Published: Wednesday 17th August 2022
With so many schools, colleges and universities for students to choose from it is important to make yours stand out from the crowd. How do you differentiate your university from the rest of the competition and get across your key features and benefits? All this is possible with the power of TV.
It is no surprise that the universities and colleges which advertise on TV have very little issue filling their places during application season and even during the subsequent clearing process. When used correctly TV can build that emotional connection which is necessary to convince an applicant that your place is the right choice for them. With location no longer playing a major factor when choosing a place to study it is now possible and essential to advertise nationally. A national campaign will allow your marketing message to capture as wide an audience as possible and convince future students that your education faculty is the one they should select above all others.
A TV advertising campaign will definitely provide an uplift in the level of exposure for your school, college or university which may be what is required to raise awareness amongst potential students and their parents or guardians who are yet to decide on a place for their further education.
A TV advertising campaign gives you an opportunity to be different and really push the levels of creativity and imagination required to build an emotion connection or something memorable with the audience. If an advert doesn’t stand out from all the other adverts within the same space then it will struggle to make the desired impact on the audience. Historically adverts within the education sector were extremely dull and lacked imagination and not much has changed since. This could be due to marketing teams honouring the traditions of an extremely old institution and afraid to deviate from the safe space of a conservative advertising campaign.
The Open University (as a modern and less traditional institution) has been able to break the education sector mould and push out really creative adverts which even challenge marketing brand giants like Coca Cola and McDonalds (in terms of building an emotional connection and a memorable piece of TV advertising).
Unlike the UK education space which is seemingly bound by tradition there are a number of TV adverts on the global stage for education which are hugely imaginative and effective. After all the sole purpose of an advert by an educational institution is to recruit new students and nothing more; so the advert needs to deliver significantly more than just a few campus shots and the local nightlife to entice potential recruits.
Adverts which tell stories are the most compelling form of advertising and deliver the most engagement and positive responses in the modern market. A great example of this was an advert for Western Sydney University located in Perth, Australia. They launched an advertising campaign which told the story of a man called Deng, a man who came to Australia at the age of 14 as a refugee having formerly been a child soldier in Sudan. The advert depicts the journey of a man who wishes to strive for more and turns his life around, a person with the will to succeed, a man who taught himself how to speak English and with the help of Western Sydney University eventually qualifies with a degree in law.
The advert tells a story which awakens feelings within us all and epitomises the power of human emotion and the drive most of us feel to succeed. This advert is inspiring and also suggests that with Western Sydney University behind you, it is also possible for you to achieve this level of success. Most of the viewers of this advert will be fortunate enough to not have experienced the same disadvantages which Deng had to endure and so they can also achieve what he did or even more at Western Sydney University.
Any educational institution outside of the top 10 needs to be advertising on TV. The top schools, colleges and universities tend to have little trouble filling their allotted vacancies purely based on their reputation alone but if your faculty lies outside of this elite tranche of institutes then you need to run TV adverts as part of your marketing mix to merely keep up with the competition.
It is vital to utilise market research data so that you can truly understand your audience and how best to communicate with them – if you are trying to create an advert which applies to the student themselves then maybe something which highlights the fun elements of being at your faculty is a better approach than showcasing the beauty of the campus but also it is worth bearing in mind that you may need to appeal to the parents or guardians of the student. It is not uncommon for student decisions on where to study, to be heavily influenced by their parents or sponsors.
Using platforms like AdSmart, education advertisers are now able to target particular demographics and ensure that their ad spend is maximised. It is now possible to create campaigns (dependent on the age range of your students) and target the ad breaks during their favourite programmes, target the geographical area where they live and even particular households dependent on age:-
15 – 17 year old – target these individuals for further education
18 – 24 year old – can target year out or students whose education was disrupted by the Covid 19 pandemic
25 – 30 year olds – to target mature students
Using insightful data it is also possible to target the exact areas where competing schools, colleges and universities have achieved success with their advertising campaigns.
The cost of TV advertising is less than you might think and it provides amazing exposure.
