#83 - Paid Ads for Higher Ed - What Works and What Doesn’t
w/ Kathleen Barth
Digital Product Manager at 3 Enrollment Marketing
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SHOW NOTES
In this episode, John Azoni sits down with Kathleen Barth, Digital Product Manager at 3 Enrollment Marketing, to discuss the ever-changing landscape of paid digital advertising for higher ed institutions. Kathleen brings a wealth of experience from the entertainment industry, having worked with Netflix, Warner Brothers, and Disney, before transitioning to enrollment marketing.
They explore the differences between organic and paid marketing, the increasing costs of digital ads, and how higher ed institutions can make the most of their advertising budgets. Kathleen also shares insights on why hyper-targeting is becoming more difficult, the impact of privacy regulations on paid media, and practical strategies for running effective digital campaigns.
Key Takeaways:
The Shift from Organic to Paid: Kathleen shares her journey from organic marketing to paid ads and the unique challenges that come with running paid campaigns.
Why Digital Advertising Costs Keep Rising: As more brands shift budgets to digital, ad prices go up. Kathleen explains why colleges need to plan for increasing costs.
Targeting in 2024: Platforms like Meta are limiting hyper-targeting, making broad audience strategies more important than ever.
Lessons from Entertainment Marketing: Kathleen’s experience in Hollywood marketing offers valuable insights into storytelling and audience engagement.
Tips for Enrollment Marketing Teams: Practical strategies for maximizing return on ad spend (ROAS) and creating ads that drive student engagement.
Connect with Kathleen Barth:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kfbarth/
3 Enrollment Marketing: https://www.3enrollment.com
Connect with John:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnazoni
Website: https://unveild.tv
Newsletter: https://unveild.tv/newsletter
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Transcript (done with AI so only about 90% accurate):
00:00:00:04 - 00:00:23:20
John Azoni
My guest today is Kathleen Bath. Kathleen has been working in digital marketing since Facebook first opened business pages. She's worked with multiple entertainment companies such as Netflix, Warner Brothers and Disney while living in Los Angeles and now in Massachusetts. She currently works at three enrollment marketing as the digital product manager, focused on running paid digital advertising for undergraduate programs.
00:00:23:21 - 00:00:25:11
John Azoni
Kathleen, welcome to the show.
00:00:25:22 - 00:00:31:01
Kathleen Barth
Hi, John. Is this where I say the happy to be here? Yeah, like I'm on NPR.
00:00:32:00 - 00:00:34:22
John Azoni
And when we sign off, everyone says, Yeah, it was a blast.
00:00:35:11 - 00:00:37:15
Kathleen Barth
Oh, yeah, it was a blast, man. Any time.
00:00:38:23 - 00:00:57:18
John Azoni
So, yeah. Well, thanks for being here. So we had Matt Hames on a couple of weeks ago and after we stopped recording he was like, You know what? You should get Kathleen on the show. Since we did, you know, organic SEO strategies here. So. But you're going to talk about paid ads. And I was like, That is exactly what I want to learn about.
00:00:58:02 - 00:01:01:20
John Azoni
So that's an area that I have a lot of questions and not a lot of answers in. So.
00:01:02:11 - 00:01:24:03
Kathleen Barth
So it's one of these things when I moved from the organic site to the paid site, I really struggled to be able to learn it myself because unless you have the budget and the set up, my mom is a e-book publisher, so I would set up like e-book ads for her on Facebook as a way to kind of just get used to the ad system.
00:01:24:11 - 00:01:43:09
Kathleen Barth
But it's not the same as organic, where you can just kind of see what works and hopes for the best. Unless you happen to have like $10,000 lying around that you just want to burn onto something. Right. Have to have somebody give you the trust for the first time. And also it's very, very different depending upon what industry you're in.
00:01:43:23 - 00:02:02:18
John Azoni
Yeah. So my experience with paid ads starts because I'm an abstract painter. And so years ago I first tried to learn the meta. Well, it wasn't called better than it was the Facebook platform for ads and I had was giving away like a free print or something like that. And I was like, Ooh, I'm going to put some money behind this.
00:02:03:02 - 00:02:28:02
John Azoni
And people are just going to like, sign up for my newsletter. I mean, the fact that I could like, pay and put it in front of people that buy art, I'm like, That's amazing. This is going to go crazy. And not a single person signed up for my newsletter. That single person bought the print. And that's when I realized that, you know, this is actually a lot a lot harder than just setting some audience targeting and, you know, throwing an image out into the world.
00:02:28:15 - 00:02:29:01
Kathleen Barth
Yeah.
00:02:29:12 - 00:02:35:15
John Azoni
I don't know if that's your experience as well. What was it like when you were first starting to learn? What did you learn the hard way?
00:02:36:06 - 00:03:05:02
Kathleen Barth
I think that all of this is there used to be a if you build it, they will come situation. That's certainly true for the beginning of my career in organic marketing, there didn't need to be a differentiation between people who were graphic designers and copy editors, or certainly not paid media because Facebook wasn't providing ads. I could just do it all by myself because if I put up a page for something, I was working in movies at the time.
00:03:05:02 - 00:03:30:10
Kathleen Barth
So that's a relatively easy ask. If I say, Hey, you want to check out The Hunger Games movie? Yeah, immediately. Every person who was on that platform as it was slowly getting adopted outside of colleges, they were like, Yeah, I want to know about this movie. That sounds great. And I think that's also true for the beginning of advertising, when there was less competition and it was easier to reach your audience really quickly and cheaply.
