As a local, storied academic institution, helping students get the degree that will launch their careers, Plaza College needed to raise its visibility and better leverage the testimonials of its student body and successful alumni.
Implementing Review Stars to aggregate their reviews and increase their visibility across Google listings and all the other major search indexes.
Enhanced and managed business listing service that ensures accurate details are surfaced for prospective students.
Increase in call volume and online interest from prospective students.
In under 18 months their reviews grew to over 650 and were overwhelmingly positive.
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Plaza College was established in 1916 as a local Queens academic institution. Its mission has been to help generations of New Yorkers pursue their dreams, through career-oriented courses of study.
After moving from its original campus in Jackson Heights, to a state-of-the art facility in Forest Hills, Plaza College realized it could be doing more with its online marketing strategies to attract new candidates for admissions.
A byproduct of its years of operations at its original location, the college’s listings and location detail were desperately in need up updating. Their SEO was being severely negatively impacted by this outdated information. With Thump Local’s Power Listings program Plaza College was able to ensure that all their online listings, in all the online directories were claimed, up-to-date and consistent.
With the help of Thump, the Plaza College team realized that they could be doing a much better job telling the stories of current students and recent graduates. In talking with prospective students, the admissions team had learned that reviews and testimonials were one of the single most important factors in deciding to apply.
The team at Thump recommended implementing a Review Stars program to allow the admissions team to better leverage stories from the hundreds of happy students and graduates. All the admissions officers were quickly set up with access to the Review Stars dashboard. This allowed them to quickly and seamlessly invite recently-enrolled students to share their experience of going through the admissions and enrollment process.
Additionally, the career placement team was also set up so that they could solicit feedback from recent graduates and capture stories of how studying at Plaza College had prepared them to start their career.
Part of Thump’s program also involved helping Plaza College administrators clean up and remove old, false and defamatory reviews from students who had left the program without graduating. A key aspect of a successful review management program is looking proactively at, and addressing, negative feedback.
Implementing Review Stars has been transformative for Plaza College’s admissions program. Prospective students have been pouring over the details in the reviews and citing their importance to admissions counselors. In the last 2 years the number of reviews has grown over 10x and the college currently has over 630 reviews and an average rating of 4.9 Stars.
