Campaign Refinement Through Advanced SEM Tools
ResultsGoogle Tool Suite
Google’s suite of research and analysis tools—Ad Planner, Insights and Trends—helped the agency gain a better understanding of Alta’s audience, choose sites to target on Google’s Content Network, further supplement the campus-targeted PPC campaign and develop time/day parting parameters. Additionally, Ad Planner showed that the following sites were visited frequently by those that also visited the Westwood College site and were thus added to the targeted sites on the network: Cooks.com, CarsBelowInvoice.com, PopEater.com, AIC.com, VH1.com, MyFunCards.com, AutoTrader.com, MovieFone.com and many others.
Based on Google Trends and internal conversion data, the agency focused on states that showed a high level of interest in Westwood and Redstone. After switching from a national focus to a state one, the agency was able to bid on high volume terms in a cost effective manner. One such term—"online college"—saw a 111% average conversion rate improvement (June to December) after switching to a state-targeted campaign. In the first month alone, the state-targeted campaign had a 9.27% conversion rate, while the national-targeted only saw 5.96%.
Campus-targeted PPC
The refocus of campaigns to geographical areas around the campuses increased conversion rates 57.00% over the course of seven months, from 1.51% in June 2008 to 2.37% in December. Through Yahoo!’s new city and zip code targeting feature, the agency increased conversion rates 80.00% over the same time period. The campaign went from a 1.30% conversion rate in June 2008 to 2.34% in December.
Day/Time Parting
Day/time parting helped the agency bid more intelligently and, thus, increase conversion rates. Using MSN adCenter’s day/time parting feature, the agency successfully lifted conversion rates by 86.33% over the course of seven months. In June 2008, the conversion rate was 1.39% . By December, the agency helped raise it to 2.59% .
Order ID Tracking
By developing the order ID tracking code, the SEM agency was able to identify engine, campaign, ad group, keyword, degree program of interest and campus location that lead to an application. This knowledge helped them further refine the campaign structure to become more relevant for applicants, not just speculative leads and held the agency more accountable for results. It is a more challenging endeavor for the agency, but one that will complement Alta’s ultimate goal and surely help them achieve greater success. In Q4, the agency was responsible for 395 applications in addition to their numerous leads.
The order ID tracking code matched leads generated by the SEM agency with individuals that completed an application, holding the agency more accountable for results.Google Website Optimizer
Through their unique approach to using Google Website Optimizer, the SEM agency helped to increase conversion rates by 44.44% on average for all degree programs where the contact form performed better on the left side; HVAC saw an improvement of 83.1% and MBA’s conversion rate improved 91.2% .
Try as they might, the agency could not find a consistent correlation between brain lateralization and contact form location. Only half of the programs confirmed their hypothesis. The agency concluded that other variables were complicating the equation. However, their efforts were still considered a success—they determined the best contact form location for each degree program and have since applied that layout to all Westwood College landing page designs since.
For a search campaign, there is never a point where the advertisers can stop and say, "That’s it! I’ve done all I can do." The engines continually come up with new and inventive ways to extrapolate data and target searchers. In turn, advertisers must look at that data and understand how to use it creatively and intelligently. Alta’s SEM agency dabbled with every tool and feature available to further refine Alta’s search engine marketing campaigns and deliver a higher quantity or higher quality leads without increasing costs.
