When it comes to marketing online degree programs, one of the most common mistakes we see clients make is advertising over too large of a geographic area.
The impulse to advertise online programs widely is strong, and it’s driven by two developments. The first is the rise of online programs themselves, which erased the geographic barriers that once kept institutions tethered to their local communities. The second is the continued evolution of digital advertising platforms, which unshackled marketers from the geo-centric targeting options of traditional media and replaced them with sexy new options like interest-based, contextual and behavioral targeting.
This fundamental shift in institutions’ ability to promote and deliver programs has prompted many university leaders to advertise their programs as far and wide as their budgets will allow.
But for a variety of reasons, this is a mistake.
The Proximity Factor in Online Student Recruitment
The promise of recruiting students from any corner of the country is enticing. Unfortunately, the data tell a different story. On average, 70% of fully online students live within 100 miles of campus, and almost half want their online university to be within 50 miles of their home.
A good illustration of this phenomenon at play was our work with a large college system that offered both online and on-campus programs geared towards non-traditional students. When we began our engagement, our client was spending the bulk of their $8M advertising budget on nationwide inquiry generation campaigns. On the surface, their efforts were performing well. Inquiry volume was high enough to keep their call center busy and cost per inquiry was impressively efficient. There was just one problem: despite the enormous flow of inquiries, enrollment was steadily declining, just like it had been for the previous four years.
Our team’s analysis revealed something the client hadn’t yet been able to diagnose: Even though they were generating inquiries from every nook and cranny of the country, only students within a relatively small proximity to campus were actually enrolling.
And here’s the thing: we’ve seen this pattern over and over again. For most institutions, most of the time, there’s a significant proximity factor at play when it comes to online recruitment.
But why would that be the case? Why would students who presumably want the flexibility of online learning ultimately prefer to stay close to campus?
I think there are four main reasons:
Familiarity Creates Preference
We know from consumer research that just the act of seeing a brand repeatedly makes us more inclined to like and trust the brand, even if we don’t know much about it. That means local institutions–assuming they’ve made some reasonable investments in maintaining local brand awareness–often have a built-in advantage in that potential students are more likely to have encountered them repeatedly through community engagement and local advertising. But that advantage dissipates the farther you are from campus. At some point, other institutions’ local advantage begin to outweigh yours.
Word of Mouth Has a Geographic Component
Similarly, we know social ties and word of mouth play an important role in the prospective student journey. Here again, local institutions often have an advantage because of the natural distribution of alumni that tend to gather around campuses. As would-be students ask friends, family, and coworkers for input on where to earn their degree, they’re likely to get recommendations for local institutions.
Local Employers
Online learners are largely motivated by career goals. All things being equal, students know that a degree from a prominent institution in their town or state is more likely to be recognized and respected by employers.
Access to Campus
Even though online learners aren’t on campus every day, many still value the option to connect physically with their institution. Whether it’s walking across the stage at graduation, participating in an on-campus event, or meeting professors face-to-face, the ability to access a physical campus holds appeal for many online students.
Geographic Concentration = Better Return on Ad Spend
Aside from the proximity effect that occurs around campuses, there are other compelling reasons to concentrate your efforts on specific geographic areas: cross-channel synergies and excess share of voice.
Sweet, Sweet Synergy
There’s really only one time I use the word synergy with a straight face, and that’s when I’m talking about cross-channel synergies in advertising. So what are these synergies? In short, it’s the ROI-boosting effect that occurs when you deploy your advertising across multiple channels. It occurs because running campaigns across a wider range of media not only increases your total reach, but it also reinforces your brand and message as people encounter it in multiple contexts and formats.
These synergistic effects aren’t trivial. Research shows campaigns that use five or more channels see 35% higher ROI on average than campaigns using just one channel.
Of course, for all of this to work, each channel needs to be adequately funded and targeted in such a way that your audience can encounter your message across multiple channels. This can be a real challenge given the modest advertising budgets of most institutions. As a result, we find most of our clients benefit from concentrating their efforts on smaller areas (think zip codes and DMAs) where they can increase the probability of reaching their target audience across multiple channels.
Excess Share of Voice
Concentrating your efforts on specific locations also has the effect of raising your share of voice relative to the other competitors in that space. This is important because of the well-documented relationship between share of voice and share of market. In short, that relationship goes like this: over time, a brand’s share of market tends to reach equilibrium with it’s share of voice. Thus, a brand that occupies a 10% share of voice, will tend to have roughly a 10% share of market. If that brand increases its share of voice to 15% to create an “excess share of voice” (ESOV) above and beyond it’s market share, over time and all other things being equal, it’s market share will tend to rise to about 15%. We’ll save exploring the underlying mechanisms that make this work and how our fragmented media landscape has complicated ESOV, for another post. What’s important here to is realize that if your brand is whispering in given market, it won’t gain enough traction to overcome other colleges and universities who are shouting. For this reason, most institutions most of the time will benefit from concentrating their limited advertising dollars in a way that helps them achieve greater share of voice.
How the University of Arizona Owned Their Backyard
If you’re looking for proof that disciplined geographic targeting can drive results, it would be hard to do better than the University of Arizona’s approach to launching their online program offering in 2019. With a $9M budget for promotion, U of A could’ve easily shoveled money into broadly targeted paid search campaigns around each of their online degree programs and banked on their stature as a prominent state institution to convert a percentage of inquiries into enrollments.
To their credit, they didn’t.
Instead, leaders from enrollment and marketing worked in close collaboration to systematically identify specific zip codes where they had strong historical patterns of enrollment and a robust alumni base. Based on these and other criteria, they narrowed their focus on the top decile of zip codes. Some of those zip codes were close to campus, others were not. What matters is that each zip code represented a specific location where they had strong existing brand recognition and some degree of enrollment momentum. Then, they set about painting those zip codes like Sherwin-Williams with a combination of digital and traditional advertising.
The result? An outstanding launch with a strong return on advertising spend.
Now, you may be thinking, “Of course, they had a $9M budget. How could they not succeed?” To that I would respectfully say “quite easily.” Advertisers burn cash with little to show for it due to poor targeting, lackluster creative, and ineffective media placement all the time.
The Bottom Line
The temptation to cast a wide net when marketing online programs is understandable, but it’s not always the wisest choice. Proximity still plays a powerful role in driving enrollment, even for online students. By focusing your marketing efforts on your institution’s natural geographic strengths and maximizing cross-channel synergies within those areas, you can stretch your budget further and see better results.
And, If you’d like some back-up as you think all this through for your institution, our team of seasoned marketing and enrollment experts is here to help. Just reach out.
