SPEAKER_03
You're listening to the Higher Ed Marketer, the podcast for marketing professionals in higher education. Join us every week as we talk to the industry's greatest minds in student recruitment, donor relations, marketing trends, new technologies, and much more. If you're looking for conversations centered around where marketing in higher ed is going, this podcast is for you.
Let's get into the show.
SPEAKER_00
Welcome to the Higher Ed Marketer podcast. I'm Troy Singer along with my friend and co-host Bart Kaler. And today the conversation is the advantages and the disadvantages of high level programmatic digital advertising.
And we have that conversation with Ashley Monk of the ANIA agency. And Bart, this conversation stemmed from you seeing her giving a presentation at a recent conference, and you felt we needed to get this information out to our listeners.
SPEAKER_02
So I was at a conference on the West Coast and Ashley was there and she did a presentation on this very subject. And I learned a lot in the presentation. I was like, wow, there's a lot of really interesting things here.
And I've heard about programmatic advertising and I've probably even said stuff about it. But I don't think I understood it to the level that Ashley had described it. And so I asked her to come on and kind of share some of the nuggets from that presentation.
A full disclosure, Ashley and I and Troy, we all do some work together professionally. But I really hope that you can walk away with hearing some of the things that I learned that day and how it applies to a lot of the thinking that I've been doing a lot of lately. I'm just being able to really focus in on those mission fit students and the segments of the students that are going to really work well at your school.
So it's a fun conversation. So I'm excited to share this with everyone.
SPEAKER_00
Yes, Bart, I feel it's not only a fun conversation, but it's also an informational conversation that anyone listening can get something out of it and move the needle at their institution. Without further ado, here's our conversation with Ashley Monk. Ashley, we are so grateful that you agreed to have a conversation about the advantages and disadvantages of programmatic digital advertising, maybe for some introducing a concept to them.
But before we get into the meat of the conversation, we always begin our conversations with our guests by asking them to share something either fun or interesting that you may have learned recently.
SPEAKER_01
Thank you both again for having me on the show. Something that I am learning recently, this may be relevant to some of you and maybe not, but I am learning one, two, three magic. So if you're not familiar, one, two, three magic is a book about raising and parenting toddlers.
And I have the most amazing three-year-old daughter that is strong-willed, no idea where she could get it from, right? As I'm laughing. And I am learning how to figure out how do we help her take breaks? How do we help her emotionally regulate? How do we help her go to bed and eat her food? So if that tells you anything about the stage of life I am in, that is what I am learning right now. It's been a treat.
SPEAKER_02
Being a parent of adult children now, it just makes me tired hearing you talk about that. I remember those days.
SPEAKER_01
If anyone has tips, let me know. But that is what I am learning. We are all in the parenting books and how do you parent a child? So that's where I'm at.
That's great.
SPEAKER_00
Well, we'll give your contact information at the end for anyone that's interested. The book and the concept seems amazing. So again, we're talking to Ashley Monk.
She's the founder and CEO of the ANIA agency. And our conversation today is about high level programmatic advertising. Before we go into it, if you would please give us a brief introduction to your agency.
SPEAKER_01
Yes. Well, excited to be here again. Thank you both for having us.
So ANIA, we are a digital advertising agency that focus predominantly on strategy and outcomes to increase overall lead generation. So that is high level. What we do and areas what we focus on typically include social media advertising, a pay per click advertising, programmatic and social media marketing.
So that is our sort of genius. But ultimately we help organizations grow and scale by the right digital advertising strategies.
SPEAKER_00
Thank you Ashley. And just to make sure everyone knows this, both Bart and I have professional relationships with Ashley and we're very familiar with her. Our conversation today stems from a presentation that Ashley did about programmatic digital advertising that Bart heard, loved and said, we need to have a conversation on the podcast about that.
So for some of our listeners that might not be familiar with the term programmatic digital advertising, Ashley, if you would please define what that means.
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely. So there is choice. I know you can speak to as well.
