Paid social media advertising budgets are growing, at the expense of other channels

The majority of advertisers (64%) said that they expect to increase their paid social media advertising budget for 2013. As social media continues to grow rapidly, it’s important for your school to stay in front of prospective students. Paid social media ads are a great way to do this because you can target your audience and direct them to a form on your website or other content that will interest them. Before your school starts using paid social media advertising make sure you have a strategy in place to ensure the best results. And remember, you’re not just spending money on the ads. You have to account for the people executing the strategy, monitoring, analyzing, and keeping an eye on the performance and adjusting the strategy when necessary.

Budgets are shifting online and offline budgets into paid social media advertising

More than two-thirds (41%) of advertisers surveyed said that social media has its own dedicated budget, indicating that their organization had dollars set aside for paid social media advertising. However, most advertisers said they would be increasing their 2013 paid social media advertising budget at the expense of other channels. Here’s where dollars for paid social media advertising are coming from:

• • 23 percent indicated they would be shifting budget away from online display to paid social media advertising
  
• • 10 percent said they would be shifting budget away from other online channels, such as rich media and video
• • 39 percent indicated they would be shifting some of their offline budget into paid social media advertising

Advertisers that indicated they would be shifting some of their offline budget into paid social media advertising raises an interesting point – there is a growing consideration of paid social media as a cross-platform tactic. If your current strategy isn’t working, why not shift some of the budget around to test out a paid social media campaign? It’s important to have a well planned strategy behind the campaign to be sure that it works in parallel with your offline efforts and supports your overarching marketing goals.

Paid social media advertising is an integrated, mostly branding-focused tactic

Advertisers are increasingly viewing paid social media advertising as an integrated tactic, meaning they’re running it in combination with online and offline media. From the survey results, 66 percent of advertisers said they use paid social media advertising in combination with other online advertising and 51 percent of agencies reported the same thing.

Credit: Vizu, a Neilson company

When asked which online tactics they typically run their paid social media marketing efforts in combination with, the top responses were:

• • Online display = 83 percent (online)
  
• • Online video = 46 percent (online)
• • Mobile = 40 percent (online)
• • Print = 52 percent (offline)
• • TV = 37 percent (offline)

Make sure your school is using social media marketing to communicate and form relationships with prospective students. Social media marketing allows prospective students to discover your school and learn more about what you can offer them. To reach more of your target audience you’ll need to consider paid social media advertising in conjunction with your other online and offline marketing efforts.

Measuring Return on Investment (ROI)

Because marketers are investing in online and offline advertising, not just paid social media, it’s not surprising that they want metrics that can measure both online and offline mediums and allow them to measure different tactics in the same manner. In fact, 42 percent of advertisers said they wanted the “exact same metrics as offline, and some additional metrics to specify the online medium.” Fifty eight percent of advertisers reported that if there was clarity on how to measure ROI they would increase their use of paid social media advertising.

At Effective Student Marketing we’ve implemented a strategy on integrating paid social media advertising with lead generation tactics. We understand that prospective students visiting your social media sites are “soft leads.” It’s great that they’ve landed on your social media sites, and even better if they’re engaging by “liking” your posts, retweeting your tweets, or re-pinning your pins, but we understand the importance of driving prospects to your website and having them fill out a form for more information and then being able to measure the ROI.

Even though paid social media advertising is somewhat of a new territory, there is no sign of it going anywhere. Marketers are increasingly integrating it with their existing online and offline marketing strategies and are no longer viewing social media as its own separate medium. Social media is now being used in addition to other forms of advertising in order to stay in front of customers.

Is your school using paid social media advertising as part of its marketing efforts? How are you measuring the ROI? Let us know by commenting below!

If you’re interested in learning more about how Effective Student Marketing can help your school with a paid social media advertising campaign, request your free consultation!

-Lauren

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The task was to help increase awareness for the National College’s Veterans Retraining Assistance Program (VRAP), highlight informational sessions, and gather inquiries from potential veteran students who would qualify for the program. It was a natural extension since our team was already in charge of the social media marketing for the school’s campuses in Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana.

After we strategized how each phase of the campaign would rollout, the VRAP lead generation campaign officially launched in June 2012. During the first three months, half of the inquiries we generated ended up enrolling at National College. Not only did we gather high quality prospective students for National College, but we also helped generate over 3,000 new “likes” for the schools’ pages on Facebook.

Here are more details about the lead generation campaign for the National College VRAP program:

- Our in-house graphic designers, copywriters, and programmers created customized Facebook tabs that included details about upcoming informational sessions, class start dates, success stories of veterans who have attended National College, and a “Request Information” form.

- Mobile users were automatically redirected to a mobile optimized landing page in order to increase conversions.

