‘Tis the sea­son to be edu­cat­ed. And as 70 mil­lion Amer­i­can stu­dents head back to school, that trans­lates to big bucks for retail­ers and huge oppor­tu­ni­ties for mar­keters.

The total com­bined spend­ing for back-to-school this year is esti­mat­ed to come in sec­ond only to win­ter hol­i­day shop­ping with $68 bil­lion in sales, accord­ing to the Nation­al Retail Fed­er­a­tion. What’s more, each fam­i­ly will spend a total of about $630, the NRF says.

Just like the win­ter hol­i­day shop­ping sea­son, retail­ers are using every tool in their arse­nals – includ­ing videos, retar­get­ing, social media, and emails – to make the prover­bial grade. But like stu­dents in school uni­forms, it can be dif­fi­cult for brands to stand out from the crowd.

Here are five tips from mar­ket­ing experts on how brands can dis­tin­guish their back-to-school offers and cam­paigns.

1. Location, Location, Location

Accord­ing to Car­la Fitzger­ald, CMO of mobile expe­ri­ence soft­ware com­pa­ny Smith Micro, what might be too ear­ly for one shop­per is just right for anoth­er, so mar­keters should focus on shop­per cir­cum­stances and pat­terns rather than cal­en­dars to build cam­paigns.

Indeed, per the NRF, 30 per­cent of back-to-school shop­pers will wait until one or two weeks before school to start shop­ping, which is up from 25 per­cent last year. And Google says while back-to-school search inter­est is trend­ing ear­li­er this year, tim­ing varies by region.

“Con­sumers lin­ger­ing near the school sup­plies are prime can­di­dates for back-to-school mes­sag­ing, mak­ing loca­tion-trig­gered pro­mo­tions a key ingre­di­ent to max­i­miz­ing engage­ment. How­ev­er, you don’t want to blast con­sumers down every aisle, so the abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy a sequence of events, such as shop­pers mov­ing between pen­cils, back­packs and lunch box­es, is more effec­tive than a sin­gle trig­ger,” she said. “Regard­less of the cam­paign or sea­son, keep­ing con­sumer shop­ping pref­er­ences in mind by mon­i­tor­ing prox­im­i­ty, device activ­i­ty, dwell time/time spent and oth­er con­tex­tu­al trig­gers can help deter­mine the right time to mar­ket to a par­tic­u­lar shop­per.”

Fur­ther, Fitzger­ald notes the use of loca­tion tech­nol­o­gy like bea­cons, WiFi, and GPS geofenc­ing is chang­ing the retail envi­ron­ment and intro­duc­ing new ways to improve tar­get­ing and increase rel­e­van­cy for mobile mar­ket­ing.

For exam­ple, she said Wal­mart intro­duced loca­tion-trig­gered ads using its Sav­ings Catch­er app last fall, gam­ing retail­er GameStop alerts its staff via tablet when PowerUp loy­al­ty mem­bers enter their dig­i­tal stores and mall oper­a­tor Taub­man is using GPS and rout­ing algo­rithms to help shop­pers find the fastest path to the stores they want to vis­it using their mobile devices.

“These are just a few of the ways in which retail­ers are har­ness­ing prox­im­i­ty and mobile to dri­ve clos­er engage­ment,” Fitzger­ald said. “How­ev­er, suc­cess­ful mar­ket­ing cam­paigns must also con­sid­er their cus­tomers’ unique his­to­ry, pref­er­ences and cir­cum­stances or they run the risk of being labeled as spam and los­ing a cus­tomer.”

In addi­tion, a recent research report from Black­hawk Engage­ment Solu­tions, a divi­sion of pre­paid and pay­ments net­work Black­hawk Net­work that says it pro­vides engage­ment, incen­tive and rebate pro­grams, found 63 per­cent of U.S. shop­pers would con­sid­er allow­ing retail­ers to send offers to their smart­phones based on where they are in-store.

2. Cater To Mobile Researchers & Shoppers

Par­ents are using mobile more than ever in the back-to-school sea­son and they are shop­ping in micro-moments through­out the day, accord­ing to Google. In fact, this year, back-to-school search­es on mobile sur­passed the 50-per­cent mark, Google says.

