How to Use Your School Audience as the Launchpad for Your Startup Business

Most High School and college students have something that most startup business owners and entrepreneurs crave for, a large accessible target audience to test and expose their ideas, services and products to. That's why I've always encouraged entrepreneurial activities such as having students start a school store. It's no surprise that most students follow the crowd, so wherever the next big thing is happening that's where they want to be, or whatever the new cool service is, that's what they want to use.

Student entrepreneurs also don't have to deal with the getting to know your audience factor as much as an entrepreneur out of school does, so the trust and credibility issue tend to come much faster and go much smoother as they can physically see the mastermind or start-up business owner regularly and even get in verbal conversation.  A people to people connection is much stronger and do much more to advance you business hobbies or products and services.

As a student entrepreneur, you'll want to do three things as quickly as possible to get the student body's attention and focus on your service.

First do a mass announcement of your business idea using free networking tools such as the school email system and free community bulletin boards located in a high school main office or cafeteria or a college student center and residence hall lobbies.

Second provide an incentive for the student audience to want to use your product or service.  OK you can't give away money (students are notoriously broke), but you can offer some kind of exchange or barter agreement. For example, if you want to see if your new service website or physical product will become a hit on campus, create a focus group to test it, and in return for their time, you can give them verbal or written credit one time in future promotions, or you could promote something else they want to bring to students attention such as selling books or other items of value (those items should always be legal and family friendly).

Third, create short electronic surveys to get more user input of your products and services. Most ideas and startup business become successful because of valuable user feedback. You don't build something nobody wants, find a niche and build your service for them, then get regular input and recommendations from them to improve your business service.

No one can build a successful business alone, even self-made college and high school millionaires need help and feedback  to take their ideas to the next level of success.

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