There's a huge spectrum of what programmatic is and isn't. So high level, simply stated, programmatic advertising is the automated buying and selling of advertising in the online space. And so what is unique and what is different about programmatic is when you think of a platform like Google or like Bing and typical pay per click channels or like Facebook, for instance, that is what we would consider a walled garden.
And so what I mean by that definition is that when you are advertising on one platform or channel, this can be effective if you know for certain that your target audience is engaged on that channel. So if you're going after teens, for instance, you know that there's a high likelihood that they're engaged on TikTok. And if you advertise there, you in theory are assuming that you'll have market share.
Same with Facebook. You're assuming that you're advertising to parents that they are engaged on the platform. So there are pros of these channels, but where programmatic is unique is you are going after a specific segment of your audience across thousands and thousands of different channels and placements.
So you have more precision in the audience that you're going to reach, but you're not betting that they're going to be in one channel in one place at the same time. And so programmatic advertising can include so many different things. Again, it continues the demand side.
So that's where you're bidding for your media. This is where you would be buying placements. And then the sell side, which is going to be the publisher, which could be the New York Times.
It could be ad placements on Spotify. There are so many thousands of channels and I can go into specific ones and details, but it could include your display, your audio, your, I don't know, connected TV. There are so many different places and what you are betting is you are hitting one precise target in different phases of the overall marketing funnel as opposed to using one channel and going after a demographic there.
SPEAKER_00
So would you think it would be accurate to describe it that it's less about the channel that we're targeting, but the importance of your target that programmatic addresses more so than some of the other mediums?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. I think with programmatic, what we are seeing, especially as we gear toward a cookie list future, whenever that will happen, it's all, it's impending when it's going to. But what is unique about programmatic is yes, you are, I would say it's a little bit of both, but you have a lot more of the precision and specificity to go after someone because typically with the right demand side provider and on that side, you can leverage security device IDs on cell phones.
You can leverage address it like you can leverage a lot more first party information and get the precision instead of relying on more third party information that with cookies, we are currently able to track, but it's kind of a matter of maybe not if, but when that data may change. And now there will still be ways to address those users on those platforms, but with programmatic, you will have that precision to be able to hit them in multiple stages. But then those placements, I think are significant too, but I would say person first placement second.
SPEAKER_02
I love that. And I, the reason I got excited when I was listening to your presentation at the NACAP conference out on the West Coast was the fact that you were talking about that and it kind of, it dawned on me. It's like, okay, this is what I wrote about in my book, the idea that, you know, chasing mission fit.
I'm trying to figure out the audience, the segment that I'm going after because as I often talk about, you know, and I use the, I use billboards, the physical billboards. It's great to have a billboard out on the interstate. The problem is, is everybody and anybody sees it and I only need to have a very small percentage of the people in the city seeing it because I have a very narrow segment of who I'm trying to talk to.
And so the fact that even a lot of the clients that I work with are even more narrow because they have a, they have a specific, you know, unique niche that they're going after, whether it's, you know, it's a, it's a community college or maybe it's a, you know, some kind of very specific type of education that they're doing or it's adult education or it's faith-based. There's a very smaller niche that I'm trying to target. And so I loved when you were talking about this, the idea that I could go after more of those segments through programmatic advertising.
And then I can also pick up another tool later on and, you know, something like Ring Digital, being able to upload those lists of, of, of addresses and be able to focus just on the households of the people that I know that are talking to it. But higher up in the funnel, I really like the idea of programmatic advertising. So talk a little bit about how, you know, even being able to narrow down in those niches, you know, you talked about the New York Times, you talked about, you know, Spotify and these other places, but let's, let's just use the example of a faith-based, you know, let's, let's say a Catholic institution and they've got a, you know, they know specific things.
Could we go into, could we go into very specific channels for them? So just kind of play that a little bit for me.
SPEAKER_01
I love this question because there are so many different ways, unlike one other channels that you can deploy different tactics to be effective with programmatic, because there are some, there are some cases where you can go directly to the publisher itself. Let's say you take a publication like the Babylon Bee, that's an example of maybe you could go to that specific publication, but where programmatic is unique is that when you're working with a demand side on the demand side, you're going through one channel to get placements to the same person across multi-platform coverage. So if I'm looking at a Catholic organization, for instance, I'm trying to think of you could go after maybe Catholic radio would be one audio ad that you could serve via programmatic.
