I have developed a product where the target audience is high school students. 90% of the consumers of this product are high school students. The product is a study aid website to help them in class. Also this product is only aimed at maybe 25% of the student population. In other words, its only aimed at students of certain subjects. I am looking for new ways of marketing this product. I've tried the obvious methods: 1. SEO to boost ranking in google (its working but it takes time obviously). 2. Compiling a list of teacher's e-mail addresses and directly e-mailing the teacher telling them about how great my product is and why they should tell students about it etc. 3. posting on various forums and websites where potential students would go (ie. yahoo answers). All of the above methods are cheap and easy to do. I've also looked into buying ads in the high school's yearbook. Seems alittle pricey though. 25$ is usually the going rate for a 1/8th page ad. With nearly 36,000 public and private high schools in this country that can be a little pricey and who knows how effective. Ive looked into google adwords, might be effective but again, google adwords is expensive and it only pays off if people buy my product. I might put 100$ into that and see how it goes. I've considered buying out competitor websites (that rank high for my SERP) and either linking them to my site, putting ads to my site or simply redirecting the url to my site but I don't know how effective that would be. I've looked into advertising on school's websites but I don't see schools putting advertising on their sites so that is out of the picture. Also maybe buying ads in the school's newspaper if they have one. Anyone have any ideas on how to market to high school students?
Don't think I'm being funny or mean, but I've had experience with a similar product and I promoted it via local pubs and nightclubs (at least where I live pubs and clubs are where students gather) So, definitely, if your site is any good (have you tested the market or had an opinion?) off-line marketing is the best way to proceed!
My guess would be less than 20 percent of students in high school worry about studying so much that they'd buy something to help them, unless its for a major test like the SAT. I would expand your target market to include parents as they probably worry about their kids grades more than the kids themselves. They could be interested in your product to help their kids. The other thing is, if its highschool kids, the money is more than likely coming out of the parents pocket.
I meant to add, if you know any kids that could promote your product.. Neighbors, son, daugter' niece, nephew etc that could promote for you it could go a long way. Kids are more inclined to follow friends and other kids than listen to you or me.
Yeah, parents may seem to be a good market for that, for students especially in high school are not really that serious in making actions or purchasing products for educational enhancement unless these are students that are academically focused but the latter won't need such at all. You can also distribute pamphlets for such product or service at schools during some events, like family day when their parents are with them.