Rhode Island College chose DDL Advertising to put together a huge, new enrollment campaign titled “Be Bold” for the upcoming school year. Their objectives were specific and they needed us to help deliver the message.
The goal of this campaign was to increase enrollment for the 2022-2023 school year and reach people of all ages. This meant we were targeting people outside the typical college student demographic. For example, we targeted people who were older and wanted to come back to school, undergraduate students who were changing schools, students who wanted to continue their education and/or anyone who wanted to earn a college degree regardless of age.
Here’s what we did:
- Created a complete media strategy
- Researched, developed, optimized & executed paid social media, google search and other paid digital tactics
- Placed the best media to run traditionally on local broadcast and radio
- Executed community related marketing and advertising with local broadcast TV stations, including sponsorships
Social Ads
DDL placed digital advertisements across these mediums to best reach the target audience:
- TikTok
These ads were designed with specific targeting, interests, locations and demographics in mind. There were three different ad sets that ran that focused on Graduate, Undergraduate and Nontraditional students. We collected interested user’s information through lead generation campaigns. This provided concrete data to provide back to the RIC team.
Paired with these sets, DDL ran Spanish ads with the same creative. Rhode Island College has a large Spanish-speaking population, so our team made sure to target this audience when running these advertisements.
(Ad)ventures worked with RIC and DDL to create the design of these ads. Here are some examples of the creative that ran:
Twitter:
LinkedIn:
TikTok:
Facebook & Instagram:
Here are the results from the lead generation campaigns our team ran on Facebook/Instagram:
After the flights were complete, we found that the TikTok ads resonated the best with all demographics. See below:
Digital Media
Our team placed digital media advertisements in the form of banner ads for in-web searches, browsers, landing pages and more. These were executed in English and Spanish. For the Spanish ads, our team enlisted Entravision as a means to reach this demographic better.
See some of the placements creative ran below.
OTT/CTV and HULU
OTT/CTV and HULU are great additions to partner with any large media campaign. As we all know, everyone is constantly streaming – whether it be on their phones, laptops, or TVs. This is another means of reaching those audiences in different areas of their daily life. Here are examples of the creative that ran on these platforms.
Email Marketing
Focusing on results driven marketing, we also included email marketing that was sent to approximately 50,000 people that might be interested in undergraduate degrees, continuing education, online classes, or anything else RIC could offer potential students.
Google Ads
Additionally, our team ran paid keyword search ads on the Google Ads Network. The campaign was considered a success as the data displayed a higher than anticipated outcome in all targeted demographics and metrics including impressions, clicks and CTR.
This campaign displayed ads on Google Advertising Network with search performance results capturing a total of 120,000 impressions, 10,000 clicks and an average Click-through-Rate (CTR) measuring 7.0% over a three-month campaign period. Specific top search keywords averaged between 21-27% CTR over the span of the campaign. Utilizing geofencing tactics, we also measured the most engaged communities over a narrow targeted range of locations and averaged a total of 12.75% CTR.
Traditional Media
Spots for this campaign ran on radio and television. This helped reinforce the messaging through a mix of prime-time spots, dayparts and bonuses.
For TV, we ran spots in local stations and for radio we ran spots in the Providence, South Eastern Massachusetts and Connecticut markets:
We had air checks and live-reads produced for radio personalities to say on-air. These stations included:
- Fun 107
- WPRO-FM
Here is an example of an air check from Fun 107: LISTEN NOW
Our team also included a community ties portion to this campaign by including radio personalities that went to Rhode Island College and local affiliates:
- Studio 10 on WJAR:
- Rhode Show on WNAC with former alumni Brendan: https://www.wpri.com/rhode-show/be-bold-and-discover-whats-new-at-rhode-island-college/
- WPRO-FM with former alumni Jess
Our team was honored to have been able to produce such a successful campaign for Rhode Island College. As always, if your business needs a robust digital, social and traditional media campaign, DDL Advertising is your one-stop-shop!