Using IP Targeting for Education Marketing

What if you could get your digital ads in front of prospective students even without an email address? Find out how with IP targeting!

Traditionally, getting your messaging in front of the right audience has always been tricky.

Old school marketing such as billboards still do have their place. But when budgets are really tight, digital marketing has much better options for private schools, colleges, and universities.

Online marketing tactics such as PPC advertising or search engine marketing have become fairly well known. 

And they are good options for getting your messaging to the right people.

There’s also the option of retargeting, which uses cookies to track visitors to your website and place digital ads in other pages that they visit. 

More on that later.

But if you’ve got the budget to invest in getting your messaging in front of the right eyes, there’s another really good option I think you should consider.

It’s called IP targeting. 

IP targeting uses the IP addresses of your website’s visitors to locate them later and place your digital ads wherever they are online.

If we think of digital marketing like outdoor advertising, it would be as if your billboard ads keep showing up wherever your prospective student drives. 

Or at the grocery store, they’d see a poster inviting them to find out more about your school.

In the mall, they’d see an ad asking them to download a special white paper.

While chatting with their grandmother, they’d see your TV commercial. 

It’s not glaringly obvious, but these happy coincidences keep your education brand top-of-mind.

When your prospective student is ready to make their choice, your school is one of the first ones they are considering. And why not? 

All the signs are pointing to you.

This is how IP targeting works.

IP targeting works well in combination with retargeting strategies. 

Retargeting is a digital marketing tactic that uses cookies to track website visitors and gather behavioral information about them.

Cookies are messages that websites send to your web browser. Whenever you visit that website again, your web browser sends that message (called a cookie) back to the website.

This is how the website knows that you’ve come back. 

You can also use cookies to place digital ads wherever your web visitor goes next (if they’re using the same web browser).

There has been somewhat of a panic around cookies lately ending up in a European Union law forcing website to announce their use of cookies on their websites. 

Also web browsers can now be configured to delete cookies or block them, effectively making them invisible to your website. 

So if you’re relying on cookies to locate your website visitors and place digital ads in front of them, you’ll find this technology less and less useful. Besides that…

Internet robots are making retargeting challenging.

The IP targeting advertising technology company eltoro.com claims that up to 55% of web traffic is non-human. 

These web bots mimic all the actions of a human user. 

They click on links, they fill out forms, and they browse through sites. But of course, they’ll never make a purchase or take any real action.

That means over half of the traffic you get is a robot which will never become a student.

If you’re using cookies to track visitors, it’s very likely that over half the money you’re spending on ad retargeting is going to target web bots, not real people.

But adding an IP targeting solution can help you work around these challenges.

Retargeting is a good way to engage those who come to your website. 

But implementing an IP targeting solution alongside your retargeting strategy can help you curb the effect of cookie blockers and web bots. 

An IP address is much like a digital home address. It’s the digital residence in which your prospective student lives.

With IP targeting, you can place digital ads strategically in IP addresses where the residents fit your prospective students’ profile.

Just like the mobile billboard illustration we used above, this is a powerful way to keep your digital marketing messaging in front of them, no matter where they are online. 

The more they see your education brand messaging, your unique value proposition, and your content, the more likely they’ll be to give your website a look and download your content. 

The more traffic you can drive to your website through IP targeting means more enrolled students for your private school, college, or university.

For more information on IP targeting, I recommend you check out the tools available at eltoro.com. 

It’s the company that I use, and they do a great job coming through for their clients. And here’s where I need to point out that I don’t receive anything in exchange for recommending them. 

This recommendation simply comes because I’ve seen results from IP targeting with them, and I want you to have the same success!

And for more ways to use IP targeting to engage prospective students, feel free to contact us today.

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