Joel Eisfelder, director of account services, Campus Media Group
Joel Eisfelder is continuing his work to help brands and advertisers reach college students with his promotion to the new position of director of account services at Campus Media Group.
Eisfelder's promotion stems from the need to make sure the Bloomington-based media and marketing firm meets clients' needs as it sees significant growth. Previously the agency's sales director, Eisfelder now oversees execution of client campaigns and is responsible for launching its new inbound marketing services.
"It's been no magic bullet, just that we've consistently stayed focused on the college market and trying to be experts on that," Eisfelder said of that growth.
Doing so has become more challenging as the range of devices, websites, apps and channels available to students has expanded greatly since Eisfelder, then just out of college, joined the agency soon after its 2002 founding.
Campus Media Group is adding inbound marketing services in response to requests from national brands and advertising agencies for content so that "students are excited and can really dig into their Web content, blogs and social media," Eisfelder said.
The agency also offers online and mobile ad buying, out-of-home advertising, direct student marketing, experiential marketing and nontraditional media placement.
Eisfelder returned to Campus Media Group after working in the Star Tribune's sales organization from 2011 to 2013. He has a journalism degree from the University of Minnesota.
Q: How do you stay on top of the best ways to reach college students?
A: The challenge is knowing what they value and what they'll respond to. It could be a financial reward or something entertaining or that gives them social status. We created a "futurist" panel of students in town that we get together with monthly to bounce ideas off and get a sense of what drives them. That's been helpful as we to try to keep putting that puzzle together.
Q: How do you overcome students' skepticism of marketing?
A: They know they're being marketed to. They're OK with that if you're doing that in a way that is transparent, in a way that they feel is genuine, that you have something of value to offer them.
Q: What brought you back to Campus Media Group?
A: What attracted me to Campus Media in the first place and what brought me back is working in a smaller organization. I love helping build new parts of the organization, build new capabilities and getting a diverse set of problems to work on. That goes for clients and also internally.
TODD NELSON