Winter is upon us, and so is the perfect opportunity for your institution to boost your outreach strategy through targeted digital advertising over the holiday season. Whether you're looking to amplify brand awareness or increase enrollment, these three areas of focus will help your institution stay top-of-mind during a critical time in the college search and decision-making process.

Focus 1: Engage the Entire Family

In a competitive higher education landscape, brand awareness is essential for attracting prospective students and gaining the trust of their parents and guardians. Your institution should be focusing on digital campaigns that engage and resonate with the entire household.

In fact, we discovered that a large majority of parents want information from your college and intend to be involved in their student’s college-decision making process.

Residential targeting is just one strategy to reach the households you want. Our clients have seen up to 5x more engagement with this family outreach strategy.

Focus 2: Run Your Ads on Top Platforms

In the dynamic world of digital student recruitment, understanding which platforms your prospective students are using is critical. Platforms like Snapchat and TikTok can help your institution build and nurture relationships across multiple platforms. 

Not able to leverage TikTok at your institution? You can take an even more personalized approach by matching your list of prospective students to their respective Snapchat accounts and devices, ensuring a tailored and impactful connection. 

Predictive audiences build upon what you already have, meaning you can reach your prospective students all while discovering new leads with similar characteristics.

Focus 3: Get the Timing Just Right

The timing of your digital ads is everything. Now’s an ideal time to put your institution directly in front of students who are actively searching for colleges—and they’re searching everywhere, including Instagram. Your institution can get in front of students—at the right time—by targeting key geographic locations via a dynamic social video strategy.

A video ad will help your institution raise awareness about your campus and stay top-of-mind during a vital time in a high school student’s college decision-making process. 

By leveraging proximity, versatile platform utilization, and visually impactful video ads, you can connect with prospective students—while they’re browsing on top platforms—in a way that goes beyond traditional outreach methods.

With these three focus areas in mind, Encoura’s digital team has developed winter packages to reach students and their parents/guardians on their favorite devices while they’re at home and on-the-go this season.

These exclusive packages are available now until January 5, 2024, with flexible start times to cater to your institution's unique needs, whether now or in the upcoming spring semester.

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