Why do companies want to enter the college campus market?

Regarding the college student campus market, I have been sharing it with the outside world three years ago. I have also written a lot about how to build campus channels, how to control the overall operation, how to select entry points based on my own resources, etc. Related articles. After finishing my entrepreneurial career and joining Meituan and Zhaopin, I now have many different understandings of the campus methods of large companies.

The more mature a company is, the more it will consider input and output when it comes to the campus market. For example, Meituan’s campus invested a lot of energy in 2014 because it began to enter the food delivery field. After the white-collar market was blocked, Since students' acceptance of new things is always ahead of the average of the entire society, they choose to enter university campuses. It has been three years since Meituan took out food. Its transaction volume and number of transactions in the campus market lag far behind that of the white-collar market. In particular, low customer unit prices and difficult to solve distribution problems on campus have made Meituan’s take-out choice more important. Focus on the campus market.

But there are still many immature companies, or companies that have never been in the campus market, that will blindly invest a lot of money in schools. So when it comes to college students’ direct annual consumption exceeding 500 billion, what we need to think about is how does this relate to us? If there are no related companies, there is actually no need to engage in the college student market.

Next, let me talk about why companies want to establish campus markets, focusing on two main points: 1. Control future behavioral trends, build campus brands, and help sell products or services; 2. The enterprise injects a steady stream of fresh blood to make it everlasting.

Nowadays, more and more companies are paying attention to the post-90s generation. It is absolutely necessary for me personally. When it comes to consumption upgrading, it is not to pursue high prices, but to pay attention to changes in consumer behavior. The obvious characteristics of the consumption of the post-90s generation are: niche, personalized, and the pursuit of KOL.

If a company cannot capture the behavioral changes of this group, it will lose its future. For example, a brand I once liked, Metersbonwe, has loyal users who are born in the 1980s. The behavioral changes of those born in the 1990s and 1995s have led to the closure of a large number of offline stores; in sharp contrast, Internet celebrity Zhang Dayi ranked second on Taobao's women's clothing list on "Double Eleven" in 2016, with sales exceeding 100 million. And if it weren't for insufficient inventory, it would not be impossible for sales to exceed 200 million in a single day.

There is no doubt that college students are the backbone of the young group. Historical experience tells us that we should never question young people, because they represent the future, and we will eventually grow old. For example, many older people are disgusted with the second dimension and think that animation is just a cartoon for children. However, this cannot resist the development trend of animation, because young people are willing to pay for it, and the consumption and behavioral habits of young people have changed in the past ten years. After that, it will become the mainstream behavior of society twenty years later.

Enterprises investing in branding for the campus market can keep the company in a youthful state and be able to promptly obtain the opinions and needs of the post-95s generation and improve their products. At the same time, the consumption expenditure of college students is increasing year by year. This kind of market activity is also conducive to the related transformation of corporate products and service sales. Of course, once students recognize a brand, their consumption potential will create greater value for the company.

Also remember that the core point of marketing is continuous exposure. Don’t think that your company is no longer known by everyone, so you don’t need to do marketing. For example, Pepsi-Cola still invests a lot of money every year to go to the market. In my opinion, there are probably not many companies that are more famous than this company when it comes to conducting some campus competitions.

In addition to brand and market levels, most companies want to be built to last. For example, Alibaba wants to be a 102-year-old company. How can it achieve this? A steady stream of fresh blood is needed, and college students are undoubtedly needed by enterprises. Fresh graduates are extremely malleable and can bring some new inspiration. Especially for companies whose products are aimed at young people, it is hard for me to imagine that a group of middle-aged people can make products that are highly enjoyable for a group of people born after 1995.

And campus recruitment must require pre-guided guidance. Otherwise, even if your company is great, students will not choose it due to lack of knowledge.

For example, a friend from Cisco came to me before. As such a global company, its business is for B-side companies, so ordinary users and college students don’t know about it, which leads to its During campus recruitment, I received very few resumes. For example, if you see a recruitment message for a company of five people recruiting an artist, you will 99% filter it out as spam; but if there is a pre-guided message, it will tell you that this company opens a Taobao store, Samsung Crown, It has an excellent reputation and annual sales of over 10 million? There should be some attention.

It can be seen that from the two perspectives of grasping future trends and making enterprises last forever, the college student campus market requires enterprises to pay attention. So how to do it specifically needs to be combined with the current situation of the company and weighed according to input and output. A great company, often in the early stages, not only focuses on the present, but also cares about the future.

The author Sun Ling is a senior campus market expert and youth growth mentor. He focuses on innovation and entrepreneurship and shares his thoughts every day. His WeChat public account is Entrepreneur Sun Ling.