The Future Starts Here.
The Ask
School of Choice Recruitment Awareness & Enrollment Campaign
With the uncertainty surrounding school openings in the fall of 2020 due to pandemic school safety concerns and concerns about the quality of remote or in-person learning, there was a need to make parents in Macomb County aware of Chippewa Valley Schools (CVS) as a viable school of choice. The goal was to create and raise awareness about CVS and highlight the benefits of choosing this school.
The ChallengeChippewa Valley Schools needed to:
- Raise awareness about their value as a school of choice in Macomb County.
- Highlight programs that provided premier academics, elite athletics, career training, and the arts.
- Drive prospects to their website and enrollment page.
- Overcome pandemic concerns dealing with safety and in-person vs. online learning
The Solution
Initial Social Media Campaign
This was a short time frame campaign that needed to get traction fast. We determined that a Facebook and Twitter campaign would reach the optimum audience in a way that met our time and budget parameters.
Our initial push used dynamic ads for school enrollment, pairing multiple creative image designs with different message options, mixing and matching them to determine which combinations resonated best with our audiences.
Phase 2: Retargeting ads for enrollment campaigns
Once we narrowed down which options drove the most engagement and traffic to the CVS website, we turned our focus to the audience that interacted with our ads. We retargeted everyone who had engagement with our social ads or visited our targeted pages on the CVS website: the home page, the school of choice page, and the enrollment pages.
At this point the campaign was split into two groups. Group 1 received additional dynamic ads continuing to mix together more design and message options to further test what worked best. Group 2 targeted specific audiences with the winning ads from phase one.
Adding Video into the Mix
During Phase 2 of the campaign, we created video ads for school recruitment on Facebook and Twitter. We had two campaigns using video about Chippewa Valley Schools paired with the messaging that performed the best during phase one. These campaigns also utilized dynamic messaging to further refine the messaging that drove the best results.
We targeted two different audiences with our video ads. The first audience was a general audience targeting voters in the Macomb County zip codes, ages 25 – 65. The second audience was retargeting those who had either visited the website pages or had watched the videos. The goal for the retargeted group was to further raise awareness of CVS and school of choice, while providing the deadline to enroll, creating some urgency for parents who had yet to make the decision.
Hudson Collective addressed these needs through the following strategies:
Initial Social Media Campaign:
Platform Selection: Launched a time-sensitive campaign on Facebook and Twitter to quickly reach the target audience within budget constraints.
Ad Strategy: Used dynamic ads with various creative designs and messages to identify the most effective combinations for engagement.
Audience Segmentation: Focused on retargeting users who had engaged with the initial ads or visited specific pages on the CVS website.
Ad Optimization: Split the campaign into two groups: one with continued dynamic ads for further testing and one with optimized ads from Phase 1.
Incorporation of Video Content:
Video Ads: Created video ads for Facebook and Twitter featuring the best-performing messages from Phase 1. Two audiences were targeted: the general Macomb County population and those who had previously interacted with the website or videos.
Urgency Messaging: Added urgency to retargeted ads by highlighting enrollment deadlines.
The Impact
Performance: The dynamic and video ads proved most effective. The successful messaging combined quality, reassurance, and urgency: “Premier academics. Elite athletics. Safe and welcoming neighborhood schools. Registration deadline approaching fast!”
Engagement: Retargeting with fresh dynamic content kept CVS top of mind and engaged the audience more effectively. The imagery reflecting the current situation (students wearing masks and remote learning) resonated well.
Insights: The campaign’s continuous testing provided valuable insights into what types of creative and messaging were most effective. This information will enhance future campaigns, ensuring a stronger start with proven strategies. The campaign successfully raised awareness, drove traffic to key CVS website pages, and engaged the target audience.