Digital Marketing Media Buying and Creative Services

The vendor is required to provide from qualified proponents to deliver a full-service, integrated advertising and recruitment marketing campaign for the 2025/26 recruitment cycle (September 2025 to June 2026).
- strategic media planning & buying
• Based on a clear articulation of recruitment objectives, schedules, and events, recommend, and execute a strategic media buy for both Peterborough and Durham campuses that effectively reaches prospective students where they seek out and consume credible information about university and postsecondary options
• Ensure media selections support key recruitment and conversion activities, initiatives, and events as defined by annual recruitment/marketing plan objectives and strategies.
• Provide a detailed media plan aligned with the higher education recruitment cycle (September 2025 to June 2026).
• Including campaigns focusing on awareness, programs and areas of study, open house(s) and other recruitment activities such as OUF, transfer students, summer courses, scholarships, OUAC deadlines. campaigns to be targeted primarily to high school students and transfer students within country.
• Review local media opportunities and provide recommendations on how to include.
• Proposed media plan should be validated by best practices, market research, target audience profiles, and forecasted ad performance. consideration of optimal personalization and segmentation strategies based on demographics, behaviors, interests, and location.
• Provide recommendations on the best cross-channel strategy and approach across advertising platforms based on campaign goals and audience, ad formats
• Purchase advertising space across approved digital platforms (including but not limited to: programmatic, google ads, YouTube, ad words (search), Spotify, meta, reddit, Tiktok, LinkedIn).
- Creative design and production
• Conduct a full review of current advertising and creative in context of new prospective student target audience considerations; recruitment cycle needs; and key touch points and marketing funnel.
• Make recommendations on the existing creative strategy that effectively evolves the campaign to support university distinctive position within the marketplace as it relates and appeals to high school students, mature and transfer students and those who influence their decisions.
• Based on the strategic considerations above, execute all elements of the creative campaign – from concept to completion – to reach and influence prospective students to explore, apply and register at various stages of the recruitment cycle.
• University to provide photography and video assets as directed and upon recommendations and direction of the vendor.
• Creative direction on asset creation.
• Present campaign creative strategy and concepts, ensuring alignment with existing key messages, recruitment goals, and established brand guidelines.
• Vendor to design and produce engaging ad creative assets (e.g., banners, videos) based on approved media strategy and plan and creative concept.
• Write required ad copy as required, including, video/ad, scripts, captions, search ad words.
• Provide recommendations on landing page user experience (UX), copy and design.
• Ensure both campuses are reflected in the creative, based on approved media plan.
• Provide a/b ad formats and designs for testing.
• Explore work with influencers and provide creative direction and assets as required.
- Account, campaign management & optimization
• Identify senior lead point-person for communications and supporting team members. outline project management, workflow, and reporting processes.
• Provide expert advice on the most effective digital marketing tactics for university recruitment and keep on top of trends and digital advertising opportunities to maximize budget.
• Analyze competitor campaigns to identify opportunities and potential threats.
• Provide POV on the future of digital advertising in relation to user privacy, use of cookies, and how the proposed plan addresses these challenges and risks.
• Key performance indicators (KPIs) to be measured and observed over the term of the contract include increase the number of prospective students enrolling to university, event registrations, contact capture (email), increased traffic to specified landing pages and conversions.
• Create and maintain accounts required to support ongoing digital campaigns, reporting, and analytics, including but not limited to google AdWords, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, LinkedIn, ga4 dashboards, programmatic, and others that might be integrated into the digital advertising strategy.
• Ensure all digital advertising campaigns are integrated into university google analytics account and dashboards. configure ga4 conversion goals as required including filters, audiences, events, etc. and manually set up tagging and pixels for tracking/remarketing as required.
• Provide weekly, transparent, detailed and easy-to-understand reports with actionable insights by campaign, highlighting key performance indicators (KPIs) like cost per lead, click-through rate (ctr), and conversion rate. offer recommendations for future campaigns based on performance metrics.
• A final year-end campaign report will demonstrate impact and increases in awareness, applications, and conversions.
• Continuously adjust campaigns to maximize performance and optimize SEO, targeting ad placements to reach the most relevant audience. monitor performance of ads and adjust campaigns for lowest cost per acquisition (CPA).
• Build and manage lookalike audiences for improved audience targeting and retargeting. leverage previous audience data from past campaigns for efficient ad delivery.
• Recommend and implement a/b testing with different ad variations (creative, copy, landing pages) to improve performance.
• Advise on landing page design and user experience to ensure high conversion rates, provide suggestions to help increase engagement and performance, with focus on SEO optimization.
• Vendor to apply best practices for keywords optimization, matching, exclusion, geo-modifiers, ad-extensions.
- Digital marketing & media buying capabilities
a. Digital marketing strategy & execution
• Describe expertise in paid search, social media advertising, programmatic advertising, and display marketing.
b. Media buying & budget optimization
• Outline experience in negotiating and managing media buys across multiple platforms, including budgeting and optimization strategies.
c. Creative development and UX optimization
• Provide examples of past creative work (ad creatives, landing pages, videos) and explain how ux improvements and a/b testing are used to enhance engagement.
d. Performance measurement and continuous optimization
• Describe reporting capabilities, key performance metrics (KPIs), and how insights are used to refine and improve campaign performance.
e. Targeting, audience segmentation and SEO
• Explain the approach to audience segmentation, targeting, retargeting strategies, and any SEO enhancements to improve campaign visibility and impact.
- The University wishes to strategically allocate a media buying budget of approximately $300,000 per year in media spend
- Contract Period/Term: 1 year
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: April 21, 2025