You could go after different publications and to do in-stream articles based on faith-based audiences within programmatic. You could go and you could target different churches as well. And so there are a lot of tactical ways that you could go after this faith-based audience with targeted placements instead of having to set up an account and run a campaign on each publisher.
Now, the, one of the things to consider within this type of advertising is that it is going to typically be your top and your bottom of funnel. It's hard again in these places to maybe get that middle of a funnel. That's where paper click and Google can typically give and drive more intent-based audiences because if they're going and searching in search, right, they have for a specific school or an organization, they're going to have more intent because they're actively looking at it.
But within programmatic, you can do two things very well. Not that it can't be used for middle of a funnel, but I would say in most cases it would depend on the circumstances. Top of funnel is going to get you in front of that audience maybe for the first time, but also the retargeting segment of these faith-based audiences can get you across the finish line.
So those are a couple of cases and some high-level tactics that I think could be applied. Depending on your organization.
SPEAKER_02
Okay. That's great because it does go a little bit toward that watering hole type of thing because I mean I love the fact that, hey, if I'm going after a Catholic audience and I want to reach parents, I might be able to do those Catholic radio stations or I might be able to do those different things. So same thing if I'm going after an engineering school and maybe there's different engineering things that I want to do or maybe there's different channels on YouTube that are featuring engineering content.
I'm guessing that that's one of the things programmatic can do.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. And it ultimately varies on the demand service or how you're going to set up the buys because different, the spectrum is so broad about what you can do depending on what kind of a demand service provider that you would use. So it's going to vary greatly depending on tactic and strategy.
But yeah, if you could go and you could target other specific churches that you know that you're going to pull people from, you could target competitors. There are a lot of innovative things and it boils down to, I mean, you know, you're going to be able to do that. I mean, there aren't very many limitations.
And so if you are a strategic and a creative thinker, this is really a blank canvas that I think can be leveraged more so than other platforms. Other platforms, I think have the advantage of, if you know, it can be a little bit more simple to rinse and repeat. I would say with programmatic, you really have to have a very good idea.
Like you said, Bart, where are those watering holes? Where do you know that your audience is going to be? If you're going to have a real big budget, that is going to be critical because there, again, there is probably over a hundred thousand different placements between online media, radio stations, physical places that you could target. The list goes on and on of the potential apps places that you can serve ads. And so it's really critical to understand who that person is that you're going after so that you could deploy the right tactics effectively.
Otherwise, what I see people fall into the trap of is just trying to serve ads to anyone and anywhere, which in some retargeting campaigns can be effective if you already have maybe to what Troy does. If you've got a really defined list, great, you can hit them on multiple placements. But if you're going top of funnel to drive intent for people that may not have heard of you, it's really important that you know where those watering holes are and how to reach those people.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I love that idea of the discovery element of being able to get your brand in front. Brand awareness in a discovery method, I think, is one of the untapped areas that a lot of schools need to do.
SPEAKER_01
And not something I think that you and I have both agreed on is that so many schools will spend their budget on brand awareness and they're just casting the net too wide on billboards and on different things, which some of those things can be effective if they're deployed to your target market. But what I see people fall in the trap of is just anyone and everybody casting the net way, way too far. And so brand awareness can be very effective if it's the right brand awareness in front of the right market.
SPEAKER_00
Ashley, you've naturally taken our conversation to the next topic that we've wanted to go in offering some very specific advantages, especially within higher ed of this type of advertising. So I would like to continue that conversation, but also wanted to know if there are any what you would deem disadvantages of this type of advertising that people in higher ed should be aware of.
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely. We can start with some of the disadvantages. So number one would kind of fall into that target of if, let's say, an organization, the marketing director of that school is trying to deploy this themselves without being a media buyer, I would say a trap they could fall into would just be setting up a campaign and not understanding what those placements are.
