It won’t be long before your incoming 2016 class arrives on campus, while at the same time across the country seniors will be starting their last year of high school. What is your marketing plan to get in front of those high school seniors and make them part of your next year’s prospective incoming class?
Here are some digital marketing tips to consider that you can easily bolt on to any campaign you may already have ready to launch. If you are about to kick off a fall Senior Search campaign that includes buying new senior names or reworking unresponsive names from last spring, consider adding a layer of digital marketing to complement your e-mail and direct mail plan. Here’s how:
IP Targeting
Using that Search list you purchased, we can match a student’s home address to their IP address and deliver digital display advertising directly into that home. The beauty of IP Targeting is that you will reach all stakeholders using the IP address in the home. Just think, not only does the prospective student see these digital ads but so will mom and dad (win-win!). Just imagine all of the branding and “apply now” messages you could be delivering to them in addition to your planned e-mails and direct mail.
Facebook and Instagram
Now what if I told you that you can also reach high school seniors on Facebook and Instagram? Well, you can. Using that very same Search list, we can use their e-mail address to match those students to their social media accounts on Facebook and Instagram and deliver in-feed advertisements directly to them. More opportunities to invite these seniors to your fall open houses, remind them about application deadlines, or simply help them learn more about your institution!
Geofencing
So we’ve talked about some ways to maximize the Search lists you are using, but what if you could also target your top feeder high schools and reach the students at those specific high schools beyond just running high school fairs? With mobile location-based targeting, also known as geofencing, you can!
What exactly is geofencing? In short, it is the ability to draw a virtual marketing “fence” around a specific area. As people enter/exit this fence, you can capture their mobile devices, which allows you to deliver mobile advertising directly to those phones later on.
To sweeten the deal, here at Carnegie we’ve already built these fences around every single high school across the country and have an audience ready for you to tap into. So as hundreds of students are entering and exiting these fences, we are collecting a ripe audience of students to market to on a medium they use the most, their phones! All we need are the high schools you want to target, and we are ready to roll. (Feels like another win-win here!).
Those are just a few things to consider adding to your fall recruitment plan that are turnkey and easy to implement alongside your senior Search. If you have any questions or want to know more about these or any of our digital services, let’s talk!
You can follow me on Twitter @adpoulin.