Connecting with today’s college bound students requires institutions to maintain a robust digital presence. The need for a strong digital arsenal isn’t new, but in the wake of the pandemic, it is more important than ever. The growing number of available channels means students have more ways to access information about you than ever before. At the same time, student attention is increasingly split, furthering the need to optimize your digital presence across channels in a way that aligns with students’ preferences.
Additionally, schools that hadn't advertised previously are now entering the landscape to help make up for their drop in enrollment numbers. Every organization from Ivy League Tier 1 schools to community colleges are now offering online degree programs and expanding their footprint of viable student applicants. This makes the digital advertising landscape even more competitive so being smart and nimble with digital campaigns is more important than ever.
The complexity of this evolving landscape is intimidating, for sure. But many of these channels represent important new audience sources and tools for winning over prospective students. Given the likelihood of drops in standardized testing across the near future, you’ll need new ways to find students to recruit. And, given the fragmentation of your audience across a growing range of engagement platforms, you’ll need to stay on top of which channels are favored by the largest numbers of students, what if any options each channel offers you for influencing them, and how the audiences and capabilities offered by these channels fit together.
87% of students say a well designed website improves their opinion of a college | 62% of students indicated they would abandon a college website this is not user friendly | 10 the average number of platforms and channels a student can be reached via advertising |
Building an omnichannel media plan is imperative to effectively reaching prospective students and engaging them across multiple mediums, devices and channels. Combining this approach with cadence messaging allows you to bring a prospect through a messaging journey and tailor the experience to how they engage with the advertisements. For example, a student may listen to a podcast ad, then see a mobile display banner that takes them to the school's enrollment page to sign up. While another student may see and hear messaging across 5-7 platforms before it clicks that your school is right for them.
Contact Manicz Media today to work with one of our higher education specialists and strategize a media plan that will deliver results and drive enrollments.