There would be bid and budget. And this is really important because I do think that you can serve programmatic with a smaller budget. However, you have to be very intentional and have an understanding of how much that you would need to bid, what that budget looks like and what placements you can go after with that bid.
And so that really does take the technician side of having some type of advertising or media buying experience because it's somewhat similar. I would compare it to the stock market to where let me give this example and this might resonate with people that are not as familiar with the technical side. I see people, specifically schools that will assume, oh, it's like if they were going to go buy the S&P 500 and say, I'm going to buy a 20th of a share one time and hope that's going to get me to retirement.
We all know it's not going to that be great. In theory, it would have to really appreciate more than the return on the market. And so I see people that understand and they have a high level of thinking the tactic will work, but they don't have a strong enough understanding of targeting, reach and budget and what that tactic will buy.
And so they do end up not investing their money. So I will say it's programmatic is more of the advanced side to where that's where they would need to partner with you, Troy, or someone like us or some other kind of partner or hire somebody that has a strong understanding because if it's not like a billboard in a strategic location that you know, okay, people are going to be driving by here, it would be very, it's very easy to set something up incorrectly.
SPEAKER_02
I was just going to kind of tease that out a little bit because I'm thinking about, you know, the examples you used already, I mean, the New York Times, obviously people would love to be able to show their board. Look, we were on the New York Times and, but did that really, was that as effective as it could have been based on, you know, the amount that we spent on that? And so that's why I also like the fact that you've indicated there's hundreds of thousands of different areas and having somebody that can, you know, one, spend the time and understand those different places to be able to say and spend the time understanding exactly who is our target audience and where are their watering holes. That's half of it, but then also being able to then log into these systems and being able to check the boxes and pull the levers and put your bids down.
You know, I remember even on the non-programmatic side, you know, just doing a keyword like MBA, you know, that could cost you $85 just to have one click on that. And so that's where a lot of times when I talk to people on the other side of other, just digital marketing in general, not knowing what you're doing and going after just the key words that you think are the ones that you need to go after. If you've got a small budget, I mean, you could spend that in one click.
And so being able to really kind of think that through and having those additional people, I think is an advantage of being able to use this, but the disadvantage is if, you know, if it's not a self-serve, as I think some people might think it could be.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it's really not, especially because those placements, when you go broad, so if you think New York Times, History Channel, National Geographic, Fox, Spotify, Hulu, that can work well on the retargeting side. If you have, like if you're working with a partner like Troy, when you've got a clear list of exactly who you're going after or you're retargeting web traffic, because then it becomes, it's only serving those ads to that individual that the algorithm knows happens to read that publication. And so it can work under the assumption that you know exactly who your market is, but most people try to flip flop it and maybe just put everything in top of funnel and hope that it bids correctly.
And it's probably not going to, because it's probably going to cast the net far, far too wide. So there's a time and a place for each, but I think that's where the expertise comes in. This is an incredibly effective way to get in front of the right people, but it does require an advanced knowledge of how to be able to bid and advertise effectively to
SPEAKER_02
deploy it well. What are some of those other disadvantages that maybe you've been thinking
SPEAKER_01
about? I would say it's hard. I see a lot of people that maybe are hoping that it's going to drive leads immediately. And this is just not the tactic that's going to drive high intent leads like yesterday.
I mean, I do think the retargeting side of setup, and you have good data, you can cross people over the finish line, assuming that you have a strong pipeline. But I think one misconception is that this is a decision middle funnel conversion based platform. And if you think about many of the placements that a programmatic ad would be served on, it is typically an interruption in someone's day.
So it could be a Spotify ad as someone is listening to a podcast and it's a commercial about that or like an ad about that school, they could be maybe on an app on their phone scrolling trying to do something else. And then an ad is served to them. They could be reading an article, higher ed publication and then the ads being served.
And so this really is a placement to where it is going to give a ton of exposure if you already have brand credibility. But I would say the return if you are deploying the strategy and expecting an immediate return other than a retargeting campaign, it is going to take a little bit longer to be able to deliver those results. And the other two goes with programmatic in some demand service providers has the ability to track footfall attribution.
