STRATEGY DIRECTOR
INTEGRATING DIGITAL MEDIA BUYING INTO
THE CAREER FAIR CAMPAIGN
CLEMSON UNIVERSITY
Center for Career and
Professional Development
Roles:
Strategy Director
Twice a year Clemson's Center for Career and Professional Development brings together over 500 employers and 5,000+ students for their career fair events. Hosted over 4 days in both Fall and Spring, this event hinges on the student and employer participation experiences that positions Clemson in the top rankings for graduate employment rates.
BACKGROUND
CCPD's Career Fair campaign has a long running tradition of success and impact with current students. Starting in 2019 I began analysis to review the impacts of traditional ad buying plans in relation to ROI as compared to implementing digital media buying strategies. ​
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Modernizing the implementation of this campaign to better impact student engagement rate goals and optimize budget spend to ROI impact, we transitioned campaign deliverables away from traditional print as and into social media ad campaigns.
STRATEGY
Seeking to meet student where they were at, transitioning dollars spent from traditional media campaigns (posters, flyers, signage) into digital campaigns (Social media ads, banner ads, email, digital signage) positioned messaging directly in front of students on their phones and laptops.
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Utilizing ad spends on these digital channels immediately modernizes performance data and insights, allowing us to make adjustments in realtime. While also learning through each campaign cycle how to update creative deliverables and messaging to increase impact.
OPPORTUNITY
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1. Digital tools allowed us to be more targeted and improve reach of specific audience goals for under-represented majors.
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2. Collection of engagement data through captured insights improves the ability to make realtime changes and maximize dollars spent for return on investment.
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3. Performance data informed more target messaging needs and outlets that lead to better diversification of deliverables, that could be placed directly in front of audiences.
INSIGHTS
Steadily increasing in implementation from year-to-year the Career Fair Campaign reduced budget spend on traditional media by 95% while investing almost completely into digital media spend now. ​
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Seeing semester over semester record growth the CCPD team have expanded the event from a 3-4 day event to accommodate current student attendance. Through increased transparency of ROI impact with social media ad spending impacts they have 3x original budgets to spend almost exclusively on social ads now.
DELIVERABLES
Annual ROI Matrix
Google Ads
TikTok Ads
META Ads