Engage, Promote, Enroll: Why Community Colleges Should Be Advertising on TikTok

TikTok has solidified its place as a dominant social media platform, with over 9,000 organic videos created every minute and a growing global user base. With more people spending time on TikTok, community colleges have a huge opportunity to tap into the platform to boost enrollment, promote their programs, and connect with potential students.

Are Prospective Community College Students on TikTok?

Absolutely! TikTok has grown beyond just high school students—it’s a platform for learners of all ages. In fact, according to our TikTok reps, 37% of users say they’ve learned about schools on TikTok, 32% have found information about courses, and 31% have discovered training programs. Plus, 51% of users actually prefer using TikTok over Google when searching for educational opportunities, making it a go-to resource for students exploring their options.

With TikTok users aligning with the age demographics of prospective community college students, this platform presents a prime opportunity to meet students where they are. And given that 81% of users globally plan to spend the same or more time on TikTok over the next six months, it’s clear that this platform is here to stay.

How Can Community Colleges Use TikTok to Reach Their Goals?

Whether the goal is to build awareness, increase event registrations, or drive leads and conversions, TikTok offers a variety of ways for community colleges to engage prospective students. From general awareness campaigns to niche scholarships and event promotions, you can customize ad messaging and creative content to suit your institution’s needs.

Here are a few great tips from Carnegie on how community colleges can start utilizing TikTok for marketing.

Don’t Have the Resources? Ask Your Students!

One of the best resources for creating TikTok content is right on your campus—your students! If your team doesn’t have the time or capacity to produce and edit videos, reach out to the experts already on your campus. Whether it’s through an ambassador program or an internship, there are bound to be students who are fluent in TikTok and eager to help. You might even discover a social media influencer among your student body!

Here’s how other students and their universities are using TikTok:

If you need extra support, TikTok also provides a set of AI-powered creative tools that can make content creation easier. The TikTok Creative Center gives you access to TV and movie clips, so you can easily add trending content to your posts. You can also use tools like the TikTok Creative Assistant and Script Generator to quickly brainstorm ideas and write video scripts. For more advanced users, the TikTok Symphony suite has even more AI tools that streamline the whole process, making it simple to create engaging videos with limited resources.

Need an extra boost?

We can help. CLARUS—A Carnegie Company, has the resources to help make your campaigns as successful as possible. With the rise of TikTok-style videos, we aim to provide community colleges with the tools to adapt and thrive. Contact us today for more information!

P.S. Don’t miss out on our Social Media Marketing Master Class Series! This expert-led webinar series covers the latest strategies for platforms like TikTok, LinkedIn, and Snapchat, designed to help community colleges engage prospective students and strengthen their digital presence.

Plus, if you sign up, you’ll be eligible for an exclusive TikTok offer—a $1,000 ad credit for new campaigns launching this fall and winter. Access the Webinar Series Now!

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Using GA4 to Measure Key Events on your Website

For a small college, understanding your website and optimizing its performance is crucial to attracting and engaging prospective students. With Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Google Tag Manager (GTM), you can measure the most important interactions on your site, such as form submissions, application submissions, and registrations, to gain valuable insights into user behavior and the effectiveness of each marketing campaign. Below, we will walk you through creating a quick and easy measurement plan for your website and the events in GTM.

Creating a Quick and Easy Measurement Plan for Your College Website

Before you start creating events and Key Events in GA4, it’s important to have a plan to ensure you’re capturing what’s most important to you. This is where a measurement plan comes in. When creating a measurement plan, it is important to define the main objectives of your website, like getting students to apply to your institution, and identify the Key Events that align with these goals, like submitting applications. There might be other leading indicators, or micro conversion points that ladder up to application submissions that are worth tracking as key events as well, such as inquiry form submissions, visit/tour registrations, application account creations, etc.

It is also important to list at least an additional 5-10 custom events to observe more detailed tracking and obtain a fully comprehensive understanding of user behavior. By creating a plan to analyze a broad spectrum of data, you can make more informed decisions, optimize user experience, and ultimately drive more conversions.

Once said measurement plan has been created, the next step is to create the tags and triggers within your GTM container.

Creating Custom Tags in GTM for Key Events

Setting up custom tags in GTM allows you to track specific actions users take on your website. The most important actions tracked, which are typically the primary objectives of the website, are what you would call Key Events. These Key Events can include, but are not limited to:

  • Application Submissions: Record when users complete an application on your website
  • Visit Registrations: Track users who sign up for campus tours on your website
  • Request For Information (RFI) Submissions: Track when users fill out and submit RFI forms on your website
  • Account Creation: Track when users create an account on your website

Tip: Remember to always test your events in GTM’s Preview Mode before publishing the container to ensure tags are firing correctly.

Create Custom Tags in GTM for More Detailed Tracking

With Enhanced Measurements enabled, a broader range of user interactions are tracked on your website without manual tagging. These interactions include events such as page views, scrolls, form tracking, and video engagement. Even so, GTM provides even more detailed tracking, allowing you to track custom forms of these events, including but not limited to:

  • Specific Form Tracking: Beyond just RFI submissions and applications, track specific forms on your site by name
  • More detailed Scroll Depth Tracking: Understand exactly how far users scroll on your pages by percentages
  • Link Click Tracking for Internal Links: Record which internal links are getting the most clicks
  • CTA Button Clicks: Understand which CTAs are catching users’ attention and on which pages

Tip: The Scroll Depth Enhanced Measurement only triggers when users scroll 90% of a page. Setting up a custom event in GTM tracks additional thresholds, like 25%, 50%, or 75%.

Include Event Parameters for Detailed Insights

To get more context about each custom event created in GTM, include detailed parameters to your created GTM tags. These parameters can include:

  • Click URL: Record what exact URLs users are clicking on
  • Click Text: See the text users are clicking on
  • Page Title: Know which pages are generating the most engagement

Tip: Use GTM’s built-in variables to include event parameters in each custom tag. This will help capture more information about each user interaction.

Configure Custom Events in GA4

Now that the events have been created and tested in GTM’s preview mode, it is time to configure the events within GA4.

  • Mark the Key events as “Key Events” in GA4: Make sure to highlight the critical events in GA4 to separate and monitor them as Key Events
  • Add Custom Dimensions: Include the event parameters added to your GTM tags in the “Custom Dimensions” section, such as link_text, page_referrer, page_title, and search_term to view them in GA4.

Tip: These custom dimensions are visible in GA4’s Standard Reports and Explorations, providing deeper insights into user behavior.

By creating a measurement plan and implementing custom GTM events, your college can effectively track and analyze detailed interactions to uncover deeper insights about user behavior on your website that leads to website or marketing campaign optimization.

Need help creating a measurement plan or implementing GTM tags and triggers? Clarus can help get you started tracking website data. Contact us today!

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