We do: Advertising CMU
Micheal Armistead, middle, films an advertisement for hiring students after graduation. (Courtesy of University Communications)
After 10 years of enrollment decline, the Central Michigan University fall enrollment statistics finally showed an end in sight: a slight increase in enrollment for the fall semester in 2024.
Part of the effort to right the ship comes from the university’s marketing and the various strategies it engages to recruit potential students.
According to CMU’s 2024-25 operating budget, University Communications (UComm) has some money to work with when it comes to digital strategy and marketing:
- Digital strategy: About $1.3 million
- Marketing: Over $1.2 million
Michael Armistead is the coordinator of multimedia content at CMU. If you’ve seen someone appear in a burst of confetti in a CMU ad on Instagram, it’s probably him.
“Everyone that works in the university, our main concern is recruitment,” Armistead said. “So we collaborate closely with Jennifer DeHaemers (vice president of Student Recruitment and Retention) and the admissions office to coordinate our messaging to put out on platforms.
“We have seen, for the first time in about 10 years, with both the efforts of my office and the efforts of admissions, the first uptick in CMU enrollment in about a decade. So what we’re doing works."
He said that a lot of campaigns feature “epic drone shots,” inspirational music and phrases like “Pursue your passion.” But students have other concerns about college, like cost and career readiness.
“We’re (in a) really unique position in that we effectively brought a marketing agency on CMU’s campus of CMU administrators,” Armistead said.
So where does that marketing and digital strategy money get spent? And is it giving a return on investment?
Social media and search engines
Deputy Chief Marketing Officer Abigail Dean said the target audience is anyone between the ages of 12 to 25 with a focus on people in highly populated parts of the state of Michigan.
“We stay in the digital space, because it is the best way to target and to make sure we’re in front of the people that we want to be in front of,” Dean said. “When we think about who the audience is for that advertising, they are multiple screen users, they are at once on their laptops, have their phone next to them and (are) watching something streaming on the T.V.”
Dean said UComm creates several different ads for social media sites. UComm's main focus is on social media sites with a high number of younger users, such as Instagram.
The university maintains active profiles on seven different social media sites including:
- TikTok
- X
- Threads
- YouTube
When targeting students online, Dean said they use “keywords” to make sure their name pops up first in the search results. Many companies and brands will buy certain keywords for a specific price so their name can show up first.
The prices of these words can vary based on their popularity and competition. Dean said CMU competes with many colleges on keywords, driving up the price. The cost of these keywords can be anywhere from $0.01 to $36.51. These keywords can be as simple as “college tours” are as complex as “Central Michigan University.”
Dean said UComm will pay for different keywords depending on the time of year and campaign. In the fall, UCOMM will focus on keywords like "college tours," "seeing campuses" or "best college campus in Michigan" when high school students will be starting their college search.
This is around the time UComm pushes out ads urging students to apply to CMU.
“It’s a factor of how popular that keyword phrase is and how many competitors are bidding for that,” Dean said.
Keywords that are more generic and popular will be more expensive, as many other colleges will want them.
In recent years, Dean said the competition for keywords is getting more serious. Through “competitive conquesting,” many colleges have bought the branded keyword “Central Michigan University” so their college can show up along with CMU. This has caused the keyword for CMU’s name to become more expensive.
Armistead explained that there are a few metrics on social media that show whether an ad, or a whole campaign, is successful. One is particularly significant.
“What we look for with our social media content, the main metric that tells us that it’s working well is what we call conversions,” he said.
He said a conversion is each instance where an individual comes across an advertisement or organic post and is interested enough to click on it and make their way to the CMU website to learn more. Those are valuable, Armistead explained, because they can lead to things like booking tours, checking out programs or even applying to be a student.
Ad targeting
When CMU’s budget planning committee sits down to decide where funds need to be allocated throughout the university, they will decide on a base budget for UComm.
Once this is decided, UComm will determine their top priorities for advertising in order to get as many views as possible.
“It’s a matter of (asking) ‘Where are we going to find the most amount of people looking to do the things we want them to do?’” Dean said.
She said there are five main campaigns, which include awareness, application, visits, deposits and Innovation and Online. UComm will start pushing ads within these campaigns during the different times of year they know certain information will be needed from traditional-age students and transfers.
Traditional media
Despite the larger focus on online advertising, UComm still utilizes traditional media. Dean said these advertisements will often be through their awareness campaign, with the goal of getting CMU’s name out to as many people as possible.
Billboards and commercials are costly, so Dean said UComm will specifically target audiences in highly populated areas in Michigan, such as Grand Rapids, Lansing, the Saginaw/Flint area and Detroit.
“What our philosophy is, is trying to have what we would call (the) dominant share of voice within DMAs (designated market areas),” she said. “For awareness, we are just trying to get the ... largest amount of eyeballs for the smallest amount of money we can.”
UComm also considers the types of high schools that are within an area. CMU may have a higher draw of applications from certain high schools over others. She said CMU will often place ads near top-feeder high schools, which are places that often draw in a lot of potential CMU students.
This may come in the shape of billboards. When looking at different locations for billboards, UComm will look at the side of the highway the billboard is facing, as well as the amount of traffic that drives by during a given day.
“We’ll do the math of ‘How can we arrange (the ad) so we’re getting the most amount of views, (and) the right views?’” Dean said. “We want to be in the places where we have top feeder high schools and community colleges.”
Advertising on a smaller scale
Not all of CMU’s advertising comes from UComm. Colleges within the university may also allocate part of their budget to advertising that is specific to their programs.
“Advertising dollars are not centralized,” Dean said. “The majority of them are in this office, but there are ad dollars that folks spend throughout the university.”
Jefferson Campbell, the dean of the College of Arts and Media (CAM), uses part of his college’s budget to advertise programs internally.
Campbell and UComm meet once a year to go over the college’s priorities for that year and discuss some of the things they may want to advertise. UComm will then create an ad that targets those priorities and check back in with Campbell to make sure it hits the mark.
Campbell allocates around $5,000 to $10,000 yearly for marketing, and the college will try to “piggyback” the focuses of UComm. When UComm focuses advertising in a certain region, CAM will also target that area.
“I’m a big believer in general awareness,” Campbell said. “One of my goals was to bring as much attention as possible to … what our students and faculty are doing now.”
Like UComm, Campbell said CAM also focuses on recruitment and awareness, but in a different way. Instead of using social media and commercials, Campbell said CAM tries to personalize recruitment. It often sends recruiters out to different high school events and provides personal tours to potential students that they wouldn’t be able to get during a normal group tour.
“Recruitment is important, and just having people understand what amazing things are happening (is important,)” Campbell said. “If we don’t tell them, (recruitment) doesn’t just happen on its own.”
