical training, internship and part-time jobs to college students improve your prospects to attract them to your start-up. You can devise skill development, practical workshops, boot camps, hackathon or other specialized training for budding talents. Such training with certification may help improve students’ employability. A collaboration with colleges in this regard would give you an edge as a trusted partner for academic and employment enhancement.

Hiring college talents for part-time jobs in your company is a double bonus. On one hand, the students get a chance to work and earn while studying and on the other hand, you can fill the labour gap in your organization. This also helps the students to learn the necessary skills required for each job profile. Thus, your company can reduce the possible skill gap among the graduates. 

Most of the colleges mandate students to undertake internships to learn practical knowledge from the industry leader as part of their course completion. Start-ups can open short-term internship opportunities for students, that would help you build your brands. Through these internees, your company’s brand and working culture would reach the entire college community.

You can also try other usual marketing strategies such as conducting competitions and offering bonus and rewards to the students. By and large students and colleges always encourage innovative thoughts. Therefore, you should focus on innovations in your products, services, and solutions. Let your works speak!