Ideas, insights and inspirations.

At Elliance, a Pittsburgh-based digital marketing agency, we create unique ad creative for paid campaigns for each of our higher education marketing clients. There are several factors that we take into consideration as we develop this ad creative. Keeping the client’s brand in mind, the target audience and the goal of the campaign helps us come up with a one-of-a-kind strategy for each client.  Here are some best practices that we follow to develop high-converting ad creative for every client campaign: Use authentic photography: As all paid marketing platforms have become more and more visual, using the right image is really important to creating the right ad.The use of client images of actual students helps us develop a more authentic look and feel for prospects. It gives a realistic feeling of being on-campus and brings out the individuality of the brand. Following are some examples of ad creative that we used for our higher education clients marketing campaigns:  Chatham University’s … Continue reading

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At Elliance, a Pittsburgh-based digital and paid marketing agency, we create unique landing pages for each of our higher education marketing clients as part of our paid digital campaigns. Along with distinctive elements for each landing page which give it an individual flavor, there are common features which consistently work very well in attracting and engaging prospective students. Here are some best practices that we follow when creating these higher education paid landing pages for our clients: Clear and Concise Argument Construction: The argument construction for each landing page depends on the client’s situation and target audience. We consider who we are trying to attract, such as undergraduate students, adult students, first generation students, or graduate students, etc. A one size fits all approach does not work.  Examples of landing pages from 3 of our clients which show how different audiences are addressed: Maker Culture at Capitol Technology University: The culture at Capitol Technology University is focused on providing a … Continue reading

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We all know Facebook is Big… But Facebook began as a service that only allowed college students to communicate with each other over the Internet. Even after the site opened up to public users, college students continued to comprise a significant segment of the Facebook user base. High school and college students still comprise a large piece of the Facebook pie. Despite recent speculations that Facebook users are reducing their monthly activity on the social network, Facebook remains the number one social media platform for teenagers ranging from 13-17, a prime target demographic for higher education marketers. Segmenting by demographic is a smart way for colleges and universities to strategically reach prospective students on Facebook. Because users list their age, gender, location, interests and other information on their Facebook profiles, it is easy to find your exact target audience. Facebook’s advertising platform includes settings that can target beyond the typical geographic criteria. For higher education paid marketing targeting specifically, you could use … Continue reading

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With a rapid change in technology, digital marketing channels have evolved quickly over the past few years. As a result, there has been an increase in investment in digital channels by higher education marketers. We’ve worked with many higher education clients who struggle to find the right balance between investing in the appropriate digital marketing channel. For the purposes of this post, let’s look at paid and inbound marketing channels to understand why a higher education institution should invest in one or the other or both. Why Paid? Paid advertising, which now includes paid social and remarketing ads, is very tightly tied in to the investment that you make. As long as you’re bidding high enough, your ads will appear in the top spots which are most visible to searchers.  Paid advertising works well in situations where there is a sense of urgency. If a college or university is faced with a tight deadline for enrollments, for example, paid advertising … Continue reading

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