- Our social media experts incorporated links to veteran success stories and the customized Facebook tab into the school’s social media posting schedule.

- Our search engine marketing specialists turned these Facebook posts into paid Facebook advertisements to increase the campaign’s visibility and engagement.

The campaign was so successful that the administrators at National College suggested that we nominate it for the 2013 AVA Digital Award in Digital Marketing & Social Campaign. This is the second time our team has won a prestigious marketing award for our work associated with National College.

We’ll be including this case study in an upcoming presentation at the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities (APSCU) Annual Convention on June 6^th in Orlando, Florida. The case study is a part of the seminar “How to Survive in Today’s Turbulent World of Student Lead Generation” and teaches school how to get more out of their marketing budgets through integrated online marketing campaigns.

If you want to learn more about ways to modernize your school’s student lead generation to beat out your competition, please download our new e-book.

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Your school can’t avoid Facebook anymore. The Facebook statistics below prove that your school needs a well-run strategy behind its presence on the social media platform. Having a page that your school simply posts to isn’t enough.  Prospective students are using Facebook and other social media sites to become familiar with your school, so you need to make sure you’re connecting with them on a personal level and making a good first impression! Not convinced this is where your prospective students are turning to? Then check out the shocking Facebook statistics below.

15 Shocking Facebook Statistics:

1. There are more than a billion monthly active users on Facebook (source: Facebook Newsroom)
2. 552 million daily active users (source: All Twitter)
3. 684,478 pieces of content are shared per minute (source: All Twitter)
4. 350 million photos on average are uploaded to Facebook daily (source: EDGAR Online)
5. 219 billion photos have been uploaded to Facebook (source: Facebook Newsroom)
6. 140.3 billion friend connections (source: Facebook Newsroom)
7. 17 billion location-tagged posts, including check-ins (source: Facebook Newsroom)
8. 2.7 billion “likes” clicked on per day on Facebook content (source: Digital Trends)
9. 1 out of every 7 minutes spent online is on Facebook (source: All Twitter)
10. 1 out of every 4 minutes spent on a smartphone is on Facebook (source: Effective Student Marketing)
11. Average daily time spent on Facebook by mobile users is 32:51, with an average length of 2:22 per session (source: Effective Student Marketing)
12. The average user has 229 Facebook friends (source: All Twitter)
13. 80 percent of social media users prefer to connect with brands through Facebook (source: The Huffington Post)
14. Facebook is available in over 70 languages (source: Facebook Developers)
15. There are now 600 million mobile users (source: Facebook Newsroom)

What other shocking Facebook statistics have you come across recently?

Do you need help developing a Facebook strategy for your school? Then request your free consultation now!

-Lauren

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Let’s take a look at the keyword “pizza.” Searching on a mobile device I’m most likely looking for a local pizza shop. In this instance Enhanced Campaigns are ideal; I can increase bids across an Ad Group for people on a mobile device and closest to my shop, targeting a very hungry and relevant customer.

The same term on a desktop device might not perform quite as well, however. Perhaps I’m searching for a recipe, an image or doing research for dinner later tonight or another day of the week. It wouldn’t be all that bad to have our ad shown for this term, but you can surely bet that the performance of “pizza” on a desktop would be drastically different than its performance on mobile.

Using the mobile bid adjuster will help ease this issue by allowing you to bid down if mobile isn’t performing well. But then, what if desktop starts doing better and I want to bid the term up? With only the desktop bid to control, the mobile bid will automatically be increased. The only way around this is to then increase the percent of decrease on the mobile bid adjuster. Confused yet?

So our question is, why go through all of that math and confusion just to optimize in the way that Google has preached to us for years?

We have been reassured that keyword level separation of desktop and mobile will not be a part of Enhanced Campaigns. We can still hold hope that the new Enhanced Campaigns will give us better results but as true analysists we’ll believe it when we see the data.

So, the question is, will agencies and in-house PPC’ers change to the new math intensive bidding algorithm, or will we all just write bigger checks to Google every month?

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Your graduates will be some of your best resources when it comes to content marketing! Start tapping into these resources by getting on the phone and simply asking them if they would like to be featured in your school’s content marketing material. Explain to them that this article or video is also beneficial to them because they’ll be able to share it with friends, family, or even potential employers depending on the industry.

During the actual interview, be sure to take detailed notes. You want to be able to include accurate quotes from the graduate in your article. The article should capture what it’s like to be in your graduate’s shoes and how the training they received at your school helped them get to where they are today. Here are some sample questions to ask during your interview:

• What were you doing before you decided to continue your education?
• What motivated your decision to go back to school?
• Why did you specifically choose to enroll in our school?
• How was your experience at our school?
• How did the education and training you receive here prepare you for work in the field?
• What advice would you give to students who might be looking to follow in your footsteps?
• What are your future career goals?

