UNT at Frisco Strategy

UNT at Frisco and UNT New College are two Frisco based departments of the University of North Texas (UNT). UNT at Frisco is the new regional campus, a location off Panther Creek and Preston in Frisco, that is now home to over 14 degrees fully available in Collin County. UNT New College is UNT’s newest academic school, offering 3 brand new degrees focused on project based learning and hands-on experience.

In 2020 - 2022 the department decreased its marketing budget by 40%. This caused a calculated loss in paid search visitors, but with increased efficiency to the key words search we were able to offset the loss. 

• There are more site visitors from organic search compared to last year, indicating that organic search SEO has been impactful in generating more interest in the site. 

• Visitors from Paid Search are down 82%, meaning organic has helped to offset the decrease.

The decrease in web traffic may become a long-term trend, as spending on search ads is decreased, there is more stability on campus open/closed, and as the New College site is developed and takes some content, and traffic, with it. Increasing traffic would require spending more on google search ads, as well as other ad platforms. 

Now let's look at the performance of the RFIs on the website. Whenever a new program is launched at UNT at Frisco a unique RFI is created for it. RFI Submissions are routed based on the program, either to admissions or a departmental contact. It's important to remember that RFIs are an early form of interest, and students submitting them may not start taking classes until a year later. These are some highlights of the RFI performance on the Frisco website. 

• What does the RFI do after submission?

  • Gets students into relevant mailing lists to keep them updated on relevant admission events.

  • Enters the students information into departmental leads reports for departments to reach out to them as well, which is more important for graduate studies

• They exist for undergrad and grad programs

• The RFIs on the Frisco Website ask for minimal information to make it easier to complete them with the goal of increasing submissions. The RFIs are integrated with Salesforce and know, based on the page the RFI is submitted at, which program the user is interested in. They can submit more than one, and Salesforce connects the user’s data and shows multiple interests, not multiple records. 

  • Therefore, if one user submitted 3 RFIs they would still show as 1 user, and 1 submission in salesforce. 

Google ads provide the base of our marketing mix, and the most important method of website user acquisition. Overall impressions and clicks are down because we are spending less at this time so that we can support a stronger late spring and summer push, for transfer students, than before. We develop ads as soon as we are able, ideally before the program launches.

By refining google keywords we have increased our organic acquisition. By reviewing program keywords compared to keywords for similar degrees I was able to identify some that we were not using and then incorporate them into our paid keywords as well as into the content on our website to increase organic search optimization. An example of this is the MS in Education Counseling. Although many graduates of the program become Guidance Counselors, that phrase was not in our keywords or on the page. After identifying this the page content was rewritten to include this as well as adding it to the google ads search keyword list. 

We contracted a local vendor, Awarity, last fall to support campaigns for Project Design and Analysis, Sports Entertainment Management, and a future campaign for Industrial Distribution.  Awarity has a focus on streaming content ads and banner ads with refined viewer targeting. Using Awarity allows us access to ad space that google ads and social media do not, giving us a more rounded ad reach. 

Earned Media, put simply, is media we didn’t have to pay for. Whenever we are mentioned in a news article, on TV, or in a podcast, we gain awareness for UNT at Frisco & New College. I have a strong connection with our media relations expert, and I also strengthened connections with Community Impact’s reporters. In the past year we have been mentioned 35 times in 14 different media outlets including Community Impact, Frisco Style, and The Dallas Morning News. This is equivalent to spending over $50,000 in advertisements across these different media outlets.