marketing ideas around a college campus .. looking for some input

hey everyone i started this forumPSU Forums back in march. right now i have about 200 members and about 150 pageviews a day. as of now the only marketing i did was send out a large number of emails, and posted a few flyers around campus. most of my users came from the emails.

now Penn State has a very high population density, comprable to sri lankas when full session is in. here are a few ideas i had in mind to market my site and get some buzz around campus.

i was thinking of creating thousands of flyers, then gather a group of people .. maybe 10-15, then one night during fall semester i was going to have everyone gather at diffrent dormrooms and apartments aournd campus. and then around 3a.m when most people are sleeping everyone would tape a PSU Forums flyer on each individual door in every dorm on campus. that way when everyone comes out they are just bombarded, and it is the same for everyone around campus. that was one idea i had

another idea i have is to get a big white van(hopefully) make it stick out and put some 22" rims on it.. just so it gets noticed, then have on the side of the van PSU FORUMS.COM in big letters w/ a slogan and maybe a fathead stuck to the side of it. Then everyday i would park it somewhere downtown for people to see, with a population density so high .. every area is pretty highly trafficked.

now my third big idea i have is to wait until the first snowfall, then i'll wait for a day when its not snowing but when the ground is covered with snow. I would then go out in the middle of the night to the "hub" lawn we call it, its a huge grassy lawn thats sort of on a hill that is right smack dab in the middle of campus. and i would spray paint in big letters PSU FORUMS.COM on the snow on the side of the hill.

These are probably definately my top 3 ideas i have to get some buzz going about the forum, what do you guys think?? do you have any other ones i may be able to use. with those 3 "stunts" i would hope to generate a lot of talk and maybe even make the newspaper, which i believe could definately help the site take off, what does everyone think?

and just to inform, Penn State has about 40k students, and has probably 10-15k that live on campus .. maybe even more

 

wow..

they are truly awesome. If you can perform these as is than it would be awesome..

I also launched a forum www.theSenorita.com/forums which is about discovering females.

I am sure you understand what it feels like when you start a forum. I am looking for users and your participation would be great.

by the way one more idea for you. Ask your school's computer network admin to include your forums link in the Intranet's website, get some t-shirts designed give to students of various departments, ask your headmaster if you can post a notice in the most important notice of your school...

all these would be great helps to boost your site..

 

wow thanks man .. i wasn't expectin that so soon .. its nice to hear from a like minded person, i asked my dad what he thought and i didnt get much feedback from him. but i'm definatly going to plan all of these out and try to get them all done this fall.

and yea starting a forum sucks. i've actually asked a few places that are school run if htey would help market the site, and all of them declined because it is a 3rd party site. i almost even got kicked out of school becasue i was spamming the universities mail, so i'm pretty much on my own with gettin the word out.

i'll gladly join your forum .. good luck with it as well

 

the only disadvantage with me is I finished my school a month back

Else that is the only place which would help me promote my blogs www.nofullstop.com and www.theSenorita.com

my friends are very very active in orkut so I regularly keep posting my blog links in orkut and that attracts them a lot too.

Now I am waiting to get in the IT company which I have to join after a couple of months. That will be a great place to advertise my forum.

Believe me, the t-shirts ideas are truly very great.

Your parents won't believe you as of now but will start believing once you show them some bucks.

Mine kept asking me to stop blogging as it was waist of time. They never supported me in my journey of 1.5 years of blogging but recently when I grabbed a $800 ad deal and showed them the money then they were shocked and now my dad askes me daily to tech him some tricks of blogging

be patient and you will win..

 

i am also an IT studnet .. i'm going to be a junior, i was going to originally hand out T shirts around campus for free .. but never followed thru due to lack of funds. and i am also in the same boat to just monetize, right now i only use adsense which doesnt get me sh*t because one: my advertisements are bland and two: not enough people visit the site regularly yet.

my main goal is to get a steady stream of users .. hopefully a decnet amount .. a few thousand, then start going business to business around state college and ask if they would like to advertise on my forum, basically its going to be all about private advertising, but my hopes are set high, and i don't plan on ever stopping to achieve them

 

your last line was the one which helped me find a domain for my first blog www.nofullstop.com

to earn some income from a forum what you can do is sell sticky posts. People tend to avoid ads many times but they just love sticky posts IF the content is good enough..

 

yea i actually thoguht of also offering sticky posts as advertising space .. but the problem is that i do not know what to charge. i still consider my forum as very slow and with a lot of room to grow. when it steadies out and i get abetter idea of pageviews per day, i will try and devise a pricing plan. ideally i would charge say 20 a month for a sitcky ad, 50 for a global sticky, then anywhere from 100-300 per advertising banner, and hopefully have 4 of them, but this is all just out of thin air. i currently belong to an automotive forum and there is a sponsor marketplace.. the admin said they pay to go in there .. but i have no idea how much they pay him, he said enough to run his site.. but i think he makes more than that.

 

I think DP also has a place for paid users. Dunno what the price is..

