Enrollment Increased by 76% with Our Education Marketing Efforts
Houston Community College (HCC) is one of the top five largest and most diverse community colleges in the United States. Our agency took the challenges of marketing to a multicultural population and leveraged them to increase enrollment. By using our customer-centric marketing approach, we’ve taken enrollment up from 39,715 when we first started, to over 70,000. In a recent campaign, we were able to see modest gains in a down market and provide an extra 25% in added value media.
Houston’s cultural mix of Caucasian, Hispanic, African American, Vietnamese, Mandarin-Chinese and Asian populations speak different languages and represent a variety of multicultural marketing needs. We gather customer data to add genuine value to the collegiate experience of every prospective student. This builds brand affinity and ultimately increases enrollment as prospective students go from the awareness stage to the admissions process and beyond college.
For a recent HCC Summer Registration Campaign, we began by categorizing the population into demographic groups and then delivered specific messaging according to age, race and culture. The primary targets were prospective students ages 18-34, and our secondary targets were the older segment of the population, ages 36-64. These were the parents, family members and non-traditional students.
To increase awareness about the upcoming enrollment opportunity, we launched a multi-platform campaign of traditional radio, Pandora Internet radio, online, billboards and paid social media. On traditional radio, HCC spots were played on top-rated stations at peak times during news, traffic and weather updates. Then, we strategically positioned outdoor billboards throughout the Houston area to reinforce the campaign message.
For extra impact, we utilized Pandora’s highly personalized internet radio platform to direct specific messaging to our diverse audience. We hit over 1,785,500 listeners and showed more than 3,571,430 banner ads.
Digital media was essential in reinforcing HCC’s positive brand image and building community awareness. We placed ads on sports, entertainment, local media news sites and search engines. Over 600,000 gross impressions were gained on social media’s highly targeted platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, which drove students to the admissions web page.
Some of the other tactics used online included: video pre-roll news, entertainment and sports on premium website channels, cost-per-click display, behavioral targeting including display on Facebook, online radio streaming, video pre-roll on local media web sites and search engine marketing.
Our agency reported an overall delivery of 4.6 million gross impressions for digital and 7.2 million gross impressions for radio.
By making the best use of our budget, we gained an unprecedented 25% added value. This allowed us to expand the campaign with live broadcast remotes, call-ins, contests, luncheons and interviews with college professionals.
By strategically planning our media budget and using our customer-centric marketing approach, we were able to reach Houston’s multicultural community, maximize enrollment and increase overall admissions at Houston Community College.
