20 FREE Ways to Promote Your Trip on Campus

1. Plan your trip as far in advance as possible, then circulate these dates among other campus organizations so they won’t plan events that conflict with your trip.  Check the campus calendar closely.  Avoid religious holidays and times when academics are especially demanding.
2. Involve as many people in the planning of the trip as possible.  The more people involved, the more people who have a vested interest in seeing the trip succeed.
3. Start a Facebook group for the trip and invite everyone you know.
4. Send a campus wide email and/or voicemail pushing the trip.
5. Use prizes as incentives for those who sign up early.  You will get more early sign ups and more people talking about the trip to their friends.  You can usually get these prizes donated by local area businesses.
6. Get a table in the quad, cafeteria, at a sporting event, or any other high traffic area and talk to students passing by about your trip.  Have something for them to take home and show their friends.
7. Go into classrooms and write a little promo in the corner of the blackboards. Students will read these before and during classes.
8. Ask your professors if you can have 2 minutes before or after your class to talk about the trip.
9. Send personal invitations to important groups and individuals who you want to attend.  Follow up with a phone call.  These influential people will bring others with them!
10. Get promotional announcements in your campus newspaper and on your campus TV and radio stations.  Remember, many times articles and press releases are read more than advertisements!
11. Put flyers in your campus post office. If they will let you, put flyers in individual mail boxes as well.
12. Use table tents in all dinning areas on campus to advertise the trip.  You can probably get a local area business to pay for the table tents in exchange for advertising they can get from it.
13. Make personal presentations at group meetings to encourage participation on your trip.  This gives them a chance to ask questions and build enthusiasm.
14. Ask professors to give class credit for attending educational excursions on the trip.  It usually helps if you invite the professor!
15. Give incentives and rewards to those who can bring five or more friends on the trip.  Do the same for RA’s, fraternity pledge educators, and so forth.
16. See if RAs, clubs, fraternities/sororities, can get programming or service credit for signing their residents up for your trip. They will appreciate not having to plan a program from scratch.
17. Do a car wash or other fundraiser to raise money and promote the trip.
18. Have another group co-sponsor the trip.  Go after a group that would not normally attend your trips so that a new group of students is exposed to your good work.
19. Brag about the trip in the media AFTERWARDS.  People will remember the great opportunity they missed and will be more likely to attend the next trip.
20. Send thank you notes to those organizations who attended the trip in large numbers. This sort of recognition will increase your number of repeat attendees.