Marketing your Restaurant to Students

Updated October 30th, 2013

Close to 20 million students are enrolled in European universities. A significant market with new opportunities every semester!

College Students are part of the sought after demographic of 18-30 year olds. Marketing to college students is no easy task and creates many challenges in order to influence this market. The reasons behind this are simple. They are in the mist of their development years where they can often be skeptical and wary, but on the other hand can be very easily influenced. They tend to be transient, strapped for cash, and critical thinkers. However, on the plus side, college students can not only be a marketer’s nightmare, but also a marketer’s dream. Remember, the student community are exceptional at communication and word-of-mouth. This is due to the fact that they see each other often and always require a topic to talk about.

If your food establishment is located within a close proximity to a university, consider implementing the following ideas to attract students:

1. Use social media for promoting your venue. This might sound easy but you hardly find restaurants that are really using the full potential of social media. What used to be word-of-mouth marketing is now possible through social networks. Create positive viral content that motivates your fans to forward to others. If you are well prepared, you can create a very cheap and reliable communication channel that no offline or online media can beat!
2. Work with pictures and videos to let your target market consume content easier. In today’s society, visual content can be created by anyone and today’s students were raised with monitors where the volume of pictures or videos has never been greater.
3. To be effective in driving traffic to your restaurant, be sure to use discounts for students or give them a free incentive as to why they should come and visit your restaurant. Create a viral sharing opportunity and post photos of happy customers at your restaurant. Students love to tag themselves in online pictures, allowing it to be spread further to their Facebook friends.
4. Make sure you are high-tech updated. A solid and good wifi installation for free is almost a must in order to conquer the student market. I even advised one student restaurant to add a professional printer as there is always something to print and students simply do not have the time to have to make another move and get it done somewhere else. There is no aim to become a student business center, just a friendly service that students will talk about ;-)
5. Consider sponsoring student events, their favorite school sports team or their graduation party (If it all makes financial sense to you of course). Students are not welcomed in all establishments because of their age, maybe lack of disposable income, loud, etc....but there are always establishments that behave differently and really make their living from exactly these clients. But as with families, do not expect to be attracting too many other target markets EXCEPT if these students consist of popular people!
6. Be logic in your restaurant concept and the services going with it. Students always try to beat the system, any system! All you can eat concepts are not the wisest strategy nor over-complicated menus. Students like to get a good deal, love loyalty programs and if you listen to their opinion, just to show that you are interested in it, you win fans. Students tend to lack respect as they are studying and then have to work for it.

While all the points above seem pretty easy to be fulfilled, remember that as easy as it seems to become a popular destination for students, it is even easier to mess it up! Students love to talk, gossip, pretend to know better and all of that can go the wrong direction. So be sure to plan your moves well, as you have maybe thousands of knowledge hungry creatures, competing for a position in society and will do anything to make themselves look better first and then you.

Written by Daniel Grossmann