00:03:30:23 - 00:03:56:18
Kathleen Barth
Post the height of the pandemic, the last dregs of media that was being used on print and a good chunk of what was being used on TV got moved to digital because people weren't going out. So it wasn't being used on things like bus signs anymore. That was going to happen eventually, but it really speeded everything up. So every year the cost goes up.
00:03:56:18 - 00:04:24:11
Kathleen Barth
Every year more people put money into digital ads. Every year you have more competition. And that's just kind of the way things go. There's no magic way to get around that system. You have to expect that your cost is going to go up. Your ability to hyper target is going to be limited, both because places like Metro got in trouble with the FCC and then they also just don't want to offer that level of targeting anymore.
00:04:24:21 - 00:04:58:17
Kathleen Barth
You used to be able to target based on other TV shows that people had liked on Facebook. Yeah. And that was something that they were slowly getting rid of over time. And now it's like you can target people in such and such. It's still a lot more than you can do anywhere else. But it's age, maybe an interest, maybe a life stage location, and far less of the super, super specific stuff, partially because they couldn't fulfill that many people and they want your money.
00:04:59:12 - 00:05:08:13
Kathleen Barth
So it's not in their best interest to say, yeah, you can target these 100 people because then they aren't going to get all the budget that you put for it.
00:05:08:23 - 00:05:15:04
John Azoni
Right? Yeah, absolutely. All right. So, Kathleen, tell us something that people would be surprised to know about you.
00:05:15:22 - 00:05:40:21
Kathleen Barth
I don't know if it's surprised so much, but fair warning. If you see this for video, your chances of seeing a cat but are extremely high. I'm peering out of the corner of my eyes to see there are multiple cats and I live in a loft apartment so there's no door to kick them out. And I hope that you forgive whichever one decides to come and rub against the microphone.
00:05:42:01 - 00:06:03:20
John Azoni
We've had our share of cats make cameos on the show, so you're in good company. All right. So talk about your background, because we briefly mentioned that you worked in the film industry, Netflix and all that kind of stuff. I want to hear about your background because now you're in higher ed and applying all that stuff that you learned in the film industry to higher ed, which I thought was a fascinating connection when we had our pre call.
00:06:03:20 - 00:06:04:15
John Azoni
So tell me about that.
00:06:05:03 - 00:06:27:10
Kathleen Barth
Yeah, So graduated from college, couldn't find a job. It was the height of the economic collapse of that time period and one of the only things that set me apart was that I was young and knew how to use these new fangled tools like Facebook, which people with lots of experience because it was a college only platform, they didn't know how to use it.
00:06:27:22 - 00:06:58:12
Kathleen Barth
So that kind of got me started with literally the very first places that were doing any kind of social media marketing as their primary business. And we started with doing Go spreading for celebrities on Twitter and Facebook. And then eventually that turned into working on movies. And then I left that agency and I went on to a number of different places, and I was doing streaming television, broadcast television and film.
00:06:59:01 - 00:07:29:12
Kathleen Barth
There was so much happening as streaming was a brand new thing that there was tons of business. This is another thing that post pandemic has really died off. The golden age of television has disappeared as all these places have realized. They don't make very much money like Netflix mostly operates at a loss constantly, and the thought was with the Disney plus's of the world, they would, you know, immediately get ten bajillion dollars overnight.
00:07:29:12 - 00:07:59:01
Kathleen Barth
But you're paying like $19 a month maybe, right? And you have to get people all over the world. And it costs a lot to make a good television show that people have, you know, expectations for in terms of costs. So. Right. I saw the writing on the wall for that. And I had been laid off by a company that got bought by Warner Brothers who immediately turned around and was like, Actually, we don't want you after all.
00:07:59:11 - 00:08:01:22
John Azoni
And then them.
00:08:02:10 - 00:08:18:07
Kathleen Barth
Yeah. Yes. So realizing that entertainment was going to be less of a concern and that the higher I went up the ladder, the harder it was for me to get compensated for my time, because it very much as a like you get to work in a cool industry.
00:08:18:07 - 00:08:18:16
John Azoni
Yeah.
00:08:18:21 - 00:08:25:01
Kathleen Barth
So we're going to pay you like $10 in a shoestring. And if you don't take it, that college kid will take so.
00:08:25:12 - 00:08:39:13
John Azoni
Much to working with you, doing video editing for one of the streaming platforms. And the attitude was kind of like, This is a privilege. But I'm like, Yeah, but I can't be like up at like three in the morning making, you know, dropping everything and overhauled this movie trailer.
00:08:40:04 - 00:09:01:09
Kathleen Barth
The amount of movie trailers that I had to wait for. I remember like calling my boss in tears because I had been told to wait for a movie trailer to post an immediately and it was 4 a.m. and it had not been sent yet. And she's like, You need to go to bed. She was a very good boss.
00:09:01:23 - 00:09:28:01
Kathleen Barth
But yeah, so like I said, I saw the writing on the wall and knew that I wanted to move into paid. I went to another agency that had just one entertainment client so they could say, Oh, well, she knows what she's talking about here, but mostly move into consumer products and auto. So suddenly I was working on tens of millions of dollars of paid advertising, and then I ended up at three enrollment.