So people that are physically going to show up to a location. But again, that can take time and data. And so I see people that try to make a sound and this is this is not even true of just programmatic.
I think this is true of advertising as a whole, but particularly with programmatic. I see people that try to make assumptions based on a month of data to where you need three to six. And so a lot of people are not willing to wait, especially with higher ed.
I mean, you really don't know if your marketing is effective until after, or at least from the advertising side until you've gone through an entire enrollment cycle, because your marketing really should mirror like you need to know what's the cycle and the cadence of your admissions counselor, how many they close. And so the biggest mistake I would say are marketing directors, VPs of enrollment that decide only after a month or three months that it's not going to work. And maybe it won't, but it really is you need to see that cycle through and get enough data to make
SPEAKER_02
an informed decision. Let's talk through that a little bit more, because I think that was so important that I want to underscore that because I don't think it I think it kind of is for all type of digital advertising, not just programmatic. But I see so many times people just try something.
And honestly, it's it's not even just programmatic or digital advertising. It's it's a lot of different strategies. I mean, one of the strategies that we often encourage our clients to do for for search engine optimization.
It's everybody's looking for that silver bullet. It's like, Oh, can you come in and just, you know, tweak our website to make it more, you know, more optimized to be number one on Google. It's like, Sure.
But the number one way to do that is by content, you know, starting to develop content and generating new blog posts every week. And, you know, you can't do that for two months, and then just stop and think, Okay, thank you, we did it. Appreciate your work, Bart, because it's just going to drop off.
And so I think that the long term commitment to some of these strategies, because I think too many people look at these like silver bullets, it's like, Hey, somebody on our board said we need to do programmatic advertising. So let's do that. And, you know, after three months, they don't see the results they want to see, or they don't see the results of being able to, you know, convert there at the bottom of the funnel, or, you know, they don't understand where they're at on the funnel on what they're trying to do.
And so they pull the plug too quickly. And because they're not seeing the results that they want, even though the results are going to come, it's just a matter of time. And, and those attributions will show that later on.
But so let's talk a little bit about that in the way that these types of things, I mean, whether it's programmatic, whether it's any type of digital advertising, how important it is to be able to one be patient, and then also be able to track and be able to, you know, show the attribution along the way.
SPEAKER_01
You hit the nail on the head part, because I think there, we all know that we live in an instantly gratified culture. And what a lot of marketing professionals are being sold is no longer the place, I firmly believe marketing has the ability to drive results. But if you look at the textbook definition of marketing, it is to bring a product or service to the marketplace, to the right people at the right time.
And more recently, in more recent years, there is an increased amount of pressure for marketing to look to deliver results. And I do think that as the outcome, and marketing can serve that purpose. But I think a lot of people get overly eager and think that they're buying a result, instead of buying a methodology to test.
And so it's just very, very important to remember that when you're buying marketing, anyone that sells you a result or a silver bullet, I'm sorry, I have never seen that work. Any of these guarantee, I mean, I don't know, if you find someone let me know, I'd be curious to see a case. Let us all know.
We'll have them on the podcast. Yeah, please do. I just don't believe that I really don't believe it's possible.
And so I find myself too having to reset those expectations. So that I think is really important to remember with any marketing that you're testing, you are not buying or getting a result, you're taking your testing an approach, because even the same approach, even if it works for one school may not work for another, depending on your audience, your brand, I mean, they're just so your landing pages, so many variables that are going to to affect that. And so I think that's the first most important thing is to understand number one, that you are obviously you're optimizing for results, but you need to know that you're testing one approach to get you that outcome.
And then the second factor is really thinking through to what you said, Bart, how am I going to measure success? And that does take some knowledge because the way that you measure success is going to depend on the stage of the funnel. If you think of the basic marketing funnel, you've your top of funnel, your middle funnel, your bottom of funnel, top of funnel campaigns, or that are focused maybe on engagement, brand awareness, repositioning, you are driving for reach and impressions, knowing that you're betting with a top of funnel campaign, that you are essentially reaching a new market at the right place at the right time to get exposure, then your middle of funnel campaigns are going to be more based on conversion. And so to be able to attribute success, number one, yes, you need to figure out how to set up proper tracking.