In addi­tion, Google notes shop­ping behav­ior is chang­ing as par­ents aren’t plan­ning out back-to-school shop­ping trips any­more but rather shop­ping in so-called I‑want-to-buy moments and rely­ing on mobile to tell them pre­cise­ly where to go for what they want.

Ergo, Google rec­om­mends brands cre­ate great mobile web expe­ri­ences and use mobile-spe­cif­ic ads to fer­ry back-to-school shop­pers from research to pur­chase as quick­ly and eas­i­ly as pos­si­ble.

3. Think Overall Solutions Rather Than Singular Campaigns

Instead of sav­ings pro­mo­tions that get lost in the back-to-school noise, Brid­get Fahrland, senior vice pres­i­dent of client strat­e­gy at Flu­id Inc., which says it cre­ates com­merce expe­ri­ences and soft­ware, said brands can dis­tin­guish their mes­sages by offer­ing solu­tions that add actu­al val­ue to con­sumers’ lives.

That includes cre­at­ing out­fits and looks based on trends, as well as enabling par­ents to pre-shop and set up gal­leries for their chil­dren to select preap­proved items, which Fahrland says also helps chil­dren learn to bud­get and avoids bat­tles in stores.

Aalap Shah, co-founder of social media agency SoMe Con­nect, agrees con­tent should be util­i­tar­i­an and tar­get con­sumer pain points, such as the aver­age fam­i­ly school sup­ply spend, which is over $600 this year.

4. Get Emotional

While many retail­ers car­ry the same prod­ucts at com­pet­i­tive prices, Bruce Clark, mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sor at the D’Amore-McKim School of Busi­ness at North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, says brands can set them­selves apart by look­ing for ways to address the emo­tion­al side of going back to school, even for func­tion­al prod­ucts.

“For stu­dents, it’s a rite of pas­sage. For par­ents, it’s anoth­er step on the par­ent­ing jour­ney,” Clark said.

There­fore, he said brands should ask them­selves ques­tions like: “How does your prod­uct make stu­dents and par­ents feel bet­ter about going back to school?”

5. Use Events To Generate A Sense Of Urgency

Mar­ket intel­li­gence firm Mar­ket Track said adver­tis­ers can build excite­ment and cap­ture the atten­tion of price-con­scious con­sumers by pro­mot­ing in-store and online events.

Not­ing retail­ers go through the same strug­gles dur­ing back-to-school as they do in the hol­i­day sea­son but to a greater extent because they must cre­ate urgency to buy dur­ing this two-plus-month shop­ping event, Mar­ket Track notes cre­at­ing events under the back-to-school umbrel­la that have start and end dates can help dri­ve con­sumers to pur­chase.

Bonus Point: Turn Customers Into Loyalists

A white paper from dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency Hel­loWorld shows there’s a 21 per­cent increase in shop­ping vis­its at con­sumers’ favorite retail­ers as engage­ment goes up.

“It’s an amaz­ing sta­tis­tic, and makes a strong case for con­tin­ued brand engage­ment,” said Jan­ice Pol­lard, senior mar­ket­ing man­ag­er at Hel­loWorld.

In addi­tion, the sur­vey of 5,000 con­sumers found shop­pers with high­er lev­els of cus­tomer engage­ment pur­chased more prod­ucts from their favorite brands and, among cus­tomers who already demon­strat­ed high lev­els of cus­tomer loy­al­ty, increased engage­ment was a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in pos­i­tive­ly influ­enc­ing those same cus­tomers to spend even more, Hel­loWorld says.

Fur­ther, Hel­loWorld found 96 per­cent of shop­pers con­sume goods or ser­vices from their favorite brands after they are engaged through a CPG loy­al­ty pro­gram.

As a result, per Pol­lard, brands should look to dig­i­tal incen­tives, offers and exclu­sive con­tent that res­onate with their tar­get audi­ences and find unique ways to extend engage­ment beyond the one-time back-to-school pur­chase.

What back-to-school mar­ket­ing tips do you think are most valu­able?