00:09:28:01 - 00:09:59:02
Kathleen Barth
And we don't deal in tens of millions of dollars of paid advertising. And that makes the strategy a lot more important when every single penny counts. And it's been interesting to see this back and forth over my career working for tiny YouTube channels that were just trying to get a couple more views with their ten extra dollars. And then Toyota, which is like, okay, yeah, like we'll probably make some money from these cars.
00:09:59:02 - 00:10:01:13
Kathleen Barth
So here's like 15 mil. I guess that'll be enough.
00:10:01:19 - 00:10:24:05
John Azoni
Right? Yeah, just pocket change. So talk about your. Oh, I want to hear from you. Just kind of give us a lay of the land from a higher ed context. YouTube versus Meta versus LinkedIn. What are you seeing are the strengths and weaknesses of each platforms. How do you decide like what to focus on with your clients?
00:10:24:05 - 00:10:49:18
Kathleen Barth
A lot of it is depending upon what their goal is. We're very focused on conversions to either an application or filling out RFI requests for information. We can also focus on RSVP to visit campus sometimes because people are using something like the Common App. We're focused on whether they click to submit that application and after that point we can't track it.
00:10:50:06 - 00:11:13:16
Kathleen Barth
But in a perfect world, it's entirely about applications and profiles. And you want a student or a parent to fill out that form that really limits what platforms will work well for you. The number one platform, it's Google, Google Search in particular. We don't work with Google Display. And in our experiments with display, it's been kind of a mixed bag.
00:11:14:03 - 00:11:38:06
Kathleen Barth
But Google search requires a certain amount of people opting in because they're looking for search terms that are already related to your school. So the person who sees an ad for your school after searching in colleges near me is way more likely to follow through on clicking and filling out a form than someone who just sees an ad.
00:11:38:16 - 00:12:02:03
Kathleen Barth
And they might be the right demographic. They might be in the right location, but you're still kind of just throwing out a lure into nothing as opposed to knowing that someone is specifically looking for undergraduate programs in our case. So that kind of puts Google at the top of the heap. Underneath that is better. Facebook is really good for reaching parents.
00:12:02:12 - 00:12:29:13
Kathleen Barth
Instagram is the closest that you can probably get to reaching students. Instagram is a little passé for like the young kids. Whatever starts being cool with the kids that are like age 13, you can assume by the time they start hitting your age range for schools, like they will have abandoned that platform. So they're fully off Facebook.
00:12:30:00 - 00:12:30:20
John Azoni
Oh yeah.
00:12:30:20 - 00:12:56:01
Kathleen Barth
They have some Instagram, but as you can imagine is mostly Ticktalk. Yeah, and so meta because of that super specific targeting, having a good amount of mix of parents and students who are active on the platform, that gives you more options to get in front of the right people and get them to click through. After that, you end up with YouTube and LinkedIn, YouTube.
00:12:56:09 - 00:13:20:06
Kathleen Barth
You're not going to get any action from somebody watching a bunch of videos on YouTube. You watch videos on YouTube. I'm sure almost everybody does. You sit there these days, they're loading up every ad break with multiple ads, so you'll watch a ten minute video. It probably starts with an ad and you're already annoyed at that ad and you're definitely not going to click on it.
00:13:20:06 - 00:13:41:02
Kathleen Barth
Right. And then it gets to the next set of ads as you just kind of mindlessly are letting the algorithm fill in whatever is going to be next. And you're not clicking on them, right? You're definitely not clicking and going on to a website and then filling out a form that's just not something that happens on a passive platform like YouTube.
00:13:41:13 - 00:14:19:23
Kathleen Barth
That doesn't mean it's not useful. And you could potentially get a handful of people that are going to be submitting a form, but it's awareness. If you want to have a video up about how great your nursing program is or your beautiful new campus have like a 32nd to one minute ad and do that, it's one of the few platforms also where you can have a long form ad again because of this move to increase the amount of advertising that YouTube shows you per like every 30 minutes, it used to be that you could do these automatic skippable ones.
00:14:20:09 - 00:14:32:00
Kathleen Barth
So you would have, you know, 5 to 10 seconds to kind of get information in. You don't have to do that anymore. So you can do longform. But I'd say if you're over a minute, that's pushing it.
00:14:32:08 - 00:14:58:04
John Azoni
Yeah, yeah. I imagine, you know, and I sort of pick on the drone footage, you know, the cliche of like the drone footage and, you know, your journey starts here and stuff like that a lot. But that's where I actually see that being really valuable is for a YouTube ad where it just gets some vibes out there, you know, like total awareness, you know, have, you know, one of these poetic voiceovers and, you know, quick clips of basketball players and whatever else, something like that.
00:14:58:04 - 00:15:01:21
John Azoni
That actually is where I would say do one of those for sure.
00:15:02:10 - 00:15:24:23
Kathleen Barth
Absolutely. And please make sure that it has audio because everybody is on their phone at the same time, too. So nobody's looking at the screen and reading all the text, and especially not during an ad, they're like half paying attention and they've gone into the kitchen to get a snack, all that kind of stuff. So it needs to really have a voiceover.
00:15:25:12 - 00:15:32:14
Kathleen Barth
And if you can't do a voiceover, at least put some good music behind it. Don't let it be silent. But voiceover preferably.
