October, 2020 - Mason Interactive

Facebook has launched new custom audience targeting over the last week specifically for retargeting users who have interacted on the Instagram Shop. New targeting capabilities allow advertisers to target users who have viewed a product, saved a product or initiated a purchase through the Shop. Brands will also be able to promote sales and discounts.

The launch of these new custom audience capabilities give marketers a new avenue to target lower funnel users with higher intent. This new custom audience targeting also allows for lookalikes to be created, a prospecting audience strategy in Facebook that serves to new people who may not have interacted with the brand previously.

In addition, Facebook is rolling out product tags on Instagram ads, that have only previously been available for organic ads. This will allow marketers to input price-tags on paid ad formats giving the user further information on the item featured in the creative.

How does this impact your business?

Instagram shops, which launched earlier this year, are ramping up in popularity and it’s more important than ever for e-commerce brands to be utilizing this platform. Instagram shops give brands an immersive storefront for users to browse products and purchase directly through the site or link to the website. Brands can also tag the product in a post which can come up on Instagram’s Shopping explore tab giving the opportunity to expose their products to users with high purchase intent. With the approach of holiday, the launch of these new audiences rolled out at the perfect time.

Many higher education marketing professionals are looking for new tactics to improve enrollment in the digital-driven environment. Before implementing new marketing strategies, it is important to take a look at what you are doing now. Is there anything you could be doing differently? Is something hindering the results?

We listed the most common marketing mistakes that may prevent you from reaching your enrollment goals. Don’t get spooked by the don’ts, we also included do’s so you can create the best enrollment marketing strategy possible.

#1 Not Knowing Your Target Audience

Understanding who your target audience is, where they are, what content resonates with them, and how they prefer to receive communication from you is the key to increasing quality leads. If you don’t have your target audience in mind with everything you do, it is unlikely you will be able to reach, engage, or eventually convert them into enrolled students.

What to do: Create student personas

The first step is to research and collect as much data as you can about your ideal student. Interview existing students to understand what platforms they use, what motivates them, why they chose your institution, and so on. Leverage that data to create student personas that will help you target specific individuals. Write a detailed summary of each persona, including behavior patterns, demographics, expectations, motivations, and pain points.

#2 Tracking Activity, Not Results

Is your reporting focused on activity metrics such as social media followers, likes, shares, subscribers, and page views? While it makes us feel good when these numbers go up, they don’t provide real indication on how successful your campaigns are. It can be dangerous to make decisions based on activity metrics because they don’t translate into new inquiries, enrollments, or overall profit – all of which are common goals in higher education marketing.

What to do: Focus on meaningful metrics

Use analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, to track actionable metrics, align them with your goals, and measure them regularly to track the progress of your marketing efforts. In enrollment marketing, the most meaningful metrics include conversions, search ranking, click-through-rates, cost per lead, and ROI.

#3 Underestimating the Power of Social Media

Statistics show that 90% of users aged 18-29 use at least one social media platform, so it is fair to say a majority of your prospective students use either Instagram, Facebook, YouTube or TikTok. If your institution doesn’t have a strong social media presence, you are missing out on a huge opportunity to be where your target audience is.

What to do: Focus on authentic content

Avoid using stock photos, or high-produced branded content. Instead focus on posting good quality, authentic content, consistently. Gather user generated content (UGC) from your student ambassadors, faculty, and alumni to engage audiences and show behind-the-scenes clips on what the life on campus looks like to help prospective students imagine their future at your school. Creating a unique hashtag for your school is a great way to encourage users to produce and share content.

#4 Ignoring Lead Nurturing

As marketers, we love to see new form submissions come in, whether it is someone requesting more information or booking a (virtual) campus visit. But our work shouldn’t end there. Even if a prospect has shown interest in your college or university, it is likely going to take them a while to make a final decision.

What to do: Keep the conversation going

It is important to understand the stages of the student enrollment funnel, and all the touch points along the journey. Help the prospective student with their decision process by maximizing the number of touchpoints through effective remarketing and email marketing campaigns. Provide useful content at each stage to stay top of mind, and continue communication.

#5 Poor Mobile User Experience (UX)

There is no denying we live in a mobile-first world with little patience for pages that take over 5 seconds to load, or buttons that are impossible to click on a mobile screen. Mobile responsiveness plays a significant role, especially if a majority of your site visitors are Gen Z; a whopping two thirds of Gen Z internet users report smartphones as their preferred device to access the web.

What to do: Audit and monitor page performance

Ask your web development team to perform a site-wide audit to identify errors that may impact UX for mobile users. Some quick fixes can include improving site load speed by compressing images, making call-to-action buttons more prominent, and improving mobile navigation.

We recommend using Google’s PageSpeed Insights to find out where your site stacks up.

#6 Not Optimizing Your Website for SEO

You have put time and effort on your website design, its usability and content. But all your hard work will never be seen if prospects can’t find your website. Many may think it is enough to optimize your website once, and the SEO work is done. In reality, maintaining a high-ranking website requires ongoing work to keep up with algorithm changes and competition.