When you’re writing the article, make sure to prominently highlight quotes that the graduate made about your school. Most of the prospective students who will be reading this article online will be quickly scanning it. By using pull quotes or boldfaced text, it will help these quotes jump to their attention. Not to mention, since the sentence is coming straight from the mouth of a graduate, it helps boost its credibility in the mind of the prospect.

Finally, tie it all together by giving additional information about your school’s career-focused curriculum, externship program, or Career Services Department. This will show how your school and your school’s network is a valuable resource for a prospect’s future career. When posting this to your school’s website and social media, try to include a form to capture prospects’ contact information, or, at the very least, include information on how they can take the next steps towards enrolling.

Prospective students who are researching your school online will be able to relate to the graduates you choose to feature with your content marketing. Your prospects want to be just like these successful graduates, so learn to use their inspiring stories to your school’s advantage!

Effective Student Marketing is blazing the path for modern content marketing strategies in the higher education industry. Our team has the knowledge and experience to develop a content marketing strategy and tie it together with social media marketing in order to get the best results for your school! Download our e-book to learn how combining content marketing and social media can help your school generate high quality leads for a lower cost.

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Declining demand and increasing competition have been impacting enrollments. Last year, 9 out of 10 prospective students entered the research stage not knowing where they were going to apply. This year, 8 out of 10 prospective students don’t know which school they want to attend. Because the pool of competition is getting smaller, it’s essential that your school is connecting with prospective students on a personal level by letting them know what you can offer them and how your program is unique.

Here are 3 ways to connect with prospective students at a personal level before the research moment:

1. Differentiate your school – Are the following words and phrases used in your marketing strategy and materials? Affordable, affordable online classes, flexible, we offer a variety of hands-on fields, offering quality degrees, earn your diploma in as little as 6 months, and so on? Guess what? All of your competitors are saying the same exact thing! As prospective students are in the research phase, they’re coming across many different schools with the exact same message, making it difficult to differentiate. It’s important to break out of this and show prospective students how your school is different. Speak their language and let them know how you can really help them.

2. Show how your programs are unique – Social media creates a great opportunity for your school to reach prospective students and engage with them. Take advantage of this and engage your audience with YouTube videos, student and graduate success stories, and photos from the classroom or lab to show off the different programs you offer. This is your chance to show prospective students how “hands-on” your programs really are! Videos are an important marketing piece to consider – not only do they allow your audience to visually see students hard at work, but prospective students are 83% more likely to consider a school after watching a video ad. In addition, 2 out of 3 prospective students are looking at video while researching schools, up 4x since 2012.

3. Show prospective students what you can offer them – We’re living in a crowded marketplace, so it’s important to understand exactly who you’re talking to and what they want, especially when your audience is in the earlier stages of the research process. More than likely prospective students are looking to earn a degree so they can get a job. While you can’t guarantee employment, you can promise that the training received at your school will prepare graduates for jobs in their field of study. The University of Phoenix does a great job with this. They use the tagline “Let’s get to work” to address the issues of unemployment. Watch the back-story on the campaign here.

Because of the impact declining demand and increasing competition has been having on enrollments, it’s important to connect with prospective students on a personal level before they reach the research moment. Your school needs to speak up and be heard during this crucial time in order to stand out from the competition.

Learn the importance of connecting with prospective students before the research moment in our ebook “A Survival Guide for the Changing Tides of Student Lead Generation.”

How is your school speaking up and being heard before prospective students reach the research moment? Let us know by commenting below!

-Lauren

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But we all want more, even from our top performers, so we’ll let you in on a few tricks for how
you can get more out of your top performing keywords in Google and Bing.

1Add all three match types
This may already be a part of your PPC strategy, but it bears repeating.  If your top performing keyword is “healthcare schools” on Broad match, this might not be the term that is converting for you. By adding all three match types you can adjust bids more accurately and weed out potentially costly traffic coming from broad matches.

2Optimize ads to the keyword, not the ad group
You may have an obvious winner in your ad copy testing, but did that ad perform the best for all your keywords? Make sure you pair your top performing keywords to the ad that works best for them, not the ad that works the best for most of your keywords.

3Build off what’s working
You might not find another top-performer but building out new keywords based on your top performers will help you boost overall PPC volume. Think of appropriate suffixes and prefixes such as locations (beauty schools Los Angeles) or superlatives (top beauty school).

Focusing on getting more out of what is already working can propel your account to new levels. And, if you’re using an agency to manage your PPC, be sure they’re focusing on your top performers as well. It’s easy to “set it and forget it” instead of pushing your star players to become super-stars!

Not sure how to optimize your own PPC campaigns? Request a free consultation to find out how Effective Student Marketing could help take your PPC campaigns to the next level, eliminating waste and generating more high quality leads for your school!