00:15:32:19 - 00:15:53:06
John Azoni
Yeah, I agree. I get annoyed with YouTube ads and I'm just like, I could just pay for premium, but I'm like, too stubborn. I don't want to use. I just like, Oh, that's half. My experience with YouTube is like, I'm annoyed that I have to sit through this. I usually get all these like video tools, motion graphics, you know, ads, Wix, all the Wix website ads.
00:15:53:09 - 00:16:00:11
John Azoni
Oh God, those drove me nuts. I haven't gotten as many of those lately, but yeah, it's obviously an interruption based marketing on YouTube.
00:16:00:18 - 00:16:01:03
Kathleen Barth
Yeah.
00:16:01:18 - 00:16:22:02
John Azoni
What would you say is the most effective form and I know your answer is probably to start with it depends, but in general, if you could only have one creative medium to use for all of your schools, what would it be for ad creative? Like is it text? Is it like a still image? Is it a video? What would that be?
00:16:22:15 - 00:16:46:02
Kathleen Barth
I don't think this is even an it depends situation. It's a video. It's always video. We have moved past the time of still frames. There is some potential for it. I found that LinkedIn does better with still content people for whatever reason are more likely to click through. I think it has to do with the choice of attention that they're giving something.
00:16:46:10 - 00:17:09:12
Kathleen Barth
Okay, I quickly get the message and then I can click verses. I watched this video, so I feel like I've given it the attention already. Mm hmm. Your videos are only going to be watched to 1 to 2 seconds maximum. So it's not super different from having a still image, but movement catches the eye. People catch the eye.
00:17:09:19 - 00:17:22:09
Kathleen Barth
You don't have a choice to be showing the beautiful brochure photos anymore. You have to get some good video of students on campus doing something interesting or better yet, talking to the camera.
00:17:22:20 - 00:17:35:12
John Azoni
Yeah, that's interesting because like every second counts in a video paid video ad, like, it really matters. Like the difference between someone watching like 3 seconds versus 5 seconds is actually pretty significant.
00:17:35:23 - 00:17:55:23
Kathleen Barth
And you won't see that most of the time. That's why I say YouTube is kind of an interesting outlier when it comes to longer form video. Go and ask whoever is running your paid ads to tell you what the average watch time is. You can look at that information on pretty much every platform. I know for us on Meta, it's one second.
00:17:56:07 - 00:17:57:10
John Azoni
Yeah. Oh, wow.
00:17:57:10 - 00:18:04:21
Kathleen Barth
People are scrolling. It doesn't even have to show up fully on the screen. If it's over 50% on screen, then it counts as a view.
00:18:05:08 - 00:18:28:14
John Azoni
Okay. Interesting. So one of the things that I've seen in Higher Ed is on LinkedIn is these email messages. These are real hot and I get them all the time. You know, I'm 40, so they assume that I might want to go back to school and get my whatever business degree. I like the ones that are that there are like surprise emails that are like, Hey, do you want to learn how to become a videographer?
00:18:28:14 - 00:18:31:17
John Azoni
Like, I'm way ahead of you.
00:18:32:09 - 00:18:35:15
Kathleen Barth
Yeah. Yeah, I think you did bad targeting. Yeah.
00:18:36:10 - 00:18:44:09
John Azoni
So what was like, what's your take on them? I've seen people pick on these like on LinkedIn, but you might have a positive view on these. Do they work, Do they not work?
00:18:44:22 - 00:19:07:19
Kathleen Barth
Confession I haven't done any of these campaigns before, right. I've only done displayed on LinkedIn literally today. I'm talking about potentially putting together an email campaign. So all I can talk about it from is the consumer perspective. I just ignore them. Yeah, I see them at the top of my email and I'm like, Oh, it's an ad. It's very obviously an ad.
00:19:08:07 - 00:19:31:04
Kathleen Barth
It has, you know, maybe if it's something subject wise that sounds right. But I think you have to be super careful about your targeting and make sure that you don't come across as an ad. And even then, I have no idea what the actual effectiveness is. Probably a lot better than display ads. But the bigger problem with LinkedIn is it's expensive.
00:19:31:11 - 00:20:03:19
Kathleen Barth
And by expensive I don't mean like, Oh well, it's like $3. I mean, for 1000 impressions On Metta, you're saying 1 to $5 maximum LinkedIn starts at $15. MM That is a huge leap they're talking about. We have a very premium set of people. They tend to be higher income. So that led to a lot of my auto clients putting quite a bit of money towards LinkedIn because these are the people who are going to buy a brand new car.
00:20:04:01 - 00:20:34:22
Kathleen Barth
MM But you really have to weigh whether LinkedIn is the best place to reach who you want to reach. Maybe if it's a graduate program, if it's an undergrad, you're program. I don't think they're there. And I would mostly use it to target existing professionals and existing industries and use their hyper targeted job title function. Companies function whatever vertical they might be in.
00:20:34:22 - 00:21:02:09
Kathleen Barth
And even then, I don't know exactly what your success rate is going to be for anything as deep as leads you know, filling out a form. Yeah, I'll see. I'm literally going to see how things work out, but I think LinkedIn presents themself as premium and because they do that, they can rely on fewer customers. And if more people turn around and say it's not worth it, it's not going to affect them as much.
00:21:02:23 - 00:21:14:07
Kathleen Barth
So it could be a total scam. All I really know from the display side is we got decent click through rates. Other than that, it's just too expensive to be worth it.
