The ground has shifted.

Now is the time to ensure your marketing messages are effective.
Here are 3 ways to make sure every dollar spent is best serving your success:

1. Shape your marketing to fit the students you actually attract

Through 20+ studies, CRi has found that no two schools draw the same profile of students. Each school differed significantly from others, attracting more of one type of student, while a school just blocks away draws more of a different type.

For example, at one school, extroverts make up over a third of the entering class while another attracts a large population of introverts. A third school draws students consumed by anxieties while at another, just 200 km away, many students just want to get their degree without the rah-rah of campus life and clubs.

As a marketer, would you target the “average student” if you knew exactly who you attracted?

CRi’s psychographic segmentation research analyzes the needs, wants, interests and motivations of your entering students to segment them and profile the students you are successful in attracting.

Marketing based on your school’s unique profile lets you tailor messages to the students you attract so your messages engage them and make them see that they truly fit in at your institution.

Now is the time to act.

2. Tie your prospecting tactics to actual applications

CRi studies show that prospects who have personal contact with a school are twice as likely to accept as those who had no contact.

Now with many avenues for personal contact closed, schools are trying a wide variety of tactics to begin the task of building relationships with prospects.

This raises the question: which tactics are actually linked to prospects making an application?

Given the stakes involved and the costs of recruitment, you need hard data to know where to best invest your time & resources.

Any study can tell you which tactics get the highest “I like it” ratings from prospective students. But popularity is not the point.

The real goal is a completed application in hand from a qualified prospect.

CRi can show you how.

3. Before you run your next ad campaign, be sure your ads work

For-profit organizations regularly test ads before running them. The research methods are tested and proven to improve your ad spend and get the biggest bang for your budget.

It just makes sense: a low-cost insurance policy to ensure that your high-cost ad buy has the best chance to produce the results you need.

Now that ad buys are getting bigger in the non-profit PSE sector, there’s a new urgency when it comes to making your best effort.

There are two common research options:

• Testing your ad concepts before you launch

• Ad and communications tracking
  

Concept testing lets you identify the most promising concepts from the ads your team develops.

Plus, you can measure how your ads would do against competitor ads. You get insights into the impact, memorability and message of the ad along with some limited diagnostics.

With concept testing, you’re sending your best ads with the strongest likelihood of reaching your target market.

Ad & communications tracking generally takes place when you’ve reached 80-90% of your campaign spend: when you’ve hit the highest point while the campaign is still active and most of the dollars/GRPs have been expended.

The research provides you with a test of in-market ads to measure ad recall, brand impact, likeability, impact on purchase intent, wear-out, etc. by channel:  TV, online, out-of-home (billboards, bus shelters, train wrap, etc.)  This is really about the impact of the ad campaign.

The end result is hard data on your current campaigns that can be used to inform your plans for future campaigns.

Let us show you how.

Call us at (514)-250-4495 or let us reach out.