Welcome to Arke’s LIVE student marketing in a COVID-19 world blog featuring real-time insights into how the current climate is shaping our online behaviours, the latest guidance and recommendations designed to help education marketers stay ahead of the curve.

Thursday 25th June 2020

According to Global Web Index, social media usage amongst Gen Z is up 58% since lockdown began (2), and, with a massive 44.44% increase in engagement and a reduction in CPCs of 60.09% and CPMs of 64.34%, Instagram offers excellent advertising opportunities for the foreseeable future.

With a huge increase in engagement (41.30%), alongside a substantial drop in CPCs (82.88%) and CPMs (70.02%), advertising on Facebook is also a must for both HE and FE institutions in this current climate.

Monday 22nd June 2020

We’re seeing consistently that the demand for Google Search has decreased throughout lockdown, which has impacted impressions and clicks. With competition increasing, we’ve seen a 52.27% hike in CPCs, with coronavirus informational landing pages seeing the highest volume of traffic, unsurprisingly.

In our recent insight report that was released in April, we predicted that, as we add more and more placements and topic exclusions to avoid appearing against troubling coronavirus related content, we expected CPCs on Google Display Network to start to rise, and that prediction has come to fruition. However, despite this climb in CPCs (77.78%) and CPMs (65.61%), plus drop in CTR (37.50%), if you have a well-defined placement strategy and constructive, informative messaging, this platform will serve you well to reach large-scale audience segments in the coming months.

Wednesday 17th June 2020

Learn how undergraduate applicants are behaving online, what they want from their prospective universities, and what you need to do to succeed in Clearing 2020 amid lockdown.

From the data science team at Arke, get the latest trends, insights and recommendations on how to win in digital advertising this Clearing 2020.

Fill out the form below to download our free whitepaper now.

Thursday 11th June 2020

We have identified the top 5 paid media channels which have witnessed the largest changes in performance from Gen Z since lockdown began. The table below reflects changes in performance pre-March vs 14th March – 31st May 2020.

Key:
Negative
Positive

Monday 8th June 2020

By comparing the sector’s web pages dedicated to COVID-19, in the early stages of the lockdown, we saw that they achieved an average of 4th most popular position, after student portals, campaign landing pages and the institution’s home page. These coronavirus focused pages generated an average of 6% of all sessions; 55% by new users, 23% by existing students and 19% by existing applicants (3% unknown).

After an initial large amount of traffic for coronavirus focused web pages, as the UK begins to come out of lockdown, the emerging trend is that they now are visited less frequently than before as students switch to emails and social media for more up to date information. Email traffic has substantially increased by 260%.

Tuesday 5th May 2020

The Student Room has unveiled interesting statistics about usage of their platform since lockdown began, showing a huge increase in posting and time spent on the site.

• Average dwell time up to 2:18 from 2:03 YoY
• 11% growth in posting and 17% growth in posts-per-poster YoY
• University and university courses have seen a 36% growth in posting
• Universities and colleges have seen the most growth at 73% growth in posting YoY
• Study help has seen a decline in posting YoY

Meanwhile, UCAS has reported that:

• Overall traffic to UCAS.com is up 21.8% YoY
• The number of social media contacts that UCAS is having with applicants is up 149% YoY
• Traffic to the page that hosts the Unibuddy ambassadors on UCAS.com has increased by 131% over the past 2 weeks

This data from The Student Room and UCAS underlines the fact that peer-to-peer and official information is desirable to prospective and existing students, who continue to seek help and advice about the future of their education.

If you wish to discuss your marketing campaigns or how to reach out to prospective students in this current climate, get in touch with one of our education marketing experts.

Monday 4th May 2020

The Government has confirmed a range of measures designed to support UK universities as the coronavirus pandemic continues to develop. The main headline is the return of student number controls, with “providers…able to recruit full-time, domestic students up to 5% above their forecasts in the next academic year.”

Other measures include:

• UCAS is developing a new, personalised Clearing system, which will include Clearing Plus
• Universities are eligible to apply for the Government support schemes, including the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme
• The Student Loans Company will bring forward £2.6 billion of tuition fee payments to help cash flow
• To ensure that research activities continue, the Government is bringing forward £100 million of Quality-related research funding
• International students are still welcome, with plans for how the International Education Strategy can be updated to be developed. The student number controls only apply to domestic and EU full-time undergraduate students

The Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, said: “We are committed to supporting our world-class universities and students through this unprecedented challenging time. So we are putting measures in place to help protect students and staff from the impact of coronavirus. I know this is an unsettling time for all involved, and we are working tirelessly with the sector to do everything we can to stabilise admissions and protect a vital part of our country’s economy and society. I am very grateful to universities for their innovation and dedication in their frontline response at this time.”

If you have any questions or wish to discuss your student recruitment campaigns in this current climate, please get in touch.

Friday 24th April 2020

Interestingly, Neil Patel has reported that, week on week, website traffic is down for most industries. The education sector has not been immune to this trend, seeing a 5% drop in traffic. However, at Arke, we’ve seen some HE and FE clients maintain and even exceed previous traffic levels by up to 14%, with an average increase of 9%. Scroll down to our first post on Thursday 2nd April to download our deep-dive Insight Report to find out how we’ve bucked the trend.

Thursday 16th April 2020

In these uncertain times, students are turning to online communities and forum sites to ask questions and seek answers about how the coronavirus epidemic affects them and their future.

The Student Room has identified a 13% increase in traffic, whilst seeing a 28% increase in posts on their platform, including a 34% increase in students engaging with university forums and university course forums. However, the biggest rise was in the Study Help forum, with posting up 134%.

It’s vital that Higher Education Institutions, and other organisations and businesses across any industry, are controlling the message and driving reliable information where conversations are happening.

Wednesday 8th April 2020

Arke’s data scientists have identified the top 4 paid media channels which have witnessed the largest changes in performance, since the outbreak. The table below reflects changes in performance pre-March 2020 vs 14th-28th March 2020.

Key:
Negative
Neutral
Positive

In addition to a substantial increase in clicks and impressions on YouTube, there has also been a large increase in viewership across all major video streaming platforms. The Verge has recently reported a 31% growth in viewership on Amazon’s streaming platform, Twitch, “with the total amount of hours watched jumping from 33 million on March 8th to 43 million on March 22nd,” whilst YouTube gaming streams have seen a 15% increase in the same period. If you’re not doing so already, now is the time to invest in advertising on video platforms such as YouTube, Twitch and TikTok.

Thursday 2nd April 2020

Welcome to our new live blog featuring real-time insights into how the current climate is shaping our online behaviours, to help education marketers stay ahead of the curve.

We’ll be updating the blog regularly, so make sure you check in frequently to find out the latest insights that Arke’s data analysts have discovered about the impact coronavirus is having across the education sector, in addition to receiving useful recommendations.

To help our education partners, we have recently produced a deep-dive Insight Report detailing the digital behavioural changes we have witnessed amongst 16-24-year-olds since the COVID-19 outbreak.

Fill out the form below to receive the Insight Report now. Over the coming days, we will be releasing a detailed Whitepaper…keep your eyes peeled.