00:21:14:16 - 00:21:39:14
John Azoni
Yeah, it is very expensive. And one of the main things which I think these email messages could be more successful if they could be the catalyst for a conversation. But like as in, I never actually tried to talk to any of these people, but when you know higher ed influencer out in the UK. Kyle Campbell he complained about these email messages recently which is what kind of put me on to this question and he's like, it's ridiculous that you can't respond to them.
00:21:39:14 - 00:21:59:04
John Azoni
So if I had a question, there's no way to respond. And I was like, And then I went and looked. I'm like, Yeah, this is dumb. Like you're in my inbox. Like, I mean, it's not the school's fault, but yeah, it's like, yeah, it's just like that. Just one considerate where like, you would think you use email to start a conversation, but you don't use it as like a one way thing.
00:21:59:04 - 00:22:17:00
John Azoni
But that's like how LinkedIn is set up is to just like blast a message and they either click or they don't. And that's annoying to me. Okay, so in our pre call, you mentioned the need for a strong visual asset library. So I want to talk about that. I want to talk about like should you have low fi video footage or photos?
00:22:17:00 - 00:22:21:05
John Azoni
Should you have more hi fi stuff? Like what's your opinions on visual asset libraries?
00:22:21:16 - 00:22:56:11
Kathleen Barth
This is an it depends answer. So you almost got it last time. Certain platforms are better with low fi, certain audiences are better with low fi. It's good to have a mix if you decide to run ads on Snapchat or Ticktalk or even Instagram towards students having a more lo fi, less polished video ad will work in your favor because people are so primed to just automatically skip past anything that they can visually see as an ad.
00:22:56:23 - 00:23:03:20
Kathleen Barth
If you go on to YouTube with a lo fi ad, it's going to look like you aren't serious, right?
00:23:03:20 - 00:23:04:06
John Azoni
Yeah.
00:23:04:15 - 00:23:27:10
Kathleen Barth
For sure. There's a way to do like an influencer video thing on YouTube, but for the most part you want something more polished, and if you're showing something that's not polished to a parent, they're just going to have a different perspective on things that it shows that you're not as serious college, that it's not, you know, worth whatever set of money.
00:23:27:10 - 00:24:01:16
Kathleen Barth
It seems kind of scammy. I mean, people who are in the parent range are in my age range. So we're not unused to influencer lo fi style videos, but we expect different things from different types of companies. And I do wonder about the Gen Z kids, whether they just will totally ignore anything that looks polished. But I'd say definitely as student age, they're less likely to pay attention if it seems polished, whereas the parents are likely to penalize you for that same type of creative.
00:24:01:16 - 00:24:22:04
John Azoni
Yeah, that's interesting. And there's a lot of talk about like, especially with COVID and the rise of Zoom and virtual calls and stuff like that, there's so much more acceptance of low fi video, especially in marketing advertising. And I agree and I'm like, I'm all for it. I'm like, Hey, if you want to give us some B-roll that you shot, that some student shot on their iPhone, great.
00:24:22:14 - 00:24:43:00
John Azoni
Let's yeah, let's do it. But I think the caveat is that, like, you know, if I go on someone's website and that hero video or whatever, it's like some video that's kind of on one of the main pages is really low fi that really reflects on the product. To me, it's interesting how context specific it really is.
00:24:43:00 - 00:25:23:10
Kathleen Barth
Yes, absolutely. I mean, you've seen videos on YouTube for like scammy sounding supplement companies. Yeah. And you can immediately visualize what's wrong. You're like, this does not look quality enough for me to count that this as a real company that does real things. And, you know, from the videographers side and I know from my bits and pieces of actually doing production that it's kind of hard to get that nice glossy feel of a real professional production with real sound, real lighting, all of the things that make it look professional.
00:25:23:17 - 00:25:53:10
Kathleen Barth
And it's not hard to be just enough off that it's visually obvious when you've done the final product. So don't just entrust this to interns or undergrads who have volunteered. You have to find a mix of both. And that normally means at some point hiring professionals. I know most of the schools are hiring professionals to do brochure photos and whatnot, so also hire them to do like some good video.
00:25:53:20 - 00:26:06:02
Kathleen Barth
Yeah, it's very hard for us to get really strong video from clients. I'd say that that's a pretty consistent issue and we're so thankful when we actually do get that video.
00:26:06:14 - 00:26:33:15
John Azoni
Okay, good to know. I like it. So talk about the back end targeting versus the ad creative yourself, because that's what my assumption like starting paid ads, you know years ago and I've had various like dips into it. I'm in a I'm currently in a LinkedIn paid ad like kind of learning that platform. But like my assumption not going into it is always like if I can just like put any message in front of the right person, like, like they're interacting with my organic stuff.
00:26:33:15 - 00:26:43:21
John Azoni
So why wouldn't they interact with, you know, the paid stuff? And so it really becomes, you know, I assume that it's like, oh, you just tweak the back end a little bit and this'll work. But what's your opinion on that?
00:26:44:09 - 00:27:21:16
Kathleen Barth
I think people like moving the dials and pressing the buttons more than they do, dealing with the harder stuff of making what people visually see as ad creative stronger. I can move it so that, you know, you're only hitting such and such zipcode instead of the entire geographic area of some town. But that's not going to make much of a difference if the ad is not good and I have to have multiple ads so that I can look through them and say, this one's really hitting, we need to make more like this, and you have to be really proactive about it.
