2021 Board Report
Employee resources toolkit and campaign
The marketing team created a new employee toolkit for faculty and staff who wish to participate in helping to drive enrollment. The toolkit includes a video message, as well as: key messages; social media posts and digital flyers; a new employee email signature, campaign hashtags; and a customizable community presentation
Results of enrollment marketing campaign – to date
In the last 30 days only, the enrollment marketing campaign has served more than 310,000 impressions.
Our general display ads were served more than 30,000 times, resulting in 12, 259 views:
Display ads that we targeted to the geographic areas of our feeder high schools made even more impressions:
In April, internet searches on our specific keywords resulted in 11,671 impressions with 233 qualified leads (direct phone calls or completion of the apply/request form online) with thousands more visits to our website:
And our social media ads reached more than 67,000 people in April.
Finally, our YouTube video was served more than 30,000 times.
That campaign has not resulted in direct leads but was a supportive campaign to spread awareness about the college.
Current search marketing ads are outperforming display ads at a rate of nearly 10 to 1. That data will be available in next month’s report. The exponential increase may be due to the fact that March and April visibility has spurred people to finally take action, or it may be that the timing is right and people are now ready to get more information or to apply.
Event Promotion
Marketing promoted the Explore LB virtual open house with paid advertising, postcards, a news release, and social media communication. The team also built an evergreen Explore website to share content with prospective students after the live event.
For CTE Signing Day, the marketing team developed a 45-minute program video, and then promoted the success of the event afterward through a news story, social media, and sharing the video.
Website Updates
The web team completed a more user-friendly admin panel for colleagues in Curriculum and Instruction, to enable them to update data in a consistent and more efficient manner.
On April 2 the new faculty bio pages went live. These new pages replaced the instructor websites which were coded in a language called ColdFusion, which is going away this year. The new bio pages pull demographic information from Banner* and match it to current CRN data so that pages are updated with current course information. In addition, the website links to the faculty member’s syllabus/i located in the community archive. Administrative staff have been trained to assist in updating custom information such as photos, bios, and custom tabs, which can be used by faculty to feature additional information.
*There are some remaining issues with this data, and there was no easy path to pull data for nonteaching faculty from Banner, so those pages were added manually. Marketing staff will work with Banner staff to hone this process for future updates.
Since going live with the new website July 1, Marketing and Communications lost 1.0 FTE web administrator, due to layoffs, and operated with 1.0 FTE web developer through the end of 2020. In January 2021, a new digital marketing strategist began at LBCC, but then the web developer unexpectedly left LBCC employment in April. Due to decreased staffing and increased need/virtual events due to the pandemic, Institutional Advancement is currently working with Information Services and LBCC leadership to explore shared responsibility and to determine the best path forward for web management at the college.
Storytelling and Public Relations
In April, the marketing team produced another issue of the community e-newsletter, LBCC Connects and shared out stories about the Board’s proclamation of Community College Awareness Month, faculty and student stories, the upcoming CARmencement ceremony, and more.
For May’s Give Day event, the marketing team created three small promotional videos
Vaccination Information
The LBCC website was updated with current COVID-19 information and vaccination information was shared throughout LBCC social media channels.
Media Coverage
April media coverage resulted in the following reach:
And share of voice:
keeps outpacing the number of returning users by a wide margin:
The most popular page views show that faculty, staff, and current students are accessing MyLB to get to college apps at the highest rate, btu after that we see pages that prospective and new students would likely be viewing.
Enrollment Marketing
The enrollment digital campaign reported on last month continues to outperform nearly all benchmarks. New digital assets for Facebook and Instagram were added to keep the campaigns fresh, increase impressions, and drive down costs. These included both static ads and video reels. This campaign runs through June so a final report will be available at the next meeting. The marketing team is currently working on a new enrollment campaign for fall 2021 to begin in July.
The marketing team created a video and translated it to Spanish for Juntos Family Day at OSU. The dayof participation ended up at 121 families totaling 424 students and parents coming from 47 middle and high schools across the state. Post-evaluation data from attendees shows that 80% of parents said their kids are likely to attend a two or four-year college, while 86% of student respondents said they were likely to attend a two or four-year college. The recorded sessions from this event are available at osujuntos.com, and will be promoted as an on-demand virtual event to all current and future Juntos cohorts through May 15, 2022, so even more families will see LBCC’s information.
CARmencement Promotion and Event Planning
In order to share information and publicly celebrate our graduates, a CARmencement 2020-2021 website was created at the short URL linnbenton.edu/carmencement with all logistical and event promo information, as well as grad lists for both 2020 and 2021. To promote sign ups, a carmencement postcard was mailed to the homes of about 1,500 class of 2020 and 2021 grads, and a social media campaign was launched. Much more activity is coming in early June.
Website Development, Public-facing and Intranet
Off-the-shelf intranet applications (Simplrr, MangoApps, Sharepoint and Jostle) were evaluated and priced out to present to leadership for a decision on how to move forward with a college intranet It was determined that an intranet committee would be formed to create a short-term solution using Google Docs and Google Drive until issues with website and intranet staffing are resolved and a shared management process between Marketing and Information Services is determined.
The results of the recent website survey were evaluated. A good deal of negative feedback revolved around website search and the inability to find items like forms. Staff is researching what it would take to institute Google Custom Search for higher education on the OU Campus platform.
Storytelling and Public Relations
The marketing team was proud to share a lot of really good information with the public in the month of May. The team produced another issue of LBCC Connects. Archived copies of this community e-newsletter are available online. The team also shared a story about LBCC’s second annual Give Day event, which raised more than $43,0000 compared to its $25,000 goal! That same story referenced the Advancement team’s national Paragon Award from the National Council of Marketing and Public Relations. The Fall Education Plan, approved May 13, went live on the home page the following day and served to help promote fall enrollment for those students who were waiting for a decision about fall classes. LBCC nursing students and their work staffing local
vaccination clinics were featured at the end of the month. All stories were shared on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter as well.
Media Coverage
May media coverage reached a potential 382,380 people:
Our top sources of coverage included:
Social Media (Owned) Traffic
Twitter:
• Total impressions: 12,500
• Total profile visits: 360
• Top Tweet: Give Day countdown post (682 impressions)
Instagram:
• Total reach: 12,300 accounts (up 182% compared to previous month)
• Total impressions: 46,098
• 253 profile visits
• 4 website taps
• Total content interactions: 265 (-31.4%)
• Total followers: 1,227 (up 1.4%)
• Top post: Nursing/vaccine story post.
Facebook:
• Total reach: 24,327 (up 17%)
• Total page views: 674
• New page likes: 28
• Post engagements (clicks, shares, etc.): 1,454 (up 17%)
• Total 3-second video views: 1,492 (up 120% compared to previous month)
• Top post: Give Day countdown (481 people reached, 7 engagements)
Website Traffic
In May our overall web traffic decreased by 1%. We had 39,000 users visit 106,000 times. Some interesting statistics include:
Acquisition of new visitors: LBCC got nearly 14,000 new visitors via organic search, meaning that we continue to show up well on Google and other search engines, as a nod to the accessibility of our website and the efforts to keep it up-todate and with appropriate metatags and keywords. We also got nearly 1100 new visitors through paid search, 688 new visitors through social media posts, and nearly 350 through display ads.
The top pages visited:
