As a higher education marketer, you know engaging prospective students is harder than ever. While you may have more opportunities for advertising to students online, this young audience is bombarded by messages all day long.

Standing out from the noise can be challenging, but higher education institutions that successfully reach and establish a connection with prospective students enjoy higher enrollment rates and greater brand recognition.

Here's how to connect with prospective students from Gen Z. 

Which Types of Ads Perform Best When Advertising to Students Online? 

Here are the top five digital ad formats used by colleges and universities for engaging prospective students, according to eMarketer PRO:

When you hear the term "college student," what comes to mind? If you're imagining someone in their late teens or early 20s who lives on campus, depends financially on their parents and attends classes full time, you're only partially correct. Over the past decade, the number of nontraditional students has grown exponentially and continues to change the face of universities across the country.

But what exactly classifies a student as nontraditional? The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) categorizes a nontraditional student as someone who has at least one of the following characteristics:

The world of higher education is filled with competition, not just among students hoping to gain admission, but among schools that want to be the first to attract the best and brightest to their campuses. Public, private and even for-profit schools are vying for attention from potential students, and have increased advertising budgets and education marketing departments to attract students.

This is actually a relatively new trend, as nonprofit colleges and universities previously only spent approximately 2 percent of their tuition revenue on recruitment, according to Inside Higher Ed. However, now that these higher education institutions are spending more than ever, let's look at some of the marketing trends currently used to attract prospective students.