What to do: Focus on relevant keywords

Start with an in-depth keyword research to discover what keywords your prospects use to find you (and your competitors). Then implement those keywords on your website content including meta descriptions, program descriptions, press releases, and blog articles. Pay attention to relevant meta descriptions and titles; they are the first thing a prospective student sees on the search engine results page and can convince them to click your link.

#7 Not Knowing Your Competitors

No matter how hard you and your marketing team are working, your competitors may be doing things better. Who are you losing students to? Why are they outperforming you? What strategies do they use? These are some of the questions every higher education marketing professional should address regularly to better understand the competitive landscape.

What to do: Competitive analysis

Performing a competitive analysis of your top competitors helps you identify similarities and differences between you and your competition, and what you can do to make your school stand out. Use the information to take a critical look at your positioning and to implement changes to your enrollment marketing strategy. Need help with the analysis? Get a free marketing analysis, put together by Mason Interactive’s digital experts.

Hopefully, this list will help you to steer away from the common enrollment marketing mistakes. Book a consultation with our higher education marketing experts to talk more about your enrollment strategy.

Why Email Marketing?

Email marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing around. Not only is it effective at turning prospects into buyers, but it is a process that can be completely automated to save time and money.

Surrounding the holidays, email marketing help businesses reach new potential buyers and turn them into repeat customers. Here are our tips for using email marketing services as an effective strategy during the holiday season.

Email Marketing Tips & Tricks for the Holidays

Product

When engaging customers in email marketing, you want to make sure you put the right product in front of your audience. It is best to offer discounts on your lower priced products earlier in the holiday season. This is when customers will be shopping around for many people and many different gifts. They do not want a high-priced product offer sent to them because it is not something they are interested in…yet.

If you have higher priced products you are interested in offering discounts on, WAIT. The second week of December is the best time to discount more expensive items. For people who have neglected to find gifts for others or just waited too long, they are less likely to turn something down from price due to lack of availability.

So, when it comes to products, you want to discount your lower priced items earlier in the season and wait until the second week of December to discount your higher priced items. In addition, make sure to stress shipping deadlines and parameters. Let customers know the last day they will be able to get next day delivery, and make sure they can actually get it before the holiday.

Offer

The offer is the meat and potatoes of your email marketing strategy during the holidays. Hundreds of thousands of companies are sending out offer emails during holiday time; how can you make yours stand out? Well, you need to offer something that cannot be overlooked.

Rather than going with a cute ‘12 Days of Christmas Deal’ approach and offering small discounts for those twelve days, offer a bigger discount for a shorter time-frame. Providing customers with a bigger discount and less time to use it not only makes them feel a sense of urgency, but helps them feel confident in knowing that they got a good deal.

Timing

The time you send out your holiday emails is extremely important. You want to start early, and earlier than what you may think is early. If you are planning to ramp up the volume of emails you send, you need to do it slowly. Going from sending one email a week to one email a day will most likely send your emails to spam, reducing the amount of people that see them. Starting in September, slowly start to send more emails weekly, and by holiday time you will make sure your emails don’t go to spam.

Offers emails should be sent out the week before Thanksgiving for best results; whether you are letting customers know what the offer will be or actually starting them. Currently, since in-store shopping has seen a decline, it is best practice to keep your offer valid all month long, so customers can truly take advantage.

Looking past holiday time, you may see declines in some of your email performance. This can be normal, due to the decrease in emails that go out weekly or monthly, and customers have already gotten what they needed.

The three most important factors that you need to consider when incorporating email marketing services into your advertising are Product, Offer, and Timing. As long as you remember these, you will surely have a successful holiday season. If you are looking to add email marketing to your business’ advertising services, please contact us or schedule a free marketing analysis with one of our expert marketers.

Are you currently running ads on Facebook? Did you know that running too many ads at the same time can decrease your overall account performance? When there are too many ads live, chances are your ads will never exit the learning phase. This is why Facebook is implementing a limit to the number of ads running (or under review) per page.

What is the Learning Phase?

The Facebook learning phase is an important part of the optimization process. The learning phase works by optimizing your ad set to your selected objective. The more an ad is served, the better the delivery system becomes at improving its performance. An ad set will exit the learning phase when its performance stabilizes. When an account has too many ads in rotation, they may never exit the learning phase and the system will not have enough data to prioritize what is performing best.

What are They Limiting By?

Facebook will be limiting the amount of ads a page can serve. If your account is running efficiently, this should not be an issue for you. The more you spend on Facebook, the more ads you will be able to serve. Ad limits range from 250 ads per page, to 20,000 ads per page. Ad limits depend on the size of your business and the amount you spend on each page.

How do I know what my ad limit is?

Ad limits vary depending on the amount you spend on the Facebook platform. The less you spend per month, the less ads you are able to run. You can see the ad limit for each of your pages by navigating to the Ad Limits Per Page tool in your Business Manager.

