Marketing to University Students: Leveraging Key Dates and Insights to Engage Gen Z

University students represent a dynamic, diverse, and highly influential market for brands, especially those targeting Gen Z. With nearly 3 million university students across the UK, it’s a segment that cannot be ignored. 

To truly resonate with this group, brands must understand their preferences, behaviours, and how key events throughout the academic year can be used to engage them and drive purchasing decisions. 

In this blog post, we’ll explore how brands can effectively take advantage of key dates in the UK student calendar and tap into the insights that define Gen Z’s approach to market consumption. From Freshers’ Week to Valentine’s Day, and everything in between, we’ll highlight opportunities for brands to engage, educate, and inspire students while keeping in mind their priorities around health, sustainability, and social values.

• How to stand out as a brand during Freshers’ Week? 
• How can you use key dates in the academic calendar to engage students? 
• How can you market to the diverse student market? 

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How to stand out as a brand during Freshers’ week 

To give more context, please read our detailed explanation with key points you can use for your brand below. 

1. Welcome Bundles: Students are looking for everything from food and drink to tech gadgets and home essentials. Bundling relevant products or services together, such as discounted mobile phone contracts, meal deals, or personalised care packages, can entice students to engage with your brand right away.  

2. Exclusive Deals and Trials: Offering special discounts or free trials to students during Freshers’ Week will build goodwill and encourage trials. For example, tech brands could offer exclusive student discounts on laptops, phones, or accessories, while gyms could offer free trials of their memberships. 

3. Experiential Marketing: Students crave experiences, and Freshers’ Week is a perfect time to create a memorable, shareable experience. Pop-up events or sponsorship of Freshers’ activities such as live music, game nights, or fitness classes can create buzz and allow students to interact with your brand in a fun and personal way. 

4. Health and Wellness sessions: University students are known for their health-conscious approach to life. Studies show that more than half of Gen Z students prioritise their health, with 87% of them exercising three to four times a week. More so, 58% of Gen Z want brands to participate in educational campaigns on important topics. Given this opportunity, health-related brands have a significant chance to engage more with students at this time.   

5. Brand Positioning: Positioning your brand to suit the preferences of students is very important for your business growth. For example, with 70% of Gen Z planning to follow a vegan diet in the next five years, brands selling plant-based products can position themselves as aligned with the values of Gen Z.

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How can you use key dates to engage students? 

Statistics have shown that younger generations often give themselves a treat as often as 11 times a month, making it ideal that as they head home for the holiday season, they often think about gifts for family, friends, and… themselves. This is a time for brands to step in with thoughtful campaigns. 

Here are some ideas you can implement for your brand:

Ideas for the #FestiveSzn

Student Gift Guides: Create a curated gift guide specifically for students, with suggestions that reflect youthful tastes. Whether it’s eco-friendly products, tech gadgets, or health-related items. Offering student discounts on gift purchases or packaging them into affordable bundles makes shopping easier and more accessible. 

Self-Care Promotions: After a challenging semester, students often turn to self-care during the Christmas break. This is a great time for wellness brands to offer promotions on products like skincare, self-help books, and relaxation products. Brands could also run campaigns educating students on how to destress and stay mentally healthy during the holidays. 

Valentine’s Day 

Friendship-focused Campaigns: Unlike previous generations, 30% of Gen Z prefer to celebrate Valentine’s Day with friends rather than a romantic partner. 

This presents a great opportunity for brands to promote a more inclusive, friendship-focused celebration. Create promotional offers or special events for groups of friends to enjoy. This could include discounts for group purchases or partnerships with local restaurants, cinemas, or coffee shops offering special experiences. Products like personalised friendship jewellery, group activity kits, or quirky gift boxes could resonate largely with the students this period as well.  

St. Patrick’s Day

Brand Experiences: St. Patrick’s Day is a big event for many students, with 52% of students choosing beer as their drink of choice.  
 
However, rather than focusing purely on a product, why not create immersive, fun experiences such as pop-up beer gardens or pub crawls that blend entertainment with responsible drinking. Partner with eco-conscious event organisers or local businesses to create these events. 

The Housing Hunt 

Home Essentials Campaigns: January is a key month for house hunting, as students begin searching for accommodation for the next academic year. Whether they are moving out of halls or securing shared flats, many students are in need of household essentials. 

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How can you market to the diverse student market? 

A quarter of UK university students are non-native speakers, representing a wide range of cultural backgrounds.  This presents an opportunity for brands to tailor their messaging to be more inclusive and relatable. 
 
At our sister brand, GottaBe! Ethnic, we’ve worked with many brands to reach diverse students in Universities across the UK and achieved massive success. An example is our work with Middlesex University where we helped them to reach ethnic students and drive applications from the target communities. Read more about the case study here.  
 
Here are some tips you can follow to reach this diverse student audience: 

Create multilingual Campaigns: Brands can run campaigns in multiple languages, or partner with influencers from diverse cultural backgrounds. This helps brands reach over 3,000 students from diverse communities and create a sense of belonging within a multicultural environment. 
 

Cultural Celebrations: Capitalising on cultural celebrations such as Diwali, Chinese New Year, or Ramadan can help brands show support for diversity within student communities. This can be done through product offers, educational content, or sponsored events that celebrate these traditions. 

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Engaging university students requires a deep understanding of their preferences, behaviours, and key dates in the academic calendar. By leveraging the power of experiential marketing, and seasonal campaigns, and addressing Gen Z’s focus on health, sustainability, and inclusivity, brands can create meaningful connections with students that extend well beyond their university years. 

Whether through targeted promotions during Freshers’ Week or engaging them through smaller opportunities like International Pizza Day, there are countless opportunities for brands to engage with students in a meaningful way. 

As this generation continues to shape trends and expectations across industries, those who successfully engage with them now have the potential to build lasting relationships that transcend typical transactional marketing, creating lifelong customers who feel truly seen and heard. 

Are you looking to reach the student market and engage with them in a way that promotes your brand, let’s help you get it done. We’ve worked with several top brands and helped them to achieve their student marketing goals.. yours could be next!

Reach out to our team today and let us get started.