Palm Beach State College – Powered by PB Post

GOAL

To elevate the Palm Beach State college brand, creating a shift in perception and consideration for all audience segments while positively influencing student enrollment

2017 – 2018 CAMPAIGN RECAP

35,801,593

TOTAL
IMPRESSIONS

286,795

TOTAL
CLICKS

.80%

TOTAL
CTR

RECAP HIGHLIGHTS

The PBPost Digital team has been managing your digital media placements for the past 2 fiscal years and continues to use our captured data, campaign knowledge and digital expertise to influence your digital strategy and connect your brand to potential students and influencers with custom audience messaging.
To help meet your goals of increasing enrollment and shifting perception of the PBSC brand, your campaign was segmented into two initiatives this fiscal year – Enrollment and Branding. Enrollment tactics and creative are initiated during peek enrollment periods, while Branding tactics and messaging is an always on initiative.
We also conceptualized your audience into four key target audience segments – Strivers, Reinventors, Explorers and Influencers
To strategically engage both active and passive potential students, we implemented further creative and audience segmentation based on a potential students age, demographics and what matters to them in terms of higher education.
As a result of our deep audience targeting and optimizations, all individual campaign tactics delivered recorded click-through rates above benchmarks provided by Google and Facebook for the Education vertical. In 2017- 2018 your digital campaigns delivered over 32MM impressions, over 280K clicks, resulting in a 0.88 CTR.
Facebook and Paid Search had the strongest performance in terms of generating traffic to your landing pages and collecting potential student leads in your prospective student funnel.
PBSC exclusively sponsored the Graduation section on PalmBeachPost.com which celebrated high school graduates by featuring local graduation location information, photos from various graduation ceremonies around Palm Beach County, and headshots/bios of local valedictorians and salutatorians from area high schools. Your ads surrounded content intended to connect with Strivers and Influencers directly online as well as daily in print for the 3 weeks of PBC graduations in our local market.

Tactic	Impressions	Clicks	CTR
Display	8,650,091	14,586	0.17%
Mobile	4,646,524	14,595	0.31%
Facebook	17,008,139	216,463	1.27%
Paid Search	241,872	10,885	4.50%
Native	1,932,811	16,647	0.86%
Graduation	242,056	1,833	0.76%
Mun/PBPost	1,580,113	1,378	0.09%
IP Targeting	1,499,987	10,408	0.69%

AUDIENCE SEGMENTS

STRIVER: Prospective students (18 to 19-year-olds) who have not yet graduated high school, plan to graduate school in the next year, are not currently enrolled in college full-time, and plan to enroll in college

REINVENTOR: 25 to 34-year-olds who have attended some college or have a college degree, who are employed full-time and who plan to change to a different career in the next year. Nearly 26% plan to enroll/return to college in the next year

EXPLORER: High school graduate or GED recipient ages 18 – 26 that may be unhappy with their current job/outlook and would like to do something different that has a positive impact on their life. May be the first in their family to go to college, parents may not speak English. Generally may come from a low-income household

INFLUENCER: Parent/Guardian with at least one child age 13-17 living in the household and expecting a child to enroll in college in the next year. High School Guidance Counselor who is having conversations with prospective student about college throughout the process. Family members such as grandparent, aunt, uncle, sibling who may have an influence on or help the prospective student make a decision regarding college

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Your current campaign has delivered over 16.7MM impressions, over 95K clicks, resulting in a .57% CTR.
In June of 2018 the data collection strategy changed per direction from the PBSC marketing team, from using the landing page to primarily collect leads and build audience segments to driving potential students to engage deeper in the enrollment and informational pages on PBSC’s website; while continuing to build audience segments. This data collection strategy change was directly related to PBSC’s internal challenges with lead nurturing/student acquisition funnels.
Target audience segments – Strivers, Reinventors, Explorers and Influencers continue to perform well within the individual tactics – creative segmentation and fresh messaging direct to these audiences is crucial for continued success in 2019.
Our search strategy was implemented as an “always on” tactic due to it’s high performance in terms of click engagement and SOV and continues to be a strong tactic. We’ve implemented an aggressive bidding strategy to ensure a high average ad position on the Google Search Engine Results page in order to capture as much visibility as possible from relevant search queries.
The Super 11 exclusive fall local sponsorship was added to the 2018 – 2019 plan in addition to the Graduation sponsorship in the spring. The Super 11 Contest highlights the top high school football athletes in Palm Beach County. Over the course of several weeks we encourage a joint audience of students, parents, administrators and fans to vote for their favorite athlete throughout the fall season. The key focus of these two initiatives is to positively influence the local markets perception of PBSCs brand and showcase community involvement in both sports (Super 11) and academic achievement (Graduation) of Palm Beach County high school students. This branding/influence tactic reaches both Strivers and Influencers target audience.