When the number of high school seniors submitting a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) was down a calamitous 40% in the spring of 2024, the National College Attainment Network (NCAN) planned and launched a first-of-its-kind national digital
ad campaign that ran from mid-May through August. The #DoTheFAFSA campaign’s goal was to encourage an additional 375,000 Pell Grant-eligible young people to complete
the FAFSA so they would be on track for college enrollment in the fall 2024 semester.
The result? The campaign yielded an estimated 587,028 FAFSA submissions, or 157% of our goal, and contributed to a record-breaking summer for FAFSA completion.
NCAN organized the #DoTheFAFSA campaign as an emergency response to substantial technological challenges and delays that occurred in late 2023 and early 2024 when the US Department of Education (ED) implemented the biggest overhaul of the FAFSA in 40
years. Because FAFSA completion is highly correlated with college enrollment, NCAN believed it was critical to augment the on-the-ground efforts happening in communities across the country to help more students complete the FAFSA as well as to reach
Pell-eligible young people in places lacking robust local initiatives. A paid digital FAFSA ad campaign made sense because of the ability to direct ads to a specific audience based on their age and family income and to reach young people online where
they spend a considerable amount of their time.
But the outstanding #DoTheFAFSA campaign results make it clear that digital advertising of the FAFSA shouldn’t just be a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency tool. We now have proof of concept that reaching out to lower-income students digitally to encourage
FAFSA completion is quite effective. College affordability is the number one barrier to higher education for young Americans, but many of them don’t know what a Pell Grant is. The high school class of 2023 alone left more than $4 billion in Pell Grants
on the table, funds students could have used to pay for postsecondary enrollment in 2023-24.
Digital advertising of FAFSA to students likely to qualify for need-based financial aid should be added to other high-impact FAFSA completion strategies such as universal FAFSA completion policies, FAFSA completion support during the school day, use of
student-level FAFSA completion data to target outreach, and trained one-to-one assistance for students needing help with the application. Digital advertising may be particularly important and effective in places with few or no college access nonprofits,
where public schools lack FAFSA completion assistance, or when trying to reach young people who have completed high school but did not immediately enroll in postsecondary education.
To inform future efforts, below are outlined the parameters of the #DoTheFAFSA campaign, key partners, and key takeaways.
Parameters of the #DoTheFAFSA Paid Ad Campaign
Target audience: ~6.5 million young people ages 17-20 with family incomes of $60,000 or less (Pell Grant-eligible) with emphasis on students of color
Duration: 16 weeks (May 13-August 31)
Budget: $4.7 million (NCAN staff time, creative agency time, digital media buys, and influencer contracts)
Ad placement: Social media (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, SnapChat, Reddit), gaming, publishing, streaming, and audio platforms as well as display, connected TV, and online video placements
Ad content: Ads in English and Spanish based on 15 themes, such as “Big Dreams Begin with FAFSA,” “Don’t Let Past FAFSA Troubles Stop You from Trying Again,” and “More Students Will Get Money”
Ad impressions:408,447,953 total impressions
Clicks to FAFSA.gov:1,806,691
Estimated FAFSA submissions:587,028
Key #DoTheFAFSA Campaign Partners
The campaign was designed and executed by GMMB, a full-service, cause-driven national communications agency. GMMB had already developed a FAFSA messaging toolkit, supported by the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation, so the firm was positioned to execute the #DoTheFAFSA campaign on an unusually short timeframe of five weeks from contract signature to launch.
Campaign funders contributed $4.7 million and enabled not only a quick start to the campaign but also robust media buys that continued throughout the summer. NCAN extends our deepest thanks to ECMC (FAFSA Student Support Strategy), Ballmer Group, Michael
& Susan Dell Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Ascendium, A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation, Ichigo Foundation, Strada Education Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Lumina Foundation, Helios Education Foundation, TIAA,
College Board, Woodward Hines Education Foundation, and NAICU for their vision and commitment to students.
Get Schooled created authentic, empathic, and timely ads for its audience that spoke specifically to FAFSA struggles, broke down common FAFSA myths, and inspired young people to start or renew their
FAFSA or state-based financial aid. This effort yielded 4,900,000 ad impressions and 40,000 clicks to StudentAid.gov.
Leveraging the power of authentic voices to amplify the #DoTheFAFSA messaging, the campaign also contracted with 13 influencers to create and share content in English and Spanish on Instagram. From July through August 15, these influencers posted a total
of 15 organic videos and reached a total of 245,403 people, achieving an engagement rate of 5.6%.
In addition to paid advertising, the campaign offered a free-to-use social media toolkit (English and Spanish) that many NCAN members and friends deployed on their own channels. The toolkit contains pre-drafted posts, videos, and graphics for Facebook,
Instagram, X/Twitter, TikTok, and LinkedIn. During the campaign period, 5,814 viewers viewed the toolkit a total of 6,646 times. The platforms that saw the most traffic were Facebook and Instagram, with over 1,000 asset downloads between the two platforms.
Key #DoTheFAFSA Campaign Takeaways
The campaign was highly effective as measured by the rate at which ads led viewers to click on fafsa.gov. The combined click-through rate was 0.44%, far exceeding the industry benchmark of 0.07%-0.15%.
The campaign was also affordable, costing just $2.39 per click to fafsa.gov and $7.36 per estimated FAFSA submission, based on the total campaign creative agency and media buy expense.
Top-performing platforms by number of ad impressions and clicks were Snapchat and Meta (Instagram and Facebook). TikTok ads generated the highest click-through rate, and gaming platforms and Reddit also delivered click-throughs that exceeded industry
benchmarks.
Targeting ads to students with Pell Grant-eligible family incomes allowed the campaign to focus on the messages relevant to them: They could receive grants to pay for college they would not need to pay back, and more students than ever are eligible
for those grants.
Almost all 15 ad themes performed at or substantially above relevant benchmarks, meaning that meaningful numbers of viewers found the content useful and interesting as measured by their engagement. According to these results, there is no single best
message with which to promote the FAFSA. Deploying a range of messages drove more clicks than any single ad theme would have yielded.
ED has little to no budget for paid advertising campaigns and relies primarily on organic social media posts and email to reach digital audiences of students, parents, and loan borrowers. It is challenging to reach new audiences of individuals who
have not yet completed a FAFSA with this strategy, especially if they are unfamiliar with financial aid.
Although this campaign was national in scope, the strong results imply that a geotargeted campaign by state or zip code would also be effective.
To paraphrase a popular expression, a crisis like the FAFSA fiasco can be an opportunity to do things you thought you could not do before. Young people voted with their clicks during the #DoTheFAFSA campaign and clearly want more information about how
to afford postsecondary education. Let’s learn the lesson and put digital advertising to work strategically to help more low-income students better understand the financial aid they qualify for and complete the FAFSA.
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