In 2024, the “new” higher education marketing strategies are less about finding the shiny marketing tool and more about finding ways to go deeper into channels by optimizing your existing content to adapt to the changing industry landscape. This year, higher ed marketing strategies need to focus on expanding reach in digital channels by leveraging new audience tools and micro content.
1. Refine Google Analytics 4 Reporting
As of January of 2024, nearly all existing instances of Universal Analytics have stopped recording new data, forcing organizations to either upgraded to Google Analytics 4 or move to another analytics solution. The deprecation of Universal Analytics left organizations scrambling to migrate existing goal conversions and reports, many of whom may have lost valuable analytics insights in the process. Now that Google Analytics 4 is the new industry standard, it’s important to evaluate the events, conversions, and reports you created during the transition and ensure you are tracking the right metrics for your school.
2. Prepare for a Cookieless Future
At the end of 2023, Google announced a pilot program, disabling 3rd party cookies on its popular Chrome browser for a small percentage of users, with the intention to roll it out to all users at some point in the second half of 2024. In recent years, Apple has made similar changes to protect the privacy of their users, making it increasingly difficult for higher ed marketers to collect data and market to prospective students.
It’s time to start preparing for a future where targeting ads down to the individual level is increasingly difficult, or even impossible.
3. Draft an AI Policy for Your Marketing Team
Generative AI dominated the conversation in 2023, and there’s little reason to believe that won’t continue to be the case throughout 2024. As adoption of AI tools like ChatGPT and Google Bard continues to increase, higher education marketing teams need to consider what role generative AI should play in their digital marketing strategy. For example:
- What content — if any — is appropriate to create using generative AI?
- Given the concerns around the inherent bias found within various generative AI tools, what DEI considerations does your team need to be mindful of when using generative AI?
- What’s the process for publishing AI generated content — is there a need for a human reviewer?
- Will you offer prompt engineering training for your team?
- Will you cite content that’s AI generated? If so, how?
Answers to all of these questions, and more, need to be clearly defined and documented to ensure your team, and your institution, are all on the same page.
4. Every Higher Education Marketing Strategy Needs a Short-Form Video Strategy
Campus facilities are a major enrollment decision driver for many prospects, with 64% of prospective students indicating that campus facilities have at least some influence on their decision to enroll. But not every prospective student is able to visit campus, with 11% of students relying exclusively on virtual tours. Schools have an increased opportunity to build brand awareness and reach prospects that can’t visit campus through video — as well as to supplement the in-person experience for those who can visit. Topics can include:
- Answering the school’s most searched queries
- Providing mini-tours of the facilities with student tour guides
- Video campus tours
Nearly every social media platform now offers the capability to include short-from video content — and short form video offers better engagement. Over 50 percent of people who watch short-form videos (i.e., videos that are less than 90 seconds) watch the video in its entirety.
In 2024, consider taking advantage of short-form platforms for awareness and retargeting campaigns to reach the feeds of prospective students. These short videos can also be linked out to long-from videos including more detailed information.
5. Include Responsive Ads in Your Higher Education Advertising Strategy
Responsive ads are ad units that automatically scale the assets of your campaign to fit the varying constraints of multiple devices and platforms. When creating responsive ads, you can upload different ad formats, headlines, copy, or visuals and Google Display Network will automatically deliver a variation to fit the needs of the platform or device of the user.
According to Google’s data, on average, advertisers see 10% more conversions at a similar CPA when using multiple headlines, descriptions, and images with responsive display ads.
From our experience running college enrollment marketing campaigns, moving from static to responsive ad units, we’ve noticed an increase in impression volume and higher click through rates. When considering your 2024 approach to display advertising, acknowledging the performance potential of responsive ad units could prove beneficial in driving relevant leads and increasing conversion rates.
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