00:27:22:05 - 00:27:45:05
Kathleen Barth
I think what has helped me the most with my interest really mixed background in social media is that I was on the creative side. I was the person who was project managing all of this, producing all of the advertising that went into all these movies and TV shows. And then I went into the paint side where they hand over the creative for the most part.
00:27:45:05 - 00:28:11:08
Kathleen Barth
Three does create the creative internally, so it's nice to be able to have an actual discussion with the creative team. But most paid media agencies, they take the creative and then they run with it and they aren't necessarily paying that much attention to what works or what doesn't work because they may not know and it's not their responsibility because it's not with their agency offers.
00:28:11:20 - 00:28:38:05
Kathleen Barth
They send over all the information. You put it together, you tell your client what's being reported, and then you flick some switches and press some buttons to make it perform a little better, but probably nobody is going back and looking at the ad and saying, This is terrible. That's why nobody is clicking on it, because it requires talking to yet another agency, like a creative agency.
00:28:38:12 - 00:29:05:16
Kathleen Barth
It requires going back to the campus and saying, Hey, you don't have any good video, so we can't make this better. It's not an easy thing to move along on the creative end, and you really should put some focus on it and you have to be ready to do that at least every three months. If you are running a continuous campaign throughout the entire year, your minimum refresh time is every three months.
00:29:05:23 - 00:29:25:04
Kathleen Barth
You really should be focusing on like every two months, and then every video has to be as good or better as the last one. It's not an easy thing to do, and I don't blame schools that are unable to do it. But best practice wise, that's that's your best practice.
00:29:25:04 - 00:29:38:00
John Azoni
I love it. That's really good. Okay. Can you think of like one or two specific ad campaigns that you've seen maybe that you've managed or that you've seen other elsewhere that have been successful or compelling that you feel like they really nailed it?
00:29:38:12 - 00:29:51:05
Kathleen Barth
I think it's hard because trends change. So often. I can think back to things that I did that were successful, that are five years old and Internet ages that might as well be the Stone Age.
00:29:53:07 - 00:30:23:09
Kathleen Barth
I mean, I know it when I see it for ads, and I think most people as consumers know that too, that it's if you scroll through and you're another college, you're likely to be seeing a lot of ads for colleges on a regular basis. Pay attention to them. Pay attention to the ones that draw your eye and the ones that don't pay attention to any ad that crosses your feet, like spend two days stopping at every single ad, even if you don't want to, and think about what works and what doesn't work.
00:30:23:09 - 00:30:50:18
Kathleen Barth
I can say that things that utilize the existing format on each platform can be clever and really get people's attention. And a common thing for movie trailers was having like a frame around it and then having part of the action jump out from the frame and you would make that the same color as the background so it would look like something had kind of a faux 3D effect.
00:30:51:04 - 00:31:21:08
Kathleen Barth
And that draws the eye, obviously, other things where it looked like a fake Instagram ad and then suddenly they would press like the heart button and say press like. So to get reminded when tickets are on sale, I assume that would still work now, but things change so much. And also the studios sorry, the platforms decide what's acceptable and they may not be okay with you doing that kind of change.
00:31:21:14 - 00:31:37:01
Kathleen Barth
I did see one of the 3D frame ads recently for a movie and I was like, Good to know. I remember when I worked for the company that I pretty sure originated it. We were so proud of ourselves and it's still it's still holding on to this day.
00:31:37:10 - 00:32:05:05
John Azoni
Yeah, I feel that way about billboards. Like I can remember some. I mean, I couldn't tell you the brands, but I can. The billboards that I can picture in my head have like something that extends beyond the border, that looks like it's 3D. Sort of. Yeah. That photo 3D. Yeah. Those little things make a big difference. There's this one gal on Instagram that I get her ads a lot and I think she sells like marketing or I never actually stick around for them, but I'm always like, I'm always like, Oh, I liked that hook, though.
00:32:05:10 - 00:32:17:12
John Azoni
Like there's one where she posts like a comment on that someone sent to her like, I don't know about the price of the course or whatever it was. And she like, reaches up and grabs the comment and it's a piece of paper in her hand.
00:32:17:12 - 00:32:19:04
Kathleen Barth
And that's really smart.
00:32:19:09 - 00:32:37:00
John Azoni
Yeah. So I'm like, that's not only is that smart because you're engaging, you're saying, Hey, there's a conversation happening here around this product, and let me dispel some myths or something like that. But then you're actually kind of making it like this tactile sort of, you know, thing that that is.
00:32:37:01 - 00:33:00:10
Kathleen Barth
Anything that surprises and is visually enticing is worthwhile. This is another situation where just looking through short form videos on a place like TikTok is worthwhile when you're thinking about what your creative is going to be because you're creative again, unless you're on YouTube is going to be a short form video. What makes these short form videos happen?
00:33:00:10 - 00:33:30:00
Kathleen Barth
What leads to a trend on Tik Tok? Think of the getting ready videos where people like throw things on a bed and then quick cut. Suddenly they're wearing it. That type of trickery is what makes something compelling instantly. Instead of feeling like you're just kind of slogging through it because nobody has the attention span, especially for an ad to be spending anything more than 2 seconds on it, unless you can prove that it's something they're going to be interested in.
00:33:30:19 - 00:33:44:22
John Azoni
Yeah, And that's when I get a little nervous. Like when we work with a school on a video and we ask them, like, where's this going to be? Use that. And they'll say, like, you know, posting on Facebook and organic social and paid ads. And I'm kind of like, you know, I'm always thinking like, oh, they're.
