OPTIMIZE YOUR PODCAST TO WIN ON GOOGLE: Just like any other form of content, getting your school’s podcast to rank on Google is key. Start by forming podcasts around a keyword (we suggest long tail keywords to start), and mention your keyword a few times in the podcast itself (search engines can actually listen to your podcast). Your podcast title and description should always include that keyword or phrase. Lastly, publish a transcript of your episode that’s optimized for SEO with headers and links. You could even consider repurposing the transcript as a blog post on your site!
Why you should care: Higher education is adopting podcasts as a recruitment tactic while also growing thought leadership. But sharing your podcast on social media likely isn’t enough. You want listenership to grow organically, which is why you should start optimizing your podcast for search engines. This can improve the chance that prospective students searching for information related to a topic associated with your program can find your podcast, just like they would your eBook or guide! Haven’t started a podcast yet and need inspiration? Check out this list of higher ed podcasts.
FACEBOOK LIMITS NUMBER OF ADS YOU CAN RUN AT ONCE: Facebook announced that come February 2021, it will limit the number of ads your page can run at once. The limit will depend on how much you spend on Facebook advertising in any given month. For example, if you’re a company spending less than $100k per month on Facebook, you’ll be limited to deploying no more than 250 ads at once. You can see the other tier limits here.
Why you should care: Running too many ads at once can negatively affect the “learning phase” where Facebook’s algorithm attempts to collect information about your ad and determine how to optimize it. While not many enrollment marketers will have to worry about these ad limits (250 ads is a lot!), there is a potential positive: fewer ads means less competition to reach prospective students on Facebook. Plus, Facebook claims your ads will improve as a result of a more optimized learning phase.
GOOGLE COMBINES CUSTOM AFFINITY AND CUSTOM INTENT AUDIENCES: Google merged its custom affinity and custom intent audiences into “custom audiences.” Marketers can use custom audiences to reach people with certain interests or purchase intentions and people who searched for certain terms on Google properties. Any preexisting custom affinity or custom intent audiences can be automatically converted to custom audiences as well.
Why you should care: Enrollment marketers can use Google’s custom audiences to target people who have searched for specific terms. Adding search terms like “top MBA programs” to your custom audience will allow you to match your ads with users who have searched these terms on Google or YouTube. Relevancy and personalization in advertising are key, so the ability to deploy an ad for your MBA program to someone who just searched for relevant terms on Google is a huge opportunity.
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