Three times in the past two weeks, I’ve had conversations or e-mail exchanges where Carnegie clients discussing our PC&U lead generation platform referred to the service as an “advertisement in a magazine.”
I died a little bit on the inside each time.
Yes, as a PC&U participant, your school is featured in a print magazine sent to high school juniors all over the country, and I don’t want to downplay the value of that kind of exposure. But the value of your investment goes far beyond that.
If PC&U is a car, the magazine is the shiny paint, racing stripes, and spoiler. CollegeXpress.com is what’s under the hood.
CollegeXpress is the website where PC&U participants have interactive, lead-generating profiles. Those profiles have already received more than 2.5 million unique visitors this year—more than half of whom found the site organically. Those are prospective students and parents, high school counselors and teachers, and other influencers looking for information. And by the end of this year, we will have delivered about 6 million qualified leads across our PC&U clients.
In addition to school profiles, CollegeXpress features content contributed by high school and college students, high school counselors, college and university administrators, and Carnegie’s editorial staff, all aimed at guiding prospective students through the college search process and helping them find the school that is the right fit. (More than 275 articles and blogs have been posted in 227 days so far this year.) There are also college and scholarship search tools, which match right-fit prospects with your institution and allow them to easily request information. And there are some 800 lists ranking colleges on criteria ranging from the conventional—academics and athletics—to more unconventional categories like the level of supernatural activity on campus. It’s fun and informative, and the quality of the content adds weight to the presence of participating schools.
Carnegie goes to great lengths to make sure CollegeXpress remains the most trafficked site of its kind. We regularly ping our database of more than three million college-bound students via e-mail, and we leverage our industry-leading expertise in digital advertising and SEO to ensure students continue to find the site on their own. It’s clear they do.
So, think of PC&U like you would anything else in your marketing arsenal. It’s not just print, and it’s not just e-mail, and it’s not just online. It all works together to reach prospective students across multiple channels.
You’re not buying an advertisement in a magazine—you’re investing in a presence on an integrated platform that reaches prospective students everywhere they are.
Want to learn more? Let us know if you are interested in generating leads with PC&U and getting your institution’s profile on CollegeXpress.
Follow Eric on Twitter @HigherEdEric