Reach students through new college tour video network

Each year, 20+ million high school students research colleges online and over 15 million of them enroll in college as first year undergraduates (Source: National Center for Education Statistics).  Campus Media Group has partnered with YOUniversityTV Video Network to give national brands a new way to reach this group through online video advertising.

YOUniversityTV

About:

YOUniversityTV Video Network, is a leading syndicated college video platform, where teens and young adults can watch hundreds of campus video tours of the top colleges and universities in the U.S. These original videos are created by YOUniversityTV for colleges and can be viewed on YOUniversityTV.com and other popular sites like Cappex.com, Scholarships.com, and Collegeprowler.com.

With advertisers not having the ability to advertise directly on college websites to reach this elusive audience, YOUniversityTV offers a platform to target this audience through some of the most popular education sites visited by teens today.

Watch a video here to see for yourself how great these videos are.

Quick Facts:

• Monthly video impressions – 1,200,000  (Projected to be over 10 million monthly by year-end)
• Video views per unique visitor – 3
• Average time watched per video – 4:35
• High school teens (aged 16-19) make up primary visitor  (55% Female, 45% Male)
• Other secondary visitors include community college students looking for transfer opportunities
• 64% are first time viewers, and 36% are returning viewers
• 29% have Household Incomes between $60,000 and $100,000

Advertising & Targeting:

Advertisers can capture this captive teen audience through highly targeted pre-roll, mid-roll and lower-third video advertising. National and regional targeting is available. Contact Campus Media Group here for rates, or email info[at]campusmediagroup.com.

Building Your Recruitment Brand – Tool 1: Career Centers

Source: Hollins University

I know, I know. It’s not a “new” way to recruit students, but career centers are a key location on campus that may have more recruitment advertising options than you would assume. Campus career centers usually have full time staff who help students with all things job related: resume writing, interviewing, updates on who’s hiring and when, career direction, etc. They also help the companies recruiting on campus by setting up interview events, campus visits, professors or departmental outreach, career fairs, and online job posting opportunities.

Student outreach opportunities at career centers on campus tend not to be very exciting, and most companies simply do the same thing year in and year out at their target schools.  I encourage you to ask the campus career centers what other branding options exist, or suggest a new way to customize your presence there. You might be surprised how receptive they’ll be.

Custom recruitment event and career center tactics:

• If you have a long-lasting relationship with a school, you may want to approach them about naming rights or sponsorship of interview rooms or the center itself.
• Send custom giveaways to the career center staff (branded pens, custom Post-it note pads, note pads, calendars etc.)
• Custom emails sent to students from the career center about new opportunities or recruitment events with your company
• Create co-branded career center shirts with the name of the school on the front and your brand on the sleeve. Give them to staff at your recruitment schools.
• If the career center has a mentoring program, get involved. If they don’t have one, create one.
• Send posters and literature stands to the career center with a request to have them displayed.
• Arrange for custom messages on the career center Facebook page and via the school’s  Twitter account
• If you are really creative, look at supplying the career centers with branded furniture (tables & chairs), floor mats, or magazine/literature racks.

If you have examples of how a company can work with campus career centers, please comment below.

Attracting Transfer Students

Photo Source: OSU - Tulsa

Typically, the incoming transfer student comes from a community college, but the poor economy, in some instances, has students at more expensive private schools trading down for something cheaper.

A recent article points to a national trend of public universities seeing an uptick in transfer applications. It notes that Indiana University is seeing a 23% increase in transfers, and the University of North Carolina is watching its transfers climb more than 15%.

To see what some schools are doing to attract potential transfer students, read my recent post for Ypulse by clicking here.