By: Charlotte Geier
The Client
The client in this case study is Alamance Community College. Alamance Community College is an established educational institution located in Graham, North Carolina.
Alamance Community College has three different academic divisions and a range of degree offerings, workforce development, apprenticeship programs and its WiSDEM program for students to participate in.
The Problem
ACC wanted to increase recruitment and applications for its workforce development and apprenticeship programs. The college also wanted to raise awareness for its WiSDEM program, which is an organization for Women in Industrial Science, Design, Engineering and Math.
This was due to outdated promotional material and a lack of targeted advertisements aimed towards potential and current ACC students to join these programs.
The Strategy
1893 Brand Studio used a three-step approach to solve this issue using lead generation optimization, email marketing and a Facebook Ad campaign. Here is the original proposal. This case study will focus on the Facebook Ad campaign, which is still running.
After auditing ACC’s existing social media strategy, 1893 Brand Studio decided to launch 17 Facebook ad campaigns over a six-month period to increase ACC’s applications and engagement in their program offerings.
These ads focused on programs that saw less applicants in a regular year, from the Career Apprentice Program to Horticulture and Agricultural Biotechnology..
*Below is a sample of the Facebook ads produced
*Below is the targeted audience for the advertisement above
*Below is the age and gender distribution and costs per result for this ad with an approximate reach of 6,000 people.
*Below is the age and gender distribution and costs per result for this same ad when the potential audience reach was broadened to 14,000 people.
Facebook ad content and schedule (created by Meredith Manning)
The Outcome
Our work with ACC’s Facebook ads was a challenging task for 1893 Brand Studio due to its specificity in audience.
Meredith Manning, the campaign strategist producing these ACC Facebook ads, shared her insight on the project:
“This was my first time doing Facebook ads that were pretty in depth and Facebook fought me every step of the way,” Manning said.
“Our strategy was just to create messaging that fit the platform and was tailored to the audience for the specific program. For example, the ad for the AgBio program targets people living in Alamance County, ages 18+, interests in agriculture, AND biology, AND farming, with an education level of HS grad. We also turned on detailed targeting expansion for this ad.”
The advertisements have been overall positively received, as adjustments to the project were made to successfully target the proper audience. Rather than letting Facebook automate the process, we made very intentional and manual decisions on the management side to reach a greater audience and get a better bang for our buck. This was done for programs that needed more attention than others.
Analysis
Overall, these ads were a successful strategy in drawing in new viewers to ACC’s updated page and offerings with its three part strategy. The video content and website produced for ACC was complemented by these advertisements.
Because of the primary target audience being young adults and adults who are interested in becoming college students or are already college students, Manning’s clever use of emojis, casual, and exciting language in the ad drew viewers in. Additionally, the authentic videos of real ACC students and faculty complemented the ads to attract the audience to stay for the ad.
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