Survey Shows Educational Institutions Increasingly Going Online to Reach and Attract Students

Online display advertising company AdReady and Stamats, the nation’s higher education integrated marketing thought leader, recently conducted a joint survey via email to more than 10,000 academic marketers across an array of EDUs in the United States.  The survey asked a number of questions designed to assess the changing online and offline marketing practices of educational institutions (EDUs).  Interestingly, the data showed online display advertising is being increasingly employed as an effective and affordable strategy for EDUs of all sizes and types that want to stand out from the crowd and reach prospective students.  And, even as many educational institutions’ marketing budgets have decreased or stayed flat, display advertising is becoming a more critical part of that overall spend – even greater than tactics such as search.

When it comes to EDUs’ marketing practices, digital marketing is playing an increasingly strategic role in reaching prospective students as AdReady has experienced with our work with EDUs such as University of Washington, Babson College and Emory University.  Sixty-two percent of undergraduate and graduate institutions, on average, plan to turn to the power of online display advertising as a key marketing tool by 2013, according to the AdReady/Stamats data.  In light of this increasing use of digital advertising, EDUs are curbing their reliance on traditional marketing tactics, with 61 percent of higher education institutions reporting a flattening or decrease in their traditional marketing budgets since 2009. Let’s take a deeper dive into the survey results and its implications.

Digital Playing a More Prominent Role in Marketing Budgets

When looking at intent to increase digital marketing dollars, the survey showed the larger the institution’s budget, the more likely they were to increase their digital spend as a percentage of overall budget.

And this trend of increasing digital marketing budgets reached across various types of EDUs.  While data showed more than 50 percent all EDUs planned to increase their digital marketing budgets by 2012, for-profit institutions (75 percent), community colleges (70 percent) and continuing education institutions (65 percent) were the ones indicating the highest level of intent in making digital marketing a core component of their marketing programs.

Suffering a less favorable fate are traditional marketing budgets, with 35 percent of EDUs expecting to flatten these budgets by 2013.  Twenty-three percent of respondents planned to decrease traditional marketing budgets; only 17 percent anticipated an increase.  These trends were consistent across all types of EDU. 

Social is Huge…and Growing

The AdReady/Stamats survey showed social platforms are playing an increasingly major role in EDU’s digital marketing campaigns, regardless of whether or not the institutions are doing display or search.  Ninety-five percent of respondents said they’re using social media outlets as part of their marketing efforts.

Ninety-two percent of respondents say they are leveraging Facebook as a platform for display advertising, in line with recent data highlighting the social media platform’s growing prominence as the leading display ad publisher. This is followed by 76 percent who use Twitter, 70 percent who use LinkedIn and 69 percent who use YouTube.

So why are EDUs utilizing Facebook so heavily? The obvious answer: This is where prospective students are spending their time. According to eMarketer, teens and young adults (18-24) comprise the core of Facebook’s users and will have a penetration rate among these groups of as much as 89 percent by 2013.

Building Program Awareness Primary Objective of EDU’s Digital Marketing Campaigns

Survey data across the broad range of EDU types showed 74 percent of respondents said the primary objective of digital marketing campaigns was to increase an institution’s program awareness.  Other digital marketing goals included driving applicant registrations (67 percent), increasing the institution’s general awareness (67 percent), and meeting specific action-oriented goals such as CPA/CPC/CTR/CPL (22 percent).

Drilling down into specific institution type, 76 percent of public EDUs indicated program awareness was their top digital marketing objective.  Second in importance was overall institutional awareness, coming in at 70 percent.  Applicant registrations, consistently the second most important objective across the rest of the EDU group, took the third spot among public EDUs at 62 percent.

For-profit EDUs indicated they expected their digital marketing campaigns to deliver across a broader range of results.  For example, 80 percent of for-profits indicated program awareness as the top deliverable from a digital campaign (compared to the 74 percent industry standard).  Other key objectives included driving applicant registrations (80 percent of respondents vs. 67 percent industry standard), and a whopping 70 percent who looked to their digital campaigns to deliver action-oriented goals such as CPA, CPC, CTR, and CPL, compared to 22 percent industry across the range of EDUs surveyed.

Display has a Slight Edge over Search

In general, display is claiming a greater proportion of EDU marketers’ overall digital marketing resources than search, with 43 percent of respondents indicating they either do only display advertising (14 percent), or more display than search. Of EDUs doing both search and display, the two strategies proved equally popular: an identical 29 percent of respondents say either display advertising comprises a larger portion of their marketing budgets than search or search comprises a larger portion than display. Twenty-four percent of respondents report doing an identical amount of search and display.

Interestingly, when we look at the breakdown of which EDU is doing which tactic by budget, there’s a divide between EDUs with smaller versus larger budgets. Presently, EDUs with a budget of $1MM or more indicated they put more emphasis on search than display in the marketing campaigns.  These EDUs are still doing display and in many cases, their display expenditures are increasing more than for search.  It will be interesting to watch how this relationship between search and display changes in the coming years, considering display is projected to overtake search by 2015, according to eMarketer.

Digging deeper into the survey results, the AdReady/Stamats data found 77 percent of the highest budget institutions ($1MM+) care most about driving applicant registrations than any other marketing program result. This might reflect those organizations’ desire to see tangible results from their marketing spend since applicant registrations are easy to quantify.  It may also account for why this group cares significantly more about action-oriented goals such as CPA than other EDUs. 

The highest budget institutions were also more likely to have worked with an agency to execute their digital marketing campaigns.  Because agencies account for an added cost, it’s not surprising that smaller budget EDUs use them less frequently than their higher-budget peers.

Institutions are slowly adopting more complex display techniques to complement their media strategies

Data from eMarketer shows that at least 70 percent of advertisers are spending some of their marketing budget on video in 2011, and EDUs are no exception. 

Survey data showed rich media is being employed by 17 percent of EDU respondents and video by 18 percent of respondents. The majority of institutions employing rich media and video have larger marketing budgets (above $200K); however, more complex display techniques are also beginning to be employed by institutions with smaller budgets.  For instance, 30 percent of survey respondents who report using video in their digital marketing campaigns have an annual budget of less than $200,000.  Industry statistics show video is the fastest growing display format and its high inventory, lower pricing and overall strong effectiveness makes it an increasingly appealing technique.

Conclusion

Having analyzed hundreds of responses from EDUs across the nation as part of the AdReady/Stamats survey, it’s strikingly apparent that digital marketing is on the rise, and traditional marketing techniques are falling out of favor.  As the budgets applied to these traditional techniques likewise dwindle, EDUs have the opportunity to allocate more of their media dollars to digital tactics such as display, social and search.  And the balance between display and search, already tilting in favor of display, will likely widen in the future in line with eMarketer’s projection of display’s increasing prominence in the broader digital advertising industry.

In addition to display, social is markedly crucial to EDUs; rightfully so, since students are spending their time on social media outlets.  As Facebook’s popularity continues to grow among this group, social media will become an even more valuable strategy for EDUs to leverage. It will be interesting to watch how EDUs’ marketing practices evolve as they continue to experiment with more sophisticated uses of rich media and video, and expand their online marketing tactics and leverage digital strategies to their full potential to capture and convert students where they live their digital lives.

—Randy Wootton is senior vice president of Sales, Service and Marketing for Seattle-based AdReady.  AdReady is the creator of powerful software that enables any marketer to master online advertising.