How Will This Affect Me?

Chances are this change in policy will not affect your business. If your account is optimized properly, and you are running an efficient amount of ads per ad set, your page will not be harmed by this update. Companies of any size will still be able to test hundreds of ads at a time, but ad limits ensure that advertisers spend their budget in an effective way.

Making sure that accounts are optimized properly is the best way to remain unaffected by this ad limit. Our team of digital marketing experts optimizes each account according to clients’ goals. Contact us for more information or schedule a free marketing analysis with one of our digital marketing experts to see how we can help you.

By now, you have probably started preparing your strategy for Black Friday and the December holiday sales. The upcoming holiday season is predicted to be eCommerce-driven, with more businesses than ever before competing for the attention of online shoppers.

It is a huge opportunity to tap into the online audience and drive traffic to your eCommerce store, but how do you recreate the in-store feel-good experience digitally? By feel-good experience we mean the physical experience of browsing the store aisles with festive songs playing in the background, interacting with a sales associate, and all other sensorial elements of in-store shopping.

We listed 7 ideas to help you enhance the digital shopping experience and stand out this holiday season. Continue reading or watch the Holiday Sales webinar for expert insights on how to prepare for the 2020 holiday season.

#1 Microsites

Create a microsite with branded content to highlight a specific product line or a campaign, or focus on a niche audience group. Alternatively, you can leverage a digital storefront to tell your brand story through an immersive, digital experience. Shops on Instagram, for instance, is essentially a lookbook that makes it easier for shoppers to browse your product catalog and curated collections, and check prices without leaving the app.

#2 Reviews & Testimonials

Product reviews are the cornerstone of an online store and an essential element when building trust on your products and brand. In fact, 89% of consumers read reviews before buying products. Ensure your website has authentic reviews and real testimonials from your customers. Avoid pushing for reviews that aren’t rooted in real customer experiences.

“89% of consumers read reviews before buying products.”

#3 Email

Stay top of mind and send emails regularly to highlight your promotions and seasonal products. Keep the communication going with potential customers through effective email nurturing and drip campaigns. Don’t forget post-purchase emails to generate reviews after the festive season – they are a great asset to drive sales all year round!

#4 Live Chats

Deliver the best customer service during the holiday rush by staying alert and prepared to handle the increased volume of customer requests. Consider using a live chat on your website or a Facebook Messenger campaign to bring that white glove sales associate experience shoppers get in-store.

#5 Videos

Enhance the digital shopping experience with creative content that goes beyond static product photos. Help customers make the purchase decision through a product video that gives a complete picture of the product, demonstrate what they can do with your product, and explain the benefits of the product.

#6 Influencer Content & UGC

In addition to branded videos, influencer content is a great way to show how your products work in real life. With nearly 50% of consumers depending on influencer recommendations, leveraging an influencer to curate stories, photos, and videos that feature your product can have a huge impact on your sales. User Generated Content (UGC) is a good alternative to add authenticity and social proof.

#7 Memes & Stickers

Engage consumers in social media with thumb-stopping memes and fun stickers. They allow you to share your brand voice while attracting more follows and shares. There is a lot of room this holiday season for this type of marketing that has both experimental as well as direct commerce side.

Hopefully, these tips have given you fresh ideas to think outside the box this holiday season. The holiday rush will be here before you know it, so start planning now. If you need help with your strategy, book a consultation with our digital experts.

Watch the Holiday Webinar

With the holiday season fast approaching, the team at Mason Interactive is getting ready for the busiest quarter of the year. In the midst of preparing our clients’ campaigns for the holiday sales rush, we have also had the pleasure of welcoming two new members to our team! As our client roster continues to grow, so does our team of digital marketing experts. Meet our two newest team members; Melina and Surina.

Melina Jorizzo, Performance Marketing Analyst

Melina is our newest team member to join us virtually and will be starting in the North Carolina office when it is safe to do so. Adding to Team Turbo as well, Melina works mainly with skincare, fashion, and jewelry clients writing ad copy, analyzing data, and creating ads.

Melina graduated from Wake Forest University and worked for another NYC-based agency before starting at Mason. When she is not working she enjoys reading, spending time outside, and staying active!

“I really enjoy the fact that there are two company-wide Zoom meetings daily. I think this helps everyone to feel connected although we are not in an office together.”
Melina Jorizzo

Surina Seetha, Performance Marketing Supervisor

Surina has been with us for a few months now as part of Team Turbo, a media team. Her days at Mason Interactive include optimizing and implementing strategies for eCommerce clients and emerging fashion brands. Surina came to us from a larger agency, and after taking a short hiatus to teach English in Thailand.

In her free time, Surina enjoys drawing, meditating, watching Netflix with a glass of wine, and working out. Even though Surina has yet to meet her coworkers in person, she enjoys our morning meetings and thinks everyone is very funny.

Once again, we welcome Surina and Melina to the Mason family so we can continue to provide our clients with the highest quality digital marketing services.