COVID-19 Campaign Optimizations

In uncertain times, it can be difficult to navigate new terrain, especially when that terrain is still being uncovered. The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly affected every aspect of our society, and higher education is no exception.

As a digital agency for higher education, we have been continually optimizing our clients’ campaigns to adapt to these recent changes in trends in order to still maintain the performance we were seeing before this pandemic. We want to share some of these insights on COVID-19 campaign optimizations to help you achieve the most success with your digital advertising campaigns during this time.

Keyword traffic

One of the first things you’ll want to spend more time on is your search campaigns. Because every university or institution has either shut down classes or transitioned to an online format, current students and staff have been searching for your university’s update and policy on COVID-19.

To prohibit irrelevant traffic to your search campaigns, we recommended adding “coronavirus” or coronavirus-related search terms as broad match negative keywords to both your search and display campaigns.

This will allow your target audience to find the most relevant information about your school’s policy and make sure they aren’t being targeted with messaging and ads that aren’t relevant. It will also prevent your campaigns from racking up unnecessary spend due to your ads being shown for the keywords.

In line with monitoring your keyword traffic, more universities will continue to migrate to the online format for future degree programs, meaning more campaigns will be bidding on “online” related keywords. This increase in competition will certainly cause an increase in keyword bids.

Looking at trends for the keyword “online masters degree” on SEMRush, we can already see a substantial increase in keyword traffic in the month of March compared to previous months. Raising those bids and finding creative ways to still bid on similar keywords to ensure your ads still get shown will be crucial in the coming months.

Website traffic

Related to your keyword traffic, if you are running any remarketing audiences that are targeting higher level university web pages, it might benefit you to segment out those audiences to prevent an influx of organic traffic from users who are looking for their school’s COVID-19 policy.

Creating re-targeting audiences for higher intent pages such as a program’s admissions or financial aid page will allow your campaign to still target key users without unnecessarily spending budget on irrelevant traffic now and preventing you from targeting those who were just looking for general information in the future.

Location traffic

Due to universities closing and switching to a virtual format to close out the semester, most students will be moving back home to live with their parents during this quarantine period.

Additionally, according to this Business Insider article, people are fleeing higher populated cities like New York City that have been affected the most by COVID-19 and are migrating to more rural areas. This means there will be changes to your location data, especially for graduate programs that are targeting current undergraduate students.

By looking at your Google Analytics data over the past month, you might notice changes in the location of your user traffic that could allow you to target new locations in your digital campaigns. It’s best to be adaptable during this time while still making decisions backed by relevant data.

In addition to location changes, students who are spending more time at home will also be spending more time on their desktop devices rather than their mobile phones. This will cause changes to your device traffic in your Google campaigns. In the past, you might’ve placed higher bid adjustments on mobile traffic, but now it might be worth it to analyze that data and adjust those bids.

Relevant messaging and targeting

It may seem like a small thing, but doing an audit of your ad copy and imagery to make sure it is still relevant to the grander situation we find ourselves in will reap benefits for your campaign and overall brand in the long run.

According to a study done by Edelman, 1 out of every 3 consumers have already stopped using brands that did not respond appropriately to the pandemic. Refraining from using imagery that’s tied to physical touching, a social gathering, or an outside adventure will prevent users from having a negative reaction to your campaigns.

We also recommend updating your ad copy by removing any reference to any on-campus promotion or event. The uncertainty of the times we’re in is causing consumers to react to advertisements in ways that they never have before. It’s best to be proactive to prevent unnecessary backlash on your brand.

In addition to auditing your messaging, it’s also a good time to audit your targeting strategies. For example, if you have a program that targets international students, it might be a good time to pause those campaigns until we have a clearer picture of life after the coronavirus.

Another example could be layering on additional interests in online education and distance learning to your social campaigns for programs that are moving future semesters to an online format. Being able to still find your target user will allow your campaigns to continue generating leads and maintain quality performance.

How can you make your COVID-19 campaign optimizations? Let’s talk.

Now is as good of a time as ever for us digital marketers to stay proactive and continue to think of innovative ways to make sure your campaigns continue to be relevant. The decisions we make now in the short term will have lasting impacts on the future.

By making simple optimizations and spending a little extra time auditing your current messaging will allow you to swim with the stream rather than fighting against the current.

We hope these insights will help you out as you navigate that terrain. Contact us today and schedule a time to talk about how we can help make sure your campaigns are optimized to adapt to these changes in trends.