Targeted Dialogue for Marketers
oncampusuk offers the complete solution to unions – free web site construction and design of a unique site for each union, free software, free hosting and free training.
Under our long-term agreements with unions oncampusuk has the exclusive right to commercially market our community of sites .
The in-house-developed software provides the unions with one of the most flexible systems available for creating and editing content within a site structure, which fits their individual communication needs. The software is easy to use, even by those with little technical knowledge.
Already, student site usage is extraordinarily high as the sites become the premier information vehicle for student activity. Take-up is higher than 30 per cent and rising on the established sites and page impressions have quadrupled since January.
The unions also enjoy a profit sharing agreement with oncampusuk, providing them with a new and sustainable revenue stream.
To date, oncampusuk has entered into partnerships with over 50 unions – including Oxford, Glasgow, Bristol, Leicester and St.Andrews – which collectively represent over 850,000 students. We are in advanced discussions with a large number of others and confident we will meet our goal of a 50 per cent share of the 1.8 million university student market by next year.
The market
The Student Union is at the centre of non-academic life at university. It is the common denominator for students, providing a wide array of benefits and services to its members. In addition to organising all of the university’s clubs and societies (which may number in the hundreds) the union owns and operates bars and arranges a wide range of other activities.
Student Unions are non-profit making organisations funded by grants and member subscriptions. Although the Internet is an obvious enabling medium for unions to communicate better with their thousands of members, financial constraints make it difficult for them to make substantial investments and they are more often than not unable to fully exploit the opportunities of the medium.
oncampusuk provides that opportunity.
A powerful niche
University students are best placed and well equipped to enjoy the full benefits the Internet brings:
- More than 99 per cent are Internet literate and are on-line every week
- They already spend seven times more time on-line compared to the general population
- Two-thirds own their own computer and all have access to campus computers
- The majority use the Internet at least three times a week
- More than half their time on the Internet is for general usage, rather than for e-mail or study purposes
- They have no fear about transactions on the Internet
Their economic position is a powerful one. As well as representing the core group of future ABC1s, the UK’s campus based population has a combined spending power of more than £10 billion.
They are the sought after and elusive elite of the 18-24 year-old market.
Leveraging this important group
oncampusuk’s commercial approach is to provide the same high level of value-added and innovative services to brand builders and marketers as that provided to Student Unions.
Our aim is to create a commercial environment which maximises the opportunity for dialogue between brand builders and the consumer group we represent.
This is done via Insite Marketing.
Insite Marketing
oncampusuk has created Insite Marketing, a unique service for marketing on the Internet. It is an innovative, direct and defined gateway to the student market.
Insite Marketing is based on the principle that brands should not wait for the consumer to go to them. Rather, brands should be introduced to them within a known, trusted environment with which they are comfortable.
With our commercial packages Insite Marketing offers brand ‘ownership’ of a section of every site within our Student Union network. This section is branded only by the marketer, contains no other advertisers’ messages and remains part of each of the union sites.
By having their own brand section of pages within each union site, marketers benefit from a permanent/semi-permanent presence within sites that are becoming essential to the day-to-day life of the university student.
Users do not have to leave their own site to access the information relevant to them. The brand has made the effort to provide it at the point of interest.
Our software allows editing and updating of the dedicated brand pages whenever required, as often as the marketer wants, from any computer, anywhere. All that is needed is an Internet connection and some basic training in our software.
The chances for dialogue are therefore greatly increased. Run a snap poll, recruit research group participants, or create an ongoing dialogue with visitors to your section. Changing content takes only a few minutes and then it’s instantly updated across our entire network.
What is more, content can be site-specific, multi-specific or general to the network to deliver clear, targeted and even tactical messages to different student groups in a minimum amount of time.
This flexibility is unmatched on the Internet and, irrespective of the media, never at the cost efficient rates offered by our series of marketing packages.
To arrange for a full presentation, and to see what more Insite has to offer your brand please contact Ben Dux.