Approximately 3.7 million students are expected to graduate from high school during the 2020-21 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In addition to tuition, students are spending an average of $3,497 on books throughout the course of the program. Students are also spending on food, accommodations, transportation, clothing and personal care. The amount students spend before and during their program is staggering. But it is also a group of people who you want to show value to when you are bringing in prospective students to the school.
Students today have information at their fingertips through their smartphones. They may digest content from a school’s website, word-of-mouth, or even social media posts (and not just from official school accounts). There are many reasons why a student may want to attend a school, it could be for a specific program, the culture, location or price – to name a few. As a college or university, there are ways to influence students to apply and even attend the school.
Here are a few ways to reach students:
Mobile ads
To make sure you are reaching students at every point when they open their mobile devices, you will want to include a mobile advertising strategy. This can also be added to your geofenced ads. Mobile ads should also target users based on demographics and interests. Mobile ads provide schools with the opportunity to share content in various ways, for example, you can have a click-to-call ad to schedule a tour of the campus, watch videos that showcase the culture of the campus and offerings of various programs, and even map-to-directions to bring students to your campus. Mobile ads can appear on sports, news, music, messaging apps and games. We can help you decide and strategize based on the type of prospective students you are trying to reach.
Geofencing
You may have heard this term before, if so – great! But if you haven’t, geofencing allows you to target specific people within a virtual perimeter. How does this work for a college campus? There are several ways to do this. It is imperative to know who your target audience is. Does your school have an excellent sports program? Do you offer degrees for students interested in STEM programs? Or perhaps, you are an art school searching for creative students in niche areas. Next, where are your students coming from? Is it a certain county or school? As a community college, you may be getting students from local schools. A university, on the other hand, may want to broaden that search. With a geofence, you can apply one around a city or certain schools that you want to target students from. It is a great way to direct ads to the people who are going to benefit from it.
Social Media
We all know social media consumes a large part of our lives. Prospective students are likely browsing Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social platforms. This is one other way to show students why they should apply and attend your school. You should have a well-rounded social strategy that includes organic and paid content. One way to get information and continue to feed potential students’ information is through landing pages. Landing pages are a single-webpage that offers students information for something such as an email. For example, if your ad says you received an accolade for having the most undergrad students get into the medical school of their choice, then you could create a landing page that will provide information on your program in exchange for a name and email. To take it a step further, this ad could be displayed to students who attend schools with a STEM focus. You would be able to achieve this through a geofence.
These are important factors to consider when you are crafting a strategy to advertise to prospective students. A company specializing in these tactics can help achieve optimal results. Thumbvista is an expert in geofenced ads that can include landing pages, mobile ads and more to your strategy. For more information on Thumbvista, click here.