Honestly, if you don't have a technician on your team, I do think it's something that you need to outsource because I see far too many people do it wrong and somebody said they set it up correctly. I find when we're working with clients, we have to always go back and fix it. And it's not simple because it depends on your site, depends on your CRM, there are so depends on the advertising platform, it depends on the campaign.
It's not simple to do. And actually, it usually involves two people working together, a web dev, and then whoever's running your advertising to make sure that they are on the same page, speaking the same language. So I think that is key.
And then finally, setting KPIs, I mean, and which is harder than it sounds, because your brand awareness KPIs are going to focus more on engagement at reach, your conversion, you're really optimizing for the cost per result, which could be a lead, it could be a click, it could be a form fill, it could be an application. And the higher intent of that result, like if it's a full application, obviously that's going to cost you $500 to $1,000, because it's going to be you're getting a full application, you're asking someone based on an ad and an interruption out of their day to take 20 to 30 minutes to fill out a ton of information. Now it's going to be worth more.
I mean, that'll be worth hopefully, I mean, it could be worth a few hundred thousand dollars if they stay and they sign up as an undergrad student and follow you all the way to an MBA program or doctoral program. But it's just very important to set expectation. Everyone's like, what should my cost per lead be? It's like, well, how long is your form? How long are so setting really thinking through what is the outcome that I want to drive for my audience? What are the KPIs to measure for that outcome? And then how do I reverse engineer the right campaigns to drive that outcome? Ashley and Bart, I've been sitting
SPEAKER_00
here and trying to keep a little quiet. But if you both don't mind, because you're familiar with what we do, I just want to break just a little bit. In addition to everything that Ashley said, one of the advantages that we have with a household digital marketing is we're able to take a list.
A lot of times it's at the bottom of the funnel from the enrollment list and able to then put ads directly into the household devices of the people on that list. As a result, we're able to measure success because at the end of the campaign, we can see who actually enrolled, who actually took the next step, and then compare it and then have a true ROI. So again, both of you are familiar with that.
That's another segment of programmatic digital advertising. And since I think it's no secret that all three of us are trying to make a case for programmatic digital advertising, Ashley would like to know what you would recommend for any of our listeners that we've been successful with if they want more information about it, and then maybe add anything else that you feel we need to say on the podcast before we come to a close. I love that.
No, it's been so fun
SPEAKER_01
for everyone listening. I know Troy, we've gotten to partner on some campaigns. And I think that is just the perfect example of a segment for enrollment professionals to be able to actually see that matchback.
Because when you're running a campaign like that, once you are very familiar, you get a very segmented list of who you want to go after, even a lookalike list, or maybe it's a list from a provider like niche.com or buying students, you hand that to ring. And then literally, you can see the exact student.
There is no discrepancy. You can see the name of that student and whether or not they enrolled. So I love it because it's so transparent.
And with your proprietary technology, one of the few ways that you can actually really attribute success. I mean, what a better way,
SPEAKER_00
there's not a better way to see the ROI. Thank you. Thank you, Ashley.
Now, again, if what would your recommendation be from your expert or subject matter expert seat? What's the first or second step that someone should take if they would like to find out more information about this type of
SPEAKER_01
advertising? This is going to be a simple but important answer. I think number one is to really look at what your overall strategy and your outcomes are. That's key with any marketing strategy.
Well, is that you have a strategy. And then number two, where are your students naturally coming from? We don't want to reinvent the wheel. We want to kind of figure out, I'm sure most schools can identify, well, maybe it's from this college fair.
Maybe it is from this church, if you're a faith based school that's bringing a lot of people in or a few local area churches. I think that's the first step of figuring out if you're going to deploy programmatic, where are they? Or is it like from lists to where you know that you're just converting it list and you need to increase the conversion on lists. That's where ring would be perfect.
You go, you give them that list and they could. So that's step one, figure out where those watering holes are. And then figuring out that number two, what type of campaign to reinforce what's already working.
