PCOM Marketing and Communications has created a new, program-specific ad campaign. The ads, which feature PCOM students, promote the clinical and school psychology programs, forensic medicine and organizational development and leadership. The campaign, which ran from October through November, was designed to increase attendance at the College’s graduate programs open house. The November graduate programs open house had the largest attendance to date with 229 prospective students.
“Once we get people in the door at our open house, the school sells itself,” say Associate Director, Marketing and Communications, Terri Blair. “Research shows that slightly over 50% of prospective students who come to our open house end up submitting applications.”
“This ad campaign is slightly different from our previous campaigns,” Ms. Blair explains. “We’ve made a major shift to online advertising. People are getting more of their information from the Web, so we’re running our ads on Philly.com, 6ABC.com and on Facebook. One great aspect of online advertising is the fact that we can track the success of our ads. We can see the number of interactions people have had with our ads, if they’ve clicked through to our Web site, what pages of our Web site they’ve viewed and how much time they spend looking at our site.”
PCOM has not abandoned traditional print advertising, but even that has a new digital component. The ads contain a QR (Quick Response) code - a type of bar code that can be read by a smartphone. When the user scans the QR code the PCOM Web site pops up. In addition to print and online advertising, the new campaign placed ads on Philadelphia buses and on 6ABC television.