00:33:44:22 - 00:33:45:16
Kathleen Barth
Two different things.
00:33:45:16 - 00:34:05:20
John Azoni
Two totally different things. Because yeah, because you can't I mean, you can just take, you know, a two or three minute video that we do or even one of the short like snippets that we do and do ads I've actually seen, you know, I have one client that that has been successful for. We did a 15 second cut down of this promo and they said that's performing really well.
00:34:05:20 - 00:34:21:00
John Azoni
The 15 second version, which makes sense because I mean, at that point, you know, 15 seconds, you got to be pretty quick with like kind of like getting some visuals and some storytelling in there. But like, yeah, just taking like any sort of video and just saying, I'm going to put it over here and I'm going to put it on paid ads, too.
00:34:21:05 - 00:34:31:15
John Azoni
It's like it's just not you're going to throw all that money away on those ads because again, it's like that. The assumption that if I just put it in front the right people, then they'll watch it. But it's people are so easily spooked.
00:34:32:06 - 00:35:10:12
Kathleen Barth
Well, think about the buy in that somebody has who's following you organically. They probably go to school or are attached to the school in some way and want to know what the next football game is going to be or what's happening in the visual arts department. You don't need to sell them. And yeah, so a video that works there that is serving two people who have already actively chosen to not only follow your page, but keep up with what's on your page are the exact opposite of the people that you need to get attention to ad wise so you can use the same footage.
00:35:10:12 - 00:35:18:04
Kathleen Barth
It's good to have footage like that, but you can't use the exact same creative for both advertising and organic.
00:35:18:19 - 00:35:31:22
John Azoni
Yeah. So do you feel like storytelling and I mean in like the traditional sense of like telling an actual story, does that have any place in paid ads or is that more bottom of funnel, mid funnel kind of like organic stuff?
00:35:32:12 - 00:35:54:21
Kathleen Barth
I think it still counts for YouTube to a certain extent. Again, because they're moving more towards these longer form video ads. But for the most part, I would say don't think about storytelling, think about immediate attention grabbing. All you need from someone seeing your ad is to be aware. Think about it. And the next time they see your ad, they choose to make an action.
00:35:55:06 - 00:36:21:17
Kathleen Barth
Or, you know, when they are at their career fair and a college counselor comes up to them, they say, Oh yeah, I remember seeing that ad, or you need someone to actively click and make the choice to get more information. You don't need to tell a story to get them to click and get more information. You need to capture their attention for long enough or for short enough, honestly, that they click through to the website.
00:36:22:02 - 00:36:46:10
Kathleen Barth
Your website. You can tell whatever you want on that website right? You can have 52 videos about all these students and their journeys and ask people to click and watch all of these videos. An ad is not the place for that. An ad is for immediate attention grabbing, and whatever storytelling you might want to do is for finishing the deal getting everything signed.
00:36:46:10 - 00:36:48:16
Kathleen Barth
It's not for getting that initial attention.
00:36:49:07 - 00:37:09:07
John Azoni
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I'll be the first to say that, like, you know, because a lot of what we do is student alumni stories. I'm like, that's probably not the best. Like first touch, you know? Yeah, yeah. You know, this is more for someone. It probably makes more sense after they've already been admitted. They're in your like yield campaign or something like that and you're trying to get them over the line.
00:37:09:21 - 00:37:36:06
Kathleen Barth
If you're looking for people to deposit or you're retargeting people who have already filled out a request for information but haven't moved to an application, I can see more reasons to have that storytelling focus. But if it's an ad, it's just the attention span isn't there. And I don't think that you can necessarily tell the story of how great an alumni did in that 1 to 2 second period.
00:37:36:17 - 00:38:02:03
Kathleen Barth
You're better off saying our alumni have gone on to become astronauts at NASA. That's much as they can get in that period of time. And then they can click through and on that website, it can have the whole story of how that happened and why you'll be getting a great science education from doing undergrad here. But I don't think you can get that across in an ad because it's just not the right format for it.
00:38:02:13 - 00:38:07:00
Kathleen Barth
Even If you're retargeting people who already have a bit of buy in.
00:38:07:11 - 00:38:27:00
John Azoni
And that's where I think that there's such a disconnect whenever, you know, in my entire career of doing videos and working with various businesses and things like that, everyone's like, Oh, this video has to be short, but we also want to do storytelling. So I'm like, Well, the you might not be. I mean, have you seen a 32nd Netflix show before?
00:38:27:06 - 00:38:47:06
John Azoni
This Can't tell a story in 30 seconds. It's like, what do you want us to do? You know? So, like, even sometimes, like I worked with this one client and it was like this really dramatic story, and she had experienced all this trauma and and stuff like that. And it was a very, like, layered story. There was so much it was 8 minutes, like the bare minimum it had to be was 8 minutes.
00:38:47:06 - 00:39:02:04
John Azoni
And I deliver to the client was like, we need to find a way to cut this down to 2 minutes. And I'm like, okay, that's telling me what to cut then, because good luck. Yeah, yeah. You know, maybe you got to find a two minute story then, you know.
00:39:02:04 - 00:39:29:00
Kathleen Barth
I like the idea of talking about storytelling to schools on a broader sense, not on a ad by ad sense, because I don't think that, like you said, you can tell a story in that 32nd time period or probably far less time than that. You can tell a story by connecting all the dots of our website looks the same as our emails, looks the same as our social ads are.