Because I see so many marketing directors and enrollment professionals that are trying, and I get it, it's fun to try something new and creative and compelling. But at the end of the day, usually there's, it's that Pareto principle, 80, 20 rule, usually 20% of all the things that you're actually driving is attributing to 80% of that result. And so how do we reinforce that with marketing? What are those watering holes? And then from three, that's where you begin to craft your programmatic strategy to reinforce what's already been effective in my opinion.
And I, and I really do. I think that's the most effective marketing we can do. We want to try, we want to test things, but obviously we don't want to reinvent the wheel too much because usually it's there for a reason, but we do want to create and test within that.
SPEAKER_00
Ashley, I promise it's going to be my last question of you today. No, actually, there's going to be another one right after it, but the real last serious question. If you have a piece of advice that you could offer for a listener that could move a brick right away and they could implement soon after hearing the podcast, what piece of advice would that be? I would say start
SPEAKER_01
with a retargeting campaign. Everyone wants to do all these top of funnel, crazy campaign, which I think again are amazing. They're time and place, but most of you, especially at the time of recording and probably around the time that this will air, we're still for higher education in that peak window where there are seniors that still have not decided on a school.
There are people that are looking for an adult or an online or a flexible learning program, and I can guarantee that there are people or prospective students in your pipeline that you need to get back in front of and if you did, that you could be able to push them over the finish line. So I think this is the perfect time where you could run a retargeting campaign usually because you're targeting a smaller audience, because that assumes that they visited your website, you have a list of people. That's going to be the easiest area that you can capitalize on a low budget to just get that those final few touch points because in 2024 it takes about 17 touch points for a prospect to convert for a student to convert and so get a retargeting campaign in place so that you can capitalize on those students
SPEAKER_00
that haven't committed yet. Thank you everyone. We've had a conversation with Ashley Monk.
She is the founder and CEO of Anya or the Anya agency that's O-N-Y-A and I will say since I am familiar with the agency and the work that they do, she would be a wonderful first stop for anyone that's looking to get in this type of advertising. You didn't say it, I will Ashley and for those who would like to find out more information about you or maybe connect because they have a question or two, what is your preferred way for people to reach out to you? Absolutely. Website is always a great
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place to start on yourmark.com and if you want to connect with me personally, LinkedIn, Ashley Monk,
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send me a message. Thank you so much for the conversation and getting this information out there. Any final thoughts that you have, Mr.
Kaler? Certainly. I'm just so excited to have this
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conversation with everybody. Anytime I learn something new, I try to make sure that we pull it into the podcast or I'm sharing it on LinkedIn or we're having conversations about it. If anybody's listening to this podcast and we're coming up on 200 episodes and it's hard to believe that we've been doing this every week for almost three years, I'm constantly just amazed at all the amazing opportunities that are out there.
Again, there's no silver bullet, but there is enough ammunition out there. There's enough tools that you can use to really impact your school and being able to think differently in the way that you do things and being able to hold on loosely to what you've done. I often in my presentations have a slide from Alvin Toffler that talked about the litter of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who can learn, unlearn, and relearn.
Sometimes when we've learned a way of doing something like digital marketing and digital advertising, it's been going on for 15, 20 years now. Then we see opportunities for modifications and ways that it's evolving and changing. We need to unlearn what we've known before and try and learn these new things and relearn it.
I'm really excited about this conversation. I think there's a lot of opportunity, especially for the smaller schools and smaller departments and colleges that are really understand who your target is. You understand exactly who that segment is.
I would even argue at the larger schools, there is a certain type of student that is a mission fit student. If you can identify who you are and who they are, then you can use these different tools that are in your toolbox to be able to increase your yield, increase the effectiveness of your school. Ashley, thanks so much for coming on and sharing this with us.
Thanks for both of you for being partners and I'm really excited about this episode.
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Thank you both again. Keeping the thank yous going. We are not able to do this without the support of Kailer Solutions and Ring Digital.
Also, thanks to Rob Conlon and his team at Westport Studios who keeps us up and running and on time to make sure we release every Tuesday. On behalf of Ashley Barton myself, thank you for listening to our conversation.
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