Canisius High School
Marketing X-Z

The Client

Canisius High School is a Catholic, Jesuit, college-preparatory school in Buffalo, NY for young men in grades 9 through 12.

The Challenge

Canisius High School competes with 26 private high schools to recruit students each year. Because traditional marketing media like direct mail has less impact on younger audiences, schools have had to find new ways to drive students and parents to fall Open House events and promote Shadow Days and entrance exam prep courses.

Canisius turned to Manzella Marketing to develop a strategy that would effectively engage both the Gen Z middle school students and their Gen X parents with targeted messaging via the digital platforms they use most.

The Solution

Manzella Marketing developed a marketing plan that utilized social media and display ads to target prospective students and their parents. Through IP Targeting and list profiling, Manzella was able to deliver ads to prospective students on both their mobile devices and in their social media feeds as well as target parents with social media ads.

IP Targeting with Social Media Advertising—Manzella targeted 12 to 14 “feeder” middle schools, provided by the client, with IP “Rooftop” Targeting. This tactic enabled us to deliver ads to all devices within the schools and follow each IP footprint back to its home and all the devices resident there. We also performed a match back to Facebook and Instagram accounts for all devices (about a 50% match) and delivered ads to those social media news feeds. Instagram ads were targeted to the potential students, while Facebook ads were targeted to the parents.

Social Media Advertising—Manzella also used mailing lists of Catholic 6th, 7th and 8th grade students provided by the client to create a Canisius student/parent profile. We matched the profile to Facebook and Instagram accounts to deliver news feed ads to potential students and parents who fit the profile.

The Results

The recruiting campaign resulted in 712 new website visitors and increased attendance at Canisius High School’s fall Open House events.

The entrance exam prep course campaign served over 35,000 ads and netted a .23% CTR (click through rate)—more than twice the industry average.

Ads on Instagram received a 5.27% CTR and Facebook ads 1.79% CTR, both well above the .6% industry standard.