00:39:29:13 - 00:39:52:07
Kathleen Barth
Every time you click on one of these ads, it goes to a website that specific to the content that we were talking about previously. There can be a connected story going on. There and you can have all these touchpoints with potential students and parents to keep that story going. But I don't think you can tell that story in one single ad and still be effective.
00:39:52:18 - 00:40:14:00
John Azoni
Yeah, exactly. I love that we agree on that. So my last question is, what's a realistic timeline for a school that maybe is just jumping into paid ads to start seeing results? Should they start bugging their ad campaign manager after month one, or are we talking like six months in a year? And what do you think?
00:40:14:14 - 00:40:38:17
Kathleen Barth
So you definitely should be getting some kind of reporting within the first month. Certain platforms run farther behind than others. Normally, information is kind of confirmed two weeks after the fact. Sometimes it's as little as 48 hours, but it's not instant. So if I was doing a report right now, I wouldn't be reporting on the month of March.
00:40:38:17 - 00:41:09:09
Kathleen Barth
I would be reporting on end of February, because that's when I know that that information is actually true and accurate. The bigger factors in success for an ad campaign are student records. Do you have them so that you can retarget these students, build a lookalike audience If you don't have that information easily available to you or you only have you have to have at least a thousand on meta.
00:41:09:09 - 00:41:42:19
Kathleen Barth
And even then there's a match rate going on in terms of the information that you provide might be a student's school email and it's not the same email that they're using on Facebook, right? Maybe they have the phone number information and that matches. But normally about 50% of your records match. So if you have 4000 records and then you build a lookalike audience off of that, you're going to see more immediate success with your campaign budget.
00:41:43:00 - 00:42:15:16
Kathleen Barth
It's the other thing budget and location. If you're based in New York City, you have way more competition. If you are based in Arkansas, you don't have to worry about that as much. And Your budget can probably be lower as well. So we find that our clients see noticeably more success after the first year or two years. We have more information that allows us to connect with the right students and that's not a quick process.
00:42:16:04 - 00:42:47:17
Kathleen Barth
So as nice as it would be to be able to turn around to someone immediately and say, Look, now you suddenly have 10 million more applications, that's not how it works because we're talking about a really big commitment. If I was still selling pens and lighters, I would expect a quick success. But also those pen and lighter campaigns had millions of dollars behind them and they are competing with the same eyes as the people.
00:42:47:17 - 00:43:16:13
Kathleen Barth
You're trying to get to spend $45,000, $50,000 to go to school for a year and you have less money than that. So it's going to take time. And it's mostly about learning internally and letting the platforms learn through their magic algorithm math, how to reach those correct students with the right message at the right time. And that is not an instant success situation.
00:43:16:21 - 00:43:24:13
John Azoni
Yeah. All right. I love it. Well, this has been great. I've loved having you on. I've learned a lot. I'm sure our audience has learned a lot. Where can people connect with you that.
00:43:25:06 - 00:43:28:16
Kathleen Barth
This is where I'm going to be hypocritical and say, find me on LinkedIn.
00:43:30:13 - 00:43:33:05
John Azoni
Target and add to Kathleen and.
00:43:33:07 - 00:43:58:03
Kathleen Barth
Yeah, to Target and add and say, Kathleen, specifically, please reach out to me. I tried to send you an email, but you can't reply to emails. Yeah. So Kathleen Barth on LinkedIn or you know, go reach out to three enrollment and say you want to learn more about what we do on the digital side and you can see me in person do the whole presentation.
00:43:58:19 - 00:44:25:22
John Azoni
Absolutely. I'm a fan of three enrollment. Well, I'm on twice as much of a fan now. I was a fan from my conversations with Matt Matt Hames, and now I'm a fan. So yeah, it does work with three enrollment. If you guys don't have a campaign manager, anyone managing your paid ad campaigns or even organic, I mean these three enrollment is they've got a lot of knowledge in this area so highly recommended from the Higher Ed Storytelling University podcast.
00:44:27:15 - 00:45:14:13
Kathleen Barth
Well I would say that I have a lot of really fantastic colleagues that have a lot of background in this, and I was shocked coming from the entertainment and a little bit more with it side of digital marketing, what is considered cutting edge for most other agencies on the higher ed side, the fact that there's still a lot of reliance on phone calls and print material is pretty shocking to me, and it was really fantastic to see that three enrollment doesn't think about those as the primary methods of reaching people, that there's all kinds of real insight into how students and parents can be connected with that doesn't require more utilizing the same techniques from
00:45:14:13 - 00:45:38:05
Kathleen Barth
when I was applying to schools because when I was applying to school, you could print out a form on the website as an application and then send it in. But you definitely couldn't submit a form online. So that was a while ago. We've moved past that point. Everybody is connecting with each other through digital formats and that means that, you know, you have to join us in 2025.
00:45:39:15 - 00:45:44:07
John Azoni
I love it. Great soundbite to end on. Thank you so much, Kathleen, for being here. It's been great having you.
00:45:44:18 - 00:45:46:02
Kathleen Barth
It's been a blast, John.
00:45:47:01 - 00:45:50:16
John Azoni
As well. But you say that.
00:45:50:16 - 00:45:51:16
Kathleen Barth
Thank you so much.
