If your company or brand is looking to reach the student market, have you thought about offering a scholarship?
Scholarship marketing is common practice in America and many of the world’s biggest brands offer scholarships to the student market, such as Adobe, Dell, McDonalds and Coca Cola, all major players in the youth marketing sector.
Why a scholarship?
By offering a scholarship your brand can address a need among your target audience with money being a major cause of worry for 80% of students. New scholarships in the UK are currently rare and a scholarship of even £1,500 a year to one student could make a huge difference to them. Bigger scholarships could attract media coverage and the support of schools and universities in promoting it.
Achieving objectives
A scholarship can be designed and created to achieve any number of corporate or marketing objectives including:
• Brand awareness
• Attract new customers
• Increase your marketing database
• Get your message in to schools
• Generate PR coverage
• Graduate recruitment
Get creative
The word scholarship might understandably evoke images of academia and a team of marketing people handing over a cheque to some students but it does not need to be that way. Take a look at the Duck Tape Scholarship in America. https://www.duckbrand.com/stuckatprom.com/ Students are encouraged to create prom outfits from Duck Tape and send in a photo of themselves to be entered in to the Scholarship Competition. Essentially it is a competition but the money they win has to be used towards tuition fees.
Different types of scholarships
Scholarships do not need to be limited to financial need. Scholarships can be offered for a wide range of things. You are offering the scholarship, so you decide on the eligibility criteria.
• Competitive – creating scholarships to identify particular talents or to encourage particular activities which can be used to drive sales.
• Academic merit – by offering scholarships on academic merit, companies could attract high quality applicants who are a potential source of high calibre graduates in future.
• Financial need – addressing financial need can be a way of encouraging social mobility and assisting students from disadvantaged backgrounds to go on to higher education
• Geographic – perhaps your company would like to be seen to be supporting students from your local community where the business operates
• Sporting or Musical Achievement – encouraging sporting, artistic or musical talents
Marketing through scholarships is a new opportunity that has been created in the UK through political change. We have seen an increase in companies starting to harness this opportunity but as a social enterprise dedicated to developing new scholarships, we are keen to raise awareness of the opportunities this presents to marketers and how creatively they can be used.
Find out more about how we can help you by clicking here and we would be delighted to come and chat with you.
