It’s a challenging time to be in education marketing. Student enrollment in higher education has been declining, and experts predict an even steeper decrease due to the shrinking college-aged population.
Your marketing team is likely relying on direct mail and social media to capture the attention of would-be students and foundation donors. But have you tried IP targeting?
We call IP targeting the Swiss army knife of marketing, because there’s so much it can do and there are a ton of benefits to using it. For your purposes, it’s a great way to recruit students and donations. Let’s break it down.
First, what is IP targeting, and how can it be used for education marketing?
IP targeting allows us to send digital ads to your ideal audience, and there are two ways we can do that.
The first is GeoFraming™. We can GeoFrame feeder schools or college fair events – even if an event already happened – and then serve digital ads to the students who attended. The GeoFraming technology uses cell phone pings to identify who was at those locations. And because cell phones regularly ping their location (regardless of whether location services are turned on), the program can identify the person’s home IP address, which allows us to also send them direct mail to reinforce your digital ads.
The second method is by identifying demographic attributes that match the type of people you’re hoping to market to, and then we’ll curate a targeted list. From that list, our IP targeting program can match home addresses with IP addresses. Anytime a smartphone or computer connects to that IP address, your digital ad will show up in that person’s website advertising as they’re searching and scrolling online (same with GeoFraming). This method could potentially be used for student enrollment, but would be more beneficial for marketing efforts like foundation donation drives.
What are the benefits of using IP targeting?
- Proactivity: You can proactively promote your school. These are cold leads, so the people seeing them may not be familiar with your school. But that can be a benefit, because you are proactively advertising the programs you offer.
- Frequency: IP ads show up, on average, 15 times per month for each person you’re targeting, which is a huge plus because it takes (on average) 7 times for someone to see an ad before they act on it.
- Multi-Channel Opportunities: It can be paired with direct mail to increase your odds of success. Multi-channel marketing is the most effective strategy, because it puts your ads in front of people several times in different ways. If someone sees your digital ad and then sees a postcard from you in the mail, it increases your brand recognition and the likelihood that they’ll complete your call to action.
- ROI: After a campaign ends, we can identify who interacted with your ad and completed your call to action. So, you gain a clear understanding of how well the campaign performed.
How can IP targeting enhance other marketing mediums?
Without sounding like a broken record, pairing different tools truly is your best path toward growth. Why? Because people will come to you from different avenues. Some people will be actively searching for your school or the programs you offer (in which case search engine advertising and website SEO are impactful). And some people will see your ad and realize you would be a good fit for their higher ed experience (in which case, IP targeting, social media ads, direct mail, billboards and more will be impactful). The more people see you, the more likely they are to come to you.
And everyone responds to marketing differently. Some people are more likely to trust a postcard, whereas others like the quick access of a digital ad. Some people will see something once and decide to act. And some people will need to see it 15+ times before they respond. It would be so much more convenient (and cost-effective) if this wasn’t true. But alas, humans are fickle creatures, and so we need a marketing strategy that reflects that.
Parting thoughts.
If your institution hasn’t used IP targeting, give it a try! In the same way that you want your students to thrive, we want your marketing to amplify your institution, so you have a bigger reach and impact on your community. If you have questions or concerns about how IP targeting could work for you, reach out to us at: info@imageworksdirect.com
We’re always here as a resource.