Students dislike text message marketing campaigns

When Barnes & Noble College Marketing consulted the 7,500 students on its Next Gen Research Panel about their media habits and marketing preferences, they found television was considered the most effective form of advertising, cited by 42% of the panel.

While 65% of students engage with brands via social media at least weekly, over half (55%) do not think Facebook is a good place for brands to advertise to them. Despite this, the majority of students expect a brand to have a presence on the social network, even though 35% don't look for them and 31% ignore them.

The main driver of student participation on Facebook is brand loyalty (26%), as well as offering things of real value and entertainment such as coupons (26%) and 'fun contests' (19%).

In the era of mobile where many students (80%) possess a mobile phone, one would think they would be receptive to messages from brands on their device. Apparently not. Almost two-thirds (61%) don't believe text messaging is a way brands should be connecting with them.

Perhaps students are more likely to interact with newer forms of mobile advertising, such as QR Codes? Nope. Almost two-thirds (63%) never scan QR Codes.

"I think that students continue to consume media at a very rapid pace, television of course being one of their top choices. They continue to be influenced by what they're seeing," Lisa Malat, Barnes & Noble College's VP of marketing and operations, told Direct Marketing News. "They're changing all the time and the channels that they prefer change all the time."

When the students were ask the best way for brands to reach them, the top three answers were email (20%), television (19%) and coupons (14%), followed by:

Word of mouth - 9%
Facebook ad - 9%
Social coupon (i.e. Groupon) - 8%
Print ad - 8%
Web ad - 5%
Radio commercial - 4%
Texting campaign - 3%
Google ad - 2%

Tags: advertising, brand marketing, college campus, communication, mobile marketing, social media, student marketing, text messaging