August 23, 2013

5 Common Pitfalls of PPC Advertising For Educational Offers

Aug. 23, 2013 at 08:00 AM | By Steve Gaitten | Comment Count

This article originally published in Today's Campus.

PPC or "Pay-per-click" advertising is the cornerstone of any university's digital marketing strategy. However, this advertising model is increasingly fraught with danger for even the savviest of digital practitioners. As PPC offerings mature and offer marketers greater control over the placement of advertising, the risk of spending large sums of money quickly with little or no return on investment has increased.

A lot of folks use the acronyms PPC or CPC (i.e. Cost-Per-Click) as synonyms for Google AdWords. PPC is actually much broader than that and technically refers to any service that enables advertisers to pay only when someone clicks on their ad. Under the heading of PPC, I also include text placements on Bing, Linkedin and Facebook as well as banner placements on any content network.

As a digital marketing consultant specializing in higher education, I frequently hear that a campus has tried PPC and failed. From small regional colleges to the largest, most recognized schools in the world, I hear phrases like, "We tried PPC and it didn't work for us." There is a tragic opportunity cost for institutions who do not maintain active PPC programs. I have never been able to find any research that quantifies the percentage of prospective students who start their pursuit of learning on a search engine. However, it seems obvious that individuals who would like to acquire a degree or gain a new skill set would start that search on Google, Bing or their engine of choice.

I believe PPC advertising is probably the fairest and most efficient business model in advertising. You only incur expense when you get results. What could be better than that? And, you can rack up millions of impressions and generate brand awareness even if no one ever clicks on your ads. PPC is a great deal, and it's the only way to gain access to the most important, most qualified prospects in the world: people who are using the Internet to search for your institution or programs. Now, if you accept my premise that advertising on search engines is a critical strategy for attracting new students and my argument that PPC is a fair and efficient advertising model, how do you avoid some of the common mistakes that lead to disappointment and wasted budget?

Here are five of the most common problems I hear about from marketers in the education vertical (pg. 14). .