Abstract
PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the different results and the level of success obtained with advertising campaigns developed on Facebook to promote postgraduate programs to create awareness and engagement.Design/methodology/approachThis study combined the data envelopment analysis technique to measure advertising efficiency with multidimensional scaling (MDS) representation, thus offering alternatives for practitioners and organizations on how to evaluate social advertising performance.FindingsInvestments on social paid advertising are an affordable and effective way both to promote postgraduate programs and create engagement with prospective students. Facebook advertisements maximize visibility, which improves social and online positioning and encourages student recruitment.Practical implicationsHigher education institutions can efficiently promote their programs with a minimal social investment contributing to dissemination and engagement. Compared to other forms of traditional or digital advertising, social media ads can be efficient and affordable with wider segmentation and targeting options. Moreover, results are immediate and measurable and campaigns can be instantly modified to better suit the audience’s requirements.Originality/valueThis study is unique as it offers a new, alternative way of measuring efficiency, in addition to the classic ratios of payment models in digital advertising that combine clicks and impressions, on a sector where there are few empirical studies. Moreover, it can be easily applied to many other sectors in public and private organizations.
Highlights
Information communication technology tools and social network sites are central to people’s personal lives as has been reflected by statistics, indicating that there were 2.82 billion social media users worldwide in 2019, 6.8 billion mobile phone users and the high usage of Web 2.0 technologies (Statista, 2019a, 2019b)
3.1 Sample To assess the efficiency of social advertising for higher education empirically, we considered 45 valid Facebook ads by an organization that managed various training programs between 2015 and 2018 and only used Facebook for social paid promotion
5.1 Theoretical implications This study offers alternative criteria to measure the efficiency of social media advertising platforms
Summary
Information communication technology tools and social network sites are central to people’s personal lives as has been reflected by statistics, indicating that there were 2.82 billion social media users worldwide in 2019, 6.8 billion mobile phone users and the high usage of Web 2.0 technologies (Statista, 2019a, 2019b). Such tools are increasingly incorporated in learning and teaching settings (Arrosagaray et al, 2019), especially because current generations of higher education students have grown up in environments dominated by the Internet and digital technologies. Research by Heiberger and Harper (2008), Imlawi et al (2015) and Rueda et al (2017) suggests a positive correlation between Facebook usage and student engagement at the university level
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