Michener’s digital marketing strategy is about engaging the highest quality candidates at every point in their journey – from when they are starting to think about their options to receiving an acceptance letter to their first day in class and beyond into their careers.
But Michener’s Communications and Marketing team has learned that this journey is more than just ads and tweets; it’s about collaboration with other Michener departments, and the Recruitment campaigns are a perfect example of how this collaboration works best.
Over the past year, Grace Acosta, Acting Associate Registrar, and the Recruitment team had a clear vision for what they needed from their digital marketing campaigns. “We wanted to leverage social media, but we also needed analytics to inform our recruitment plans,” says Grace. “We knew this data would show how different applicants learn about us, and we could then take a custom approach to our recruitment.”
Digital marketing analytics can show a range of demographic information about an applicant, including their professional and academic background and how they gather and search for information online. With this data, Michener’s Recruitment team can see the kind of people who are landing on Michener’s admissions web pages and quickly adjust their messaging based on this data. “Seeing those numbers and how applicants interact with us is eye opening,” says Grace.
But the flow of information in the digital marketing process goes both ways. For a digital strategy to succeed, the Communications and Marketing team needs to understand the stakeholder’s goal, but also what the information gaps are for the audience and how to fill them.
Chiranjiv Phull is Michener’s Digital Marketing Advisor, and he works closely with staff and faculty across Michener to manage their digital campaigns. “An important part of my plans is to reach a point where there’s flawless communication between the Communications team, the Recruitment team and our prospective students,” says Chiranjiv. “There needs to be constant touch points between all three of these groups for the campaign to resonate.”
Chiranjiv says the marketing strategy for Michener’s new Digital Health and Data Analytics program is a good example. Both Chiranjiv and Grace were part of a recruitment planning committee that connected regularly on the best way to meet their admissions goals for the new program and reach an audience that Michener had never tapped into before.
“We experimented with the audience and message and monitored our digital ads daily to get a sense of which audience was the most engaged. We then narrowed down our audience based on our analytics. This strategy was totally informed by the group, and it was successful,” Chiranjiv says. The campaign met its goal of approximately 30 accepted offers from highly qualified learners for the program’s first year.
Once we welcome students to our school, and even after they graduate, the Communications and Marketing team works constantly to create and share digital content to keep students engaged and to build brand awareness and loyalty.
For Grace and the Recruitment team, the analytics from the digital campaigns act as their guide. “The analytics has shown us how our audience uses our online tools like the website and virtual tour. We rely on these tools so much, and we can now shape them into better resources and draw qualified applicants,” she says. “I already have all kinds of ideas for future campaigns.”
To get a better sense of Michener’s digital marketing campaigns, how our digital marketing works and some of the stats that show our audience’s engagement, click here to view a short presentation. You’ll see how the Communications and Marketing team uses creative content to reach our audience, then relies on data to improve campaigns year after year.
