Interest in post-secondary education has declined in recent years, but this semester’s numbers are looking up for St. Thomas University after what the university said was a successful marketing campaign.
“Our digital impressions showed a double-digit increase, and our clicks through to the website showed a significant increase,” said St. Thomas University director of communications Jeffrey Carleton. “We were very thrilled with the impressions, and exceptionally thrilled with the clicks.”
The campaign was focused on digital advertising through social media, online, Google AdWords and cinema commercials.
The campaign lasted 12 weeks and was pushed out in five waves, with the goal of driving potential applicants to the St. Thomas University website.
The university saw a five-per-cent increase in first-year applications, and a six-per-cent increase in high school applications. Carleton would not disclose exact figures of how many people applied this year.
Final numbers on student enrolment will not be released until the first week of October, but Carleton said he thinks enrolment numbers and first-year class sizes will show an increase this year.
“We built [the campaign] around the ‘small university, big opportunities,’ where we had student testimonials and related graphics that would deliver messages about who the students were, where they were from and what they were studying,” said Carleton.
The video format of the testimonials, 15-seconds in length, were shown in theatres across New Brunswick and Halifax. It is estimated that roughly 250,000 people viewed these testimonials over its 21-day run.
“We were very fortunate last December. The Star Wars movie was a massive hit, and there were a couple of other movies that did very well. So there were a lot of people going to the cinema in the month of December,” said Carleton.
Carleton said cinema advertisements are a gamble as some movies don’t do as well as others and it’s hard to measure the overall effectiveness and analytics. STU will be dropping cinema from their 2016-17 marketing plan.
Anthony Bryan, a student featured in the testimonials, said, “People have messaged me online being like ‘Hey, I saw you when I went to see Star Wars, or when I went to see The Hateful Eight.’”
Even though applicant numbers and website traffic had shown increased numbers, first-year student Jodi Bell said she paid little attention to the advertisements.
“I just heard good things about the school from people who attended it and decided it was a school I would want to attend,” said Bell. “I didn’t look too much into it and didn’t read anything about it.”
Carleton said this year they are going to change the way their marketing strategy looks and feels with the upcoming academic year being solely focused on digital advertising.
“One of the reasons we’re doing two campaigns this year is to freshen the campaign up half-way through. We want to make sure our target audience sees some fresh content in a fresh campaign while they are still making a decision on a university.”
