I am in my fifth year of using Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing tools for student recruitment campaigns for the college i work with, and i must say it is one of the most efficient tools ever discovered over Internet which provides effective and cost efficient strategy to engage prospective students and draw them into your institution’s recruitment funnel. It all started when i was inclined towards using SEO for attracting more and more search listings for my institution. Having realised that with SEO it can take months before you notice any results, i was looking for options to get instant results and have a greater control over the campaigns which i want to manage with more flexibility, transparency and is targeted.
My requirement brought me closer to Google AdWords. Google AdWords is a simple a pay-per-click service which allowed me to create and run ads for my institution. These group of words are clickable and are displayed in Google's search results as well as other websites, based upon our preferences. Magic of using Google Adwords lies in the right selection of keywords and selecting the right target audience in specific geographical locations. I can say, its more similar to participating in an education fair, where we can predict the kind of visitors who are sure of their reason behind visiting the fair.
By using the right keywords for the target audience, we are already ahead because we are reaching people you have an interest in our product or service. Once the AdWords campaign goes live, ads will appear and we will get instant results, like visitor data. Some of the measurable benefits for using Google AdWords as per HEM are:
Google Adwords provides the advertising platform to reach into the highly competitive and rapidly evolving world of PPC advertising on the Google network, which accounts for almost 70% of global search traffic. To be successful on this platform, universities must combine sophisticated student recruitment strategy with a good technical mastery of the mechanics of PPC marketing, which i feel i have done. According to Moz, 80% of search results now contain AdWords ad placements. Furthermore, those ad placements are covering as much as 85% of the space above the fold on the results page. This doesn’t just mean that Google is making a hefty profit, it illustrates that AdWords are being used by more and more advertisers. So, the only way to be in the competition, is to be a part of it.
Because of the speed and accuracy of AdWords, when compared to SEO, we have a major advantage over our competitors. Because we are already appearing in search engines, our site will be receiving more clicks from search results than all of the other institutions in our territory. Success for a Google AdWords campaign also depends upon the type of the landing page and a clear understanding of what is expected from a visitor landing on the page after clicking the AdWords. Landing pages can have some sort of CTA (Call-To-Action) to help increase the time a visitor spends on the page as well as the conversion rates. It is also important to have a perfect linkage in message between the information provided in the AdWords and the landing page. Confusing and detached information on the landing page reduces the time spent on our site, hence lesser the chance for conversion.
Just recently i also started using Yahoo Gemini, which i feel is somewhat similar to Google AdWords in terms of budgeting, target audience selection, keywords and CPC. After my addiction to Google, i used the same strategies in Yahoo for designing my campaigns, but later realised that the results generated and the advertisement content policies were different. I started experimenting with Yahoo Gemini after realising that most of the non-English applicants at our end uses Yahoo Mail as their primary E-mail provider. Although the market share of e-mails as per various agencies are similar for Gmail and Yahoo, our own survey gave me a reason to experiment with.
Yahoo Gemini is giving intended results in the non-English speaking African countries, with the same budgeting and non-English keywords. Yes, to meet the advertisement content policy, i have to fine-tune my landing page to include second language, similar to the language of the advertisement. Moreover Yahoo also gave me an option to select the area of interest for target segment, similar to Facebook, which is not currently available in Google AdWords.
Overall i would say that African Universities are now looking for an edge when it comes to recruiting students in this intense competitive and challenging environment. Its not only paid campaigns that should be the metrics to measure the success of campaigns, organic traffic to websites are also very important to be in the market. A good blend of SEO, PPC, Blogging and Social Media are important four key elements that can drastically help improve traffic to websites and help cover all the bases as required.
I must say that PPC has significantly reduced my advertisement budget, without compramising on the net result. It has also helped my institution to reach out to the territories, which was initially difficult to reach or could be reached only through print or electronic media. The selection for Google AdWords or Yahoo Gemini totally depends upon territory they are strong into, and our target segment. Till now, both of them are delivering excellent results to me. I hope that the results will keep on coming despite the economic downturn in most of the African countries.
Anyone having any better idea on how to increase students recruitment in the era of high currency depreciation must also share it.
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