The journey to choose a university.
Introduction.
If you took the path to university, do you remember the path you took when it was time to apply? You probably didn’t jump on Google, type “best universities in my area”, and click on “Apply now!”
The way we market and advertise to prospective students keeps evolving in line with technological advances, at a very fast pace. Marketers in higher education need to keep up and up their game more than ever before, with search engines playing an immense role in the university/college research phase, and mobile becoming even more powerful.
When it comes to recruitment, universities always look for the edge. The more applications a university receives, the easier it is to pick the brightest students.
Thus, the key metrics that universities hold so dear to attract the next generations, such as progression rates, salaries upon graduation, and ROI, improve consequently.
Complimenting marketing.
Marketing and advertising in all sorts are an effective means to get new students enroled at HE institutions. But marketing alone cannot beat the persuasive outcomes of a face-to-face meeting with one of your recruitment officers or a visit to your campus. Almost every time, one-on-one communication is more successful at getting a prospective student to say “Yes!” than a marketing campaign.
It’s not that you don’t need education marketing. You absolutely need to market your education brand! But what if you could make your Paid Ad campaigns as influential as in-person recruitment meetings?
In case you’re wondering why personal meetings are more effective than various marketing techniques, it’s because everything happens in real time!
Some personalisation.
In personal communication, you can tailor each message to fit the person with whom (audience) you’re speaking and the situation (context) to which you’re referring. Students give out information about themselves, their aspirations and goals. You process that information and offer them a fully customised answer within seconds. This ability to reply uniquely to a visitor’s question on the spot is one of the main reasons face-to-face communication is so influential.
What if you could make your Google Ads campaigns feel like a personal interaction? That would make your search engine ads more effective for the same amount of money, right?
That’s why we encourage marketers to turn to Google’s responsive search ads! Google’s responsive ads can bolster the results of HE campaigns.
How responsive Search Ads work?
Essentially, Google responsive search ads are a collaboration between you, the HE marketer, and Google’s A.I. (That’s right. You can recruit a robot to help you get the right message to your audience at the right time. It’s transforming the industry and the way that universities communicate to their audience)
According to Google, the client simply has to provide Google Ads the content for multiple ad elements, and then Google’s machine-learning software pieces them together in various ways to optimize the campaign’s results.
In the words of Jerry Dischler, Google Vice President, Product Management: “Simply provide up to 15 headlines and 4 description lines, and Google will do the rest. By testing different combinations, Google learns which ad creative performs best for any search query. So, people searching for the same thing might see different ads based on context”.
Responsive ads try out new variations of Google Ads made for education marketing and advertising, based on who the user is, where they live, the keywords they entered, etc. And that is how you can get closer to the power of personal interaction.
I’ll leave you with one final kernel of wisdom: when in doubt, speak to our experienced advertising team for more insights in all things digital.
Speak to us.
If you enjoyed reading this blog, stay tuned to our monthly eNewsletter and blog! If you want to speak to us about potential campaigns, or even just questions please email sayhello@crunchdigitalmedia.com