Response to COVID-19

Shortly after the pandemic began, I partnered with HCC's Director of Marketing & Public Relations to quickly develop and launch a new institutional marketing campaign within a few weeks. The results supported a 16% college-wide year-over-year enrollment increase when most community colleges were experiencing significant declines due to the pandemic.  

Business Objectives: 1) Enrollment of new students and 2) Retention of current students

Creative Summary: Your World is On Hold. Your Future Isn't. 

Featured Tactics 

Direct Mail

• Postcards targeted former/current students and residential areas that generate high enrollment
• ​Direct mail letters sent to target audiences

Email Marketing

• Targeted former/current students divided by segment, parents of kids summer program, and business community
• Business community message shared by partners including Howard County Economic Development Authority

Social Media

​Goals:

1. Build sense of community
   
2. Keep community engaged in brand
   

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​​Coordinated production of user-generated content to support goals:

• ​Painting Instructor Demo
• Pickleball Tips

Video

• ​Ran as video on demand, over the top, and traditional cable TV programming
• Brand message-centric to feed top of funnel landing page
• Additional video ads created for student retention campaign

​Digital Ads

• Two campaigns: 1) General awareness and 2) Student retention
• Tactics included keyword search, social media (static and video ads), targeted display, retargeting, addressable geofencing, and CRM targeting 

Web Content 

• Campaign landing pages created
• Key program and process-oriented pages significantly revised

More Information

Additional Tactics Deployed

• Print advertising
• Messages on Naviance (American college and career readiness software) 
• Community outreach
  
  

Primary Audiences

• ​Adults looking to improve career prospects, un-/under-employed, seeking professional development
• High school juniors, starting college search process 
• Current college students and high school grads (seniors), plans have changed
• Current HCC students