The word ‘campus representative’ is also mostly referred to as ‘brand managers’ or ‘brand representatives’. Now you would be figuring out that many companies who want to market their products, looks to alternative ways of reaching the youngsters or growing generation. As the students network is easier way to spread the message, many companies who are giants in the market often use college children as sales representative to advertise their goods in their respective campuses. But some are skeptical about the turnaround of the program. Sometimes the students wont be loyal or stick around long. Or sometimes they would be sincerely or truly promoting your product as thought. Then you need to figure out how to make campus brand ambassador programs for students that would ultimately bring out the results or promote growth.
Building an Effective Campus Rep Program:
1. Select right college:
Mostly these programs are successful in campuses that have good background. For this you could consider where the campus interviews happen mostly. There are many databases with such information. For this make a list of the campus that are famous for carrying out campus recruitment’s. In other words, try to go back to history to check out which campuses had done more recruits. Also it is wise to initiate with a pilot program to ensure that it works out well. Select 2 or 3 campuses and launch your program. Once, you find that there was good response, with few changes to the hitches you could think of expanding to other campuses.
2. Identify your market:
This is a very important criteria for making your choice of campus as well as students. You need to make a priority list depicting the educational background and the extra-curricular activities that you know would be suitable. Having this in mind, you need to identify in which campuses do these students with this background study. This is not easy task but once you are sure what is your requirement then task of recruitment is easier. You could also look out for those students not only in colleges but also clubs where the students gets enrolled. Scrolling through those databases, you would be able to segment out such students who would be suitable for your company.
3. Establish your presence:
There are many job fairs, campus interviews, workshops etc. that are either sponsored or directly held by the company. This is one way that they get to put their foot inside the ground of campuses helping them to establish their brand name. Many methods are employed for landing themselves inside the campus. Some colleges allow posting positions in their noticeboards, while some allow career or job fairs inside their campus. Some companies host seminars and workshops inside campuses. Some colleges host technical quiz, competitions, workshops hosted by them. This way they spread their message among the students. During this process the students gets selected as their brand ambassadors.
4. Utilize social websites:
As it is the age of digital world, there is no student who is not connected with social websites. There are groups within social sites. Make use of social sites for referring to the campus hires within your corporate culture. Also make reference of the newly hired within the campus intranet or magazine. All these help in building proper references for the students for future projects. This is one way of making way for the future. Boosting up the morale of students who are hired is one way of selling your product and also branding them as ambassadors for you.
5. Recruit less:
Most of the company feel that having many ground force will help to spread the message quicker and get more outcome. But if you analyze the real facts, you would realize that many who get recruited would feel that they can beat round the bush while only few of them would be putting in their sincere efforts.
Thereby you cannot be assured of the dedication from many of them. During the initial phase many students not knowing the ground work get themselves enrolled and then will not show any progress as they may not know how to proceed or are not interested in your products. Hence it is imperative to be selective in your recruit and have few. Thereby you would be able to look at the chart of progress easily when the numbers are less rather than have hundreds.
6. Compensate appropriately:
As these representatives are your brand managers, it is important to get them compensated appropriately as you would have done for your employees. If there is no appropriate programs then you are sure to lose good candidates. Nothing works around in the competitive world without proper compensation. You could have it in terms of monetary benefit. But it is an important criteria to inform them beforehand about your compensation programs. Let your programs be attractive such that you get most out of them. Mostly, belonging to younger generation, their expectations are mostly focused on monetary benefits. The program of providing ‘incentives’ to promote products usually brings in competitive edge to make the representative work harder. Taking due care of them is sure to make them stay longer with your company.
7. Provide training:
Every hire who starts on the work, is initiated with a training program. As new employee undergoes a induction program, it is better to have a sort of program to make aware on the highlights of the company and the product sold. A brief training will surely make things clear for the students hire and explain the basic concepts, their key performance indicators, company culture so that they perform with due dedication. This will make the students that they are already part of the team and proud of it. Get few employees to help out in this process of training students. Hence, to sell and make your program successful involve a few of your employees to train these students who are your college brand ambassadors.
8. Guarantee long term:
You would need to make long term plans for making the students to hold on longer. It’s not wise to just hand over the product or scheme to them and ask them to sell. From this they would come to know that the company is disoriented and disorganized. In other word, it means that there is no specific vision for the company. Hence, explain to them the steps they need to take and objectives or goal that they need to achieve. How to get it done? Create plans with chart of their progress and incentives for that. A formatted scheme is sure to attract students who are very clear on their view. Moreover, try to build a rapport with them by asking their feedback regularly.
9. Keep track:
Having few hires will be helpful in managing them and also keep tracking on their work. Besides that, the relationship between the representatives and company gets stronger. Another crucial factor is that your attractive stocks of giveaway will be enough to cater to the needs. Keeping track of the progress of students work, you would get to know whether it is working well or any training required. Also it would trigger for some changes in the marketing strategy if not satisfied. And those changes would not hurt the company as those changes are manageable. Hence, keep track of the progress and help them out to learn more.
10. Provide feedback:
Just keeping a track of the progress is not enough for program to be successful. It is to be supported with a feedback. Without a feedback policy in place you are not going to know the other side. Let’s say there is a need to change the way the marketing has to be done, then feedback are proper channels for you to gain more insights of the markets. As they are directly in the frontline of the market, they get to hear and see a lot of comments or views. These brand ambassadors are ones who would help to gather them and provide to you. So make a program where there is space for feedback and collect them on regular intervals. This could help your company to progress in other ways too!
Though it is considered as one of the marketing tools to your products, having campus representative for your company is not a bad idea. As suggested there are many ways to enter the campus but you would need to have a proper program to make it successful. Definitely, reviewing the above aspects you would surely come out with suitable programs to cater your needs. Do take time to create programs that stand long and let them be unique for your company. Every company has their own strategy and vision to be the world class. So create your program and enter the world class levels through the younger generation on your side.
