A digital marketing strategy is the path to profitability. Optimum7 can help you set the right goals, offer and implement creative and technical strategies, and use data and analytics to review and improve your business’s performance.
PPC advertising for universities can be a lucrative internet marketing strategy to increase student enrollment. However, when operating in a highly-competitive space such as higher education, running a successful and profitable pay-per-click campaign can be quite complex.
This is because universities:
Here’s a detailed breakdown of why universities need to use a sophisticated PPC strategy to stay competitive in the future.
Before we discuss why PPC is essential for marketing universities, let’s explore the challenges these institutions face in their marketing.
Universities often struggle with:
Let’s explore how universities can gain access to the benefits PPC brings, and use it to produce a steady influx of new students.
PPC is a form of online marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. One reason it is so popular is that an ad budget only gets spent when a valuable action is performed, in the case of universities, a click from a potential student. In the future, digital research will only grow as a preferred method by potential students.
A university’s PPC ad might look like a search engine result at the top of a page, with subtle signals like faint changes in background color and a small note denoting that the content is promoted or an advertisement.
Internet browsers can click on the result just as they would for any other headline that popped up when they searched for something. The click action would, as discussed earlier, result in a certain portion of the advertiser’s budget being paid to Google.
Good question, and the answer involves the ongoing study of the art and science of SEM. While SEO and PPC practices evolve over time, the theory of keywords remains consistent. Basically, if a prospective student or parent needs information about a university, they are likely to punch certain phrases and words into a browser, like Google.
Below are examples of probable phrases, though there is no data to back any of them.
..and so on.
Google and other search engines are always working towards posting relevant material to people who are looking for information on their platforms. If your copy reads perfectly, while addressing the most common concerns of prospective students, you give yourself a good chance of being displayed to the right people at the right time.
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Before we discuss why PPC is essential for marketing universities, let’s explore the challenges these institutions face in their marketing.
Universities often struggle with:
The best practices of creating a PPC campaign evolve just like any other digital tool. Let’s explore how universities can gain access to the benefits this tool brings, and use it to produce a steady influx of new students.
The reality of the education sector is this: every university faces unique challenges based on:
That’s why every university needs a custom PPC campaign. You may be a state university that needs to direct your marketing campaign to be more weighted to your state’s name. Careful though, if you over-use this term, search engines may consider your content to be spammy. That’s where the art part of SEO comes into play. You use data to learn what’s on the minds of your audience, and strong marketing writing skills to create the campaign.
Knowing the components of PPC copy often has to do with data and analytics. Many digital marketing tools and programs can show you which words and phrases are used most often. You can design your content to address these concerns, and answer them simply.
Ultimately, you need to consistently A/B test your campaigns to get the best results. Many universities don’t have time to do so, and make the mistake of treating their PPC campaigns as “set it and forget it”. At that point, it’s better to outsource your campaigns to an organization that can devote consistent attention overtime.
A/B testing in the context of PPC marketing means running two similar ads against each other and comparing their performance. There are numerous factors you can test when you create a PPC campaign.
These include, but are not limited to:
Often, you will want to maintain your current advertisement, and publish a new one to see if your changes measurably improved your performance.
Not everybody who visits your university’s website due to a PPC ad will become a student. However, they’ve expressed enough interest in your school that you can reap rewards from using retargeting strategies.
Retargeting is basically a system in which you use data collected from your PPC traffic in order to try a new approach with them. Marketing is often about persistence. Maybe someone meant to become a student, but got distracted, which is a common hazard in the online world. Maybe they didn’t find the degree they wanted to study or the information they really needed on loans. You can bring more students on board through retargeting.
A digital marketing strategy is the path to profitability. Optimum7 can help you set the right goals, offer and implement creative and technical strategies, and use data and analytics to review and improve your business’s performance.