How to Run Enrollment Ads
There are over 100,000 schools in the U.S., and all of those schools are looking to boost their enrollment rates. So, how do you make sure that your school is noticed? Digital advertisements, particularly those aimed at parents and students looking for new schools, are a great way to highlight your institution’s resources and drive traffic to your site. Now more than ever, individuals are searching for new educational opportunities online, rather than visiting schools or scheduling in-person meetings.Therefore, your school’s online presence needs to be organized and engaging. If someone is only going to give you a few minutes of their time, you want to make a good first impression, ensuring that they return to your site and eventually enroll in your program. With enrollment ads, our team of marketing experts can help you reach your target audience, increasing brand awareness and enrollment rates for your school.
Education advertising may seem daunting, but hundreds of schools do it every year, and with increasingly positive results. Online Optimism will guide you through this process, helping you choose your target audience, messaging, and format, so that your advertisements showcase the very best of your school!
What Do Enrollment Ads Look Like?
As education advertising grows, so do the many options available for displaying those ads. You might be wondering, “What do enrollment ads look like?” or “Where do I display my ads once I’ve created them?” Our team has worked with a variety of advertising platforms, and can help you choose the best one for your school. In the past, we’ve designed Google and social media ads for educational programs, increasing traffic to their website and boosting their overall conversion rates. We’re optimistic that we can do the same for you!
As you might have noticed, networks like Facebook and Google prioritize paid advertisements. So, it’s important to take advantage of those spaces and format your advertisements based on their preferences and capabilities. For example, text ads are particularly prevalent on Google and give you the opportunity to share important information with potential students and parents. Those ads should include information like enrollment deadlines, the length of your program, whether classes will be in-person or online, if your program utilizes specific teaching methods, etc. Facebook, on the other hand, is much more multimedia-based, and prompts you to display graphics, photos, or video alongside your ads. These images and videos can offer an intimate glimpse of your school or program, encouraging viewers to visit your website and learn more. In these advertisements, you want to include images of your school, students, teachers, extracurricular activities, etc., while also sharing more direct information, like recent policy changes, the dates and times of certain school events or deadlines, and statistics that showcase your school’s success.
With our team of digital marketers, designers, and content creators, we are confident that we can create the ideal enrollment ads for your program, attracting more students and helping you build long-lasting connections. Want to find out more about the digital marketing opportunities available for schools? Visit our Digital Marketing Agency for Schools page!
Learn More About Our Enrollment Ads Below:
SEO and Content
When parents and students are considering a new school, they’ll often spend a large amount of time on search engines, researching the best educational institutions and programs. They’ll ask a series of questions: Which schools are near me? Which programs rank highly for standardized testing? Which universities have the best STEM programs? These questions can seem endless, but with our help, you’ll find and target the keywords that are most relevant to your organization. To ensure that your enrollment ads are answering as many questions as possible, we’ll spend time researching the most prevalent content and questions surrounding enrollment. We’ll also study your program, as well as the programs of your competitors, to highlight the ways in which your school surpasses the competition.
Once we’ve completed our research, we’ll want to hear your feedback and ideas for the ads! We’ll speak with your team, crafting vision boards and choosing themes. Your ad should look, sound, and feel like the values your organization represents. Once you’re happy with the content, our team will get to work crafting your ads and spreading your message!
Graphics and Design
While providing useful information to an enrollment ad is key, and particularly helpful when someone is searching for a specific answer on Google, some viewers may not be as responsive to ads that feature only text. After all, well-written text is sometimes difficult to showcase or preview. Graphics and images, however, are often the first thing people notice when they scroll through a social media feed or web page.
Our team can create custom graphics and animations, as well as provide photography and video services, to ensure that your ad is attracting as many viewers as possible. Whether your ad features an informational graphic that highlights your recent successes, a video tour of your campus, or a jumping animation of your school mascot, we’ll be sure to stay true to your vision and brand!
Enrollment Ads on Social Media
As mentioned above, social media advertising is taking off in a big way. More and more people are spending time on social networks, interacting and sharing large amounts of content every day. This popularity bodes well for your campaign, and makes our job easier!
Social media ads are highly customizable and can reach very specific target audiences. For example, Facebook allows you to customize your audience by location, demographics, interests, behavior, and connections. This way, you can reach people not only by their location or age, but also by the events they’ve attended or the hobbies that they’ve shown an interest in. Furthermore, social networks like Instagram and Facebook provide several advertising locations on their site, so you can reach people through their main pages, as well as their Stories, Newsfeed, Messenger, etc.
Our social media team is familiar with all major social platforms, as well as the advantages and restrictions of advertising on each. We’ll help you choose the best networks for your program, bringing more traffic to your site and driving up enrollment rates.
Managing and Tracking Your Ads
After your campaign goes live, our team doesn’t just pack up and head on our way. We want to ensure long-term success, so we carefully track and manage each of your advertisements, adjusting campaigns to optimize traffic. Social media pixels are particularly helpful, as they allow us to retarget your ads to individuals who have visited or interacted with your site. This way, visitors that have already established a familiarity with your school are being reminded of your site and encouraged to choose you as the next school for themselves or their children.
There are a lot of ways to reach people, and with an ever-growing education industry, that task might seem more and more competitive by the day. Online Optimism has the experience and tools needed to guarantee a positive enrollment campaign, reaching the parents and students that are looking for an organization just like yours!
Want to find out more about our digital marketing for schools?
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