Three ways to use Meta advertising in your higher ed marketing strategy

You may have heard the saying that no one uses Facebook anymore. In reality, it may just be that people don’t admit they’re using Facebook. Facebook is the most used social media platform, with over 3 billion active monthly users. By comparison, Instagram has 2 billion active monthly users. So how does this translate into Facebook not being used? Well, it doesn’t. 

As of April 2024, 70.9% of all Facebook users were between the ages of 25 and 64, while only 67.8% of all Instagram users fell into the same age range.* Instagram users tend to skew younger than Facebook, with a slightly higher percentage of users who are 18 to 24. Instagram has rolled out new features like Stories and Reels (which have carried over to Facebook), to help it compete with popular social media platforms like Snapchat and TikTok. This shows that Instagram is focusing more on a younger demographic, while Facebook has adopted these changes after they were tested on Instagram first.

When working on your paid media strategy, Meta platforms (including Facebook and Instagram) should be a consideration — not only because of the demographics of the platform, but also due to strong targeting, a wide array of placements, and multiple types of creative assets that will help you reach your audiences most effectively. In the world of video-first platforms, Meta offers a different approach across multiple platforms (such as Facebook and Instagram) that includes static images, videos, and carousel ads. This allows you to break through the noise and reach people with creative assets that are most likely to resonate with them, based on how they engage on the platforms. 

Let’s break this down a little bit further. 

Strong Targeting

Whether you’re looking to reach parents with children of a certain age, or users interested in the Olympics, or a custom data list (like grad students, adult learners, or nontraditional students), or anything in between, Meta has options for you. Building awareness through Meta can be easy, due to demographic targeting for factors like age and location, as well as interest and behavior targeting that infers information about a user based on what they provide on their profiles and how they engage across Meta platforms. This can drive awareness of who you are and lead users to your website, which in turn allows you to potentially move them further down the funnel to request information or schedule a visit. At the very least, you can add them into a retargeting pool that you can target later on down the road if they visit your site. Awareness is always the first step of the funnel, and it should be included in your media plan, as it can influence down-funnel actions, like applications and deposits. 

Another great opportunity within Meta targeting is the ability to create custom audiences. These can be used for a mix of awareness, engagement, or conversions. You can upload a list of current students, prospects, or any other group you want to target specifically. Then, you can also build a look-alike audience from your list to help broaden your reach and hit new people who fit the demographics you’re looking for. Here’s a prime example: You have a custom list of prospective students, but you also build a look-alike audience to help increase the funnel of users who might be interested in your school but haven’t previously considered it. 

Wide Array of Placements

Want to show up only in Instagram Reels? What about only on a Facebook feed? Well, you can! Facebook and Instagram give you options to be in feeds, in stories, in reels, in video streams, in Messenger, and more. With Meta, you can choose either Advantage+ placements (which includes everything available on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger) or selecting your specific placements manually. When building your campaign, the best practice is selecting Advantage+, because this will show your ad everywhere possible within the Meta suite of platforms, furthering your reach and hitting potential students anywhere they might be on these platforms. 

One important consideration here is shape and size. With so many placement options, you’ll want to make sure the aspect ratio of your creative fits the requirements of your desired placements. Some options, like reels, use only vertical videos; some use square or horizontal assets. It’s important to have multiple size variations of each asset, to ensure that it fits everywhere you want to run it. Read on to learn more about various creative types that can be used on Meta.

Placement examples

Multiple Types of Creative Assets

Photos, and carousels, and videos, oh my! While popular platforms like TikTok focus on video-first assets, having a variety of creative assets can help you to meet the user in whichever way they prefer to engage. While certain placements across Facebook and Instagram are video-only (or lean primarily into video for best engagement), a majority of them allow for photo, carousel, and video content. It’s important to have at least two types of creative within your campaign, as users may be more likely to engage with one type of creative over the other.

All three creative types can serve different purposes — and they shouldn’t look the same. Photos should give the user exactly what they need, with the goal of getting them to your website or a lead form, or just driving engagement with the ad. 

Carousel assets are the perfect way to tell a story. A user can swipe through and learn more about who you are, what you do, and what sets you apart. Carousels are also a strong driver of engagement, which provides an added bonus to your ultimate campaign objective. 

Like carousels, videos also have an element of storytelling, but they can also help a user picture what their life might look like if (for example) they come to your school. User-generated assets can also perform well in video-specific placements, like reels, where they blend into the content already being shown.

Conclusion

While Facebook may be considered the social media platform for your parents’ or grandparents’ generation, that doesn’t make it a bad thing. New research shows that Gen Alpha looks to its parents as some of its major influencers. And (you guessed it) those parents are still using Meta platforms. So when you’re planning your paid media campaigns, make sure to keep Meta in mind by taking advantage of its strong targeting, multiple placements and platforms, and various creative assets that can be used to engage your prospects. 

 

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*This data does not include users under 18.