I have developed a website where people can place and search advertisements for roommates. Does anyone have any tips for marketing to 18-25 year olds? Any advice is appreciated. Thanks
have an advertisement in the schools related websites. Start an affiliate program, and advertise in some of the schools.
find communities (especially forums and websites like MySpace or Facebook) that focus on topics that are important to 18-24 year olds (e.g. music, fashion, and so on) and maybe get a banner on there, or if its a forum, talk to the admin - many (myself included) would be happy to create threads about your site and put it amongst the other threads. This is a clever and very productive advertising technique which very few have tried
You can advertise on facebook.com, which has attracted about 80% of all the undergraduate students who need roommates.
You should read these reports on Pew Internet. The latest one, Teens and Technology, has just been published. There are links to other teen reports from that page which should give you a few ideas.
Thank you for all of your tips. At the moment I'm talking to all of the Universities in Australia about advertising/PR for the beginning of the new school in February next year - it's good to now that I'm on the right track. Also, thank you for telling me about MySpace and Facebook - I've been trying to find some forums that are Australian or Australians are interested in but to no avail.
If you make money from your site using a shopping cart then you should have an affiliate program. You set it up and then do the same work as looking for reciprocal links just this time you offer the websmasters a percentage of the sales. There are tons of relevant sites for you out there. Check out the program in my signature. Affiliates have literally sold millions for me every year.
I have to go with Bradley - myspace is probably the best launching pad for this demographic - they have a classifieds section too. If your site is geographically specific, submit to directory(ies) for that/those area(s). Eye catching banners, graphics and images seem best for attracting the attention of this age group if you're going to be adverstising on other sites.
CJ charges five grand to set you up. There are a few big affiliate program networks, CJ & Linkshare are the biggest. They charge five grand or more to join and will integrate your site in to their network and expose it to their base of thousands of potential affiliates. This is a tempting way to spend five grand and it seems to makes sense that the exposure will be worth the large set up fee. But unless your site is truly unique you will also encounter serious competition within the network. Because of this, every time you recruit a valuable affiliates they will join the network and be exposed to your competitor’s offers. ‘Not exactly preferable. This is the advantage of an independent program. The affiliates you recruit will be focused on your program alone. Why spend so much money and so much time bringing in affiliates who are immediately directed to other programs as soon as they join? This is a big negative that makes a strong case for running an independent program.
Hey JD... I believe there is a sort of 'unofficial' policy that you don't put affiliate links in your SIG line. I could be wrong tho...but it might be nice to let folks know that you get a bump for anyone purchasing/signing up via your sig links. Alt...there are hundreds of classified ad sites (such as Craigslist.com) where you can post for free. Find the ones that target the market you're going after. I would also recommend putting some promotions together. For instance, hooking up with entertainment or retail gadget sites to run a giveaway would be a great way to get press. You can use PRweb to distribute your release, but I would also take the time to put together a targeted list of college newspapers. Is your site open to all cities, or just one area?
Thanks Dreamshop for your advice and suggestions. They are things I hadn't thought about. I'm going to run a promotion at the beginning of next year but I didn't think of getting together with another site to run it. My site is for people looking for roommates in Australia regardless whether they are already in Australia or coming to live in Australia.