e-Campus Advertising - Is it Working?

There's no doubt that many things can be partially responsible for our sudden increase in online enrollments again this spring. When we went through our major growth spurt from 2000 to 2004 we had five straight years of more than a 55% increase in online enrollments with an annualized growth rate of 93% per year over the five years. Then things leveled off pretty well. This semester we have seen a 13% increase in online enrollments. That is the largest semester increase since spring 2004. Why did this happen? Economy? Sure, probably several economic factors are at play here. General student demand for online? Sure. Advertising? Yes, I think so.

There is no way to know for sure, but our award-winning promotional campaign for Lake Superior Connect might very well have had an impact on our enrollments. I've worked closely with Gary Kruchowski, Director of Public Information and Governmental Affairs at Lake Superior College to promote our e-Campus offerings and services. I'm of the opinion that these efforts have been successful with an impact on increased enrollments.

There are several occasions each year where we post banners, such as Grandma's Marathon, the American Birkebeiner, and similar public events. Yesterday we received our new banners based on the same comic strip-like approach we have used for the past few months.The banners are very striking. The artist on all these items has been Dave Kirwan of Duluth.


I've previously posted our video ad E-Learning is G-Learning which is one of the 3 30-second ads created for television and web display. The video below is the other two 30-sec ads combined together into a single 60-sec ad.


We have also used the idea in print ads, as shown below.It's impossible to say how much of an impact any of these things have had on the increasing online enrollments, but I feel safe in saying that they have played a significant role - somewhere, somehow, someway.

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