 

Around my uni. I dont go but my office is behind the uni so i walk past it everyday. People used chalk on the footpaths everywhere around the uni for some "ratemyuni.co.nz" or something along those lines i cant actually remember the URL. But i see it EVERYDAY. It has a slogan about uni stuff and since i dont go i have never bothered looking at it. BUT! i assume that the person also has friends at other universitys round the country and he did it at those unis too.

Chalk is good really. It wash's off. Posters etc are ok. But get littered easily. And its not exactly a hard paper trail to follow. I say just one night use chalk and MAKE SURE you use a slogan in your writing.

 

what do u think a good number of page views per day would be before i start looking for private advertisers? and should i go by page impressions or uniques when i talk to advertisors

 

it depends on the kind of visitors which you have and the advertiser which is coming in to advertise on your forum...

like if the users coming in are totally targeted on one niche like for example sunglasses than 500 uniques a day is enough but if the niche is more wider in sense like tech. than you need higher uniques like 2000 I think to get some good rates..

you should reveal the complete details to advertisers like impressions and uniques and everything possible. Be honest to them and they will love to come back

 

i wanna stay away from chalk, just because penn state is super clean.. and i think i'd piss the wrong ppl off by doing that

i figure if i spray painted the snow.. its not harming anyone .. just defacing the snow, right now my slogan that i will use on teh flyers is .. "its kind of a big deal" i was gunna put that on the back of t shirts as well. but for when i use the spray paint .. i was gunna just write in a little "...w00t" under the name .. lol just for a laugh


yea .. my forum pretty much has a very large but unique niche, for instance .. most users will be studnets.. and every place in state college caters to students .. soooooo i dunno

 

wait till you touch the 1000 mark on daily basis. The way you are going it won't take long.

Once you get that I am sure you will get good deals..with exponential increase as time passes.

 

I worked for a UK University for over a decade and would suggest not spamming students offline, flyers etc.

You need promotional material but if has to be used within an integrated promotions, I would use the Google business model, make sure your forum is of the highest quality, adds value to students and provide a place they are actively looking to communicate.

In my experience students love to see pictures of themselves, get a team of fit boys and girls with branded Tshirts an cameras taking pictures at a variety of events taking pictures, hand out a business card/flyer to promote the site and have a section where you can view photos.

Only an idea but think it will have a better conversion rate, make thumbnails public and pictures members only

 

i like your ideas, but i have one in addition:
your plan is sound, youll probably get a ton of views instantly (though alot wouldnt stick, it WOULD bring in regulars IMO)

make it a game of "Who is doing this!" keep your identity a secret, make people wonder, thatll keep them coming back trying to find it out (just avoid any legal trouble...)

also, your hitting one area, yeah its huge, but its one area. Find some buds from the net that are going to/around big campuses (personally, i could help w/ Texas A&M easy, and UCLA once every 6 months or so unless things change) and attack multiple places, if ONE populated area is good, more than one is fantastic. get partners in, split the revenue if any, and im sure theyll be willing to help out.

with the right connections (aka people across the US in big campuses) you could literally hit the local newses...hell if it was big enough, you could get on national news with it lol

 

does anybody want to trade links or posts or advice with me. My forum is http://www.acollegehand.com

 

How is your school's student government? You might be able to get them to help you financially in promoting the website, or at least get some high PR .edu links from their site.

Think about existing groups on campus like professional clubs or whatever that don't have their own forums yet. Make sub-forums for them and market to the group or the groups' leaders.

Basically, find the people who already have a network/marketing structure on campus and sell your idea to them. If you can sell it to them or give them some consideration such as a personal reason to use it, you'll find people volunteering to promote your site.

 

i like the idea of using other colleges .. that would be cool but thats a little far out of reach. as for making it a game of "who is this?" thats what i was sort of shooting for, i would want ppl to be like wtf is all this psuforums stuff .. then visit the site.

i've thought about promoting ideas to clubs as well .. i just never got around too it.

the problem i have is .. right now the forum is stagnant.. i get about 1 or 2 posts every 2-4 days, the problem is that there are 200 users .. but no one has really been using it, my reason to believe is that school is out .. and only a few ppl are in summer session, which they probably never heard of the site.

and to adwords .. my intent of spamming wasn't to bombard students with flyers everywhere they look, but to create an "awe" effect around campus. my goal is to get the word out about my forum to as many penn state students as possible. and i think that by posting up thousands of flyers overnight.. without 95% of the students knowing it was going to happen, then having half the campus waking up and seeing the same thing in the morning .. i think that will create a 'buzz' .. something students will talk about with other students

and korr.. i REALLY like the student government idea.. realllly like that, i'm sure i'll be able to make some kind of deal with one student running for office, then he can get ppl from the forum to vote .. and at the same time he can tell ppl about the forum as he is running for office

wow there is so much stuff i can do.. i dont know where/how to even start.

and what do you guys think about the forum.. it's not "top quality" but personally i don't care a whooole lot for vbulletin, does my forum look ok? or do u think ppl are drawn away from it once htey see it?

 

If you haven't already advertise on Facebook, I am sure a huge percentage of the population there uses it. The only issue is that you have to justify why they should use your forums in addition to facebook, which fills a similiar purpose.

 

i advertised on facebook .. imo its not worthin it. i had 70k impressions and 10 clicks and spent 30 bux.. id never pay that much again