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The key to content marketing is to create content in a way that your target audience likes to consume it. The good news is that your school’s prospects love to watch online videos! In fact, these videos are playing an important role in their decision making process. At the Google Think Education event in New York City, our team learned that 2 out of 3 students are now looking at videos while researching schools and prospects are 83% more likely to consider a school after watching a video.

Last week we revealed ideas for online videos that would interest your prospective students. When you’re publishing these videos, it’s important to use some search engine optimization best practices to ensure they’re getting the most views possible. Here are three tips on how to do this:

1. Title, Descriptions and Tags – Include important keywords in every field possible when you’re publishing a video. Using keywords will help search engines and viewers understand what the video is about. You should also include information in the video description that prospects would find useful, like your school’s website, address, and phone number, so it’s easy for them to take the next steps towards enrolling. 

 

2. Landing Pages – Embed your videos on your school’s landing pages, website, and blog. Once someone lands on your site, you’ve only got a few moments to impress them. Embedding videos on your landing pages will significantly increase the length of time a person sticks around.
   

 

3. Social Media – SEO is becoming more social by the day. Therefore, your videos need to be as easy as possible for people to share on their social media sites. You can do this by adding social share buttons to the landing pages where your videos are embedded.

 
The most important thing you can do to optimize your school’s video is to simply make a good, quality video that covers something your target audience is interested in. Then, your prospects will naturally be inclined to watch it and share it. However, by taking just a few extra steps when you’re publishing the video, you can ensure more people are watching it and therefore maximize your investment.

Want to learn more search engine marketing tricks that will help your school beat out its competitors? Contact us for a free consultation! We’ll show you ways to modernize your student recruitment plan to get you more leads at a lower cost per lead.

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The key finding in this study was that mobile + social = connectedness. Smartphones, combined with applications and data services, allow us to stay connected with our friends, family, and community throughout the day. Smartphones have revolutionized how we communicate, socialize, share, and connect.

Checkout the infographic below to see how smartphones and social keep us connected:

Use the following code to embed this infographic on your website:

<a href="http://effectivestudentmarketing.com/press/how-smartphones-and-social-keep-us-connected-infographic" target="_blank"><img src="http://effectivestudentmarketing.com/media_uploads/How-Smartphones-Keep-Us-Social-And-Engaged.png" alt="How Smartphones and Social Keep Us Connected [INFOGRAPHIC]" width="612" height="4300" border="0" title=How Smartphones and Social Keep Us Connected [INFOGRAPHIC]" /></a>

-Lauren

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Marketers worldwide took an excited leap for joy, but are these analytics really offering us anything worthwhile? We took a peek at how you can start seeing analytics for your school on Pinterest and what the numbers actually mean.

Follow these three steps to start seeing Pinterest Analytics for your school’s account:

1. Create a business Pinterest account, or switch your current account to a business account
2. Verify your account by uploading a small HTML file to your website
3. Switch to the new look of Pinterest (soon this won’t be a step as all Pinterest users will be on the “new look”)

Pins, Repins, Clicks and Impressions are all measured by the analytics tool. Each metric is divided into “number of actions” and “number of people who took action.” So, if you have highly active users the number of pins could be double or triple the number of pinners. This is particularly helpful in identifying what type of content speaks to a prospective student versus that which engages your current student body.  For example, if your latest pin “5 ways to choose the right career for you” causes your number of people who took action to spike, this is an indicator that more prospects are engaging with the content. Students who pin your content regularly will maintain or decrease the delta between the number of actions and people who took action.

Another metric to look at is the number of people who have clicked through your pins to your website. While this isn’t directly available in Pinterest Analytics, you can get this information by exporting reports to Excel and digging deeper. This information will help you understand which pins drive traffic and which pins are just “eye-candy.” Gearing your website content towards traffic driving images will boost Pinterest’s ability to engage prospective students.

It’s important to remember that this is not an analytics tool for your Pinterest account as a whole; it is an analytics tool to see how users are pinning content from your site. So if you’re like many schools out there that create boards based off other people’s content you won’t be able to see metrics for those pins. It is still a very valuable tool for you to use as you consider what content to include in your school’s Pinterest strategy.

As you develop a Pinterest strategy for your school, you need to find the right mix of “pinnable content” that comes directly from your school’s own website and “repins” from sources like other Pinterest users, blogs, and other websites. Sites like Pinterest can be a great tool for reaching prospective students who are in the research stage of their school search, so keep that in mind while developing your content strategy.

If you’re struggling to figure out how Pinterest and customized content fits into your school’s social media, marketing, and lead generation strategy, download our  ebook “A Survival Guide for the Changing Tides of Student Lead Generation.”

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