June 19, 2012

From Dud to Superstar using Google AdWords

Jun. 19, 2012 at 02:04 PM | By Susie Gotschall | Comment Count

While summer may mean vacation for most, enrollment professionals are hard at work preparing for the upcoming student recruitment year. One element of your recruitment plan should include how to reach students online through paid search campaigns. Why? Most students and/or families begin their college search online.

As product manager for digital marketing, I help many clients to turn their higher education marketing campaigns into lean, mean enrollment delivering machines. By following these four steps you can optimize your latest campaign to not only get the best return on your school’s investment but also make your eager admissions director handing out hi-fives for a job well done!

Step 1:

Taking advantage of Google’s free AdWords tools can help turn your higher education marketing campaign from a dud to a student recruitment superstar.

Once a campaign is launched in Google, (here’s how), the first step is to review your data. Select the campaign you wish to analyze by choosing a substantial amount of data within the campaign’s active date range via the “Campaigns” tab.

Google AdWords Campaigns Tab

*Tip: For newer campaigns, two weeks is generally a decent amount of time to start analyzing. Seven days may be appropriate for campaigns with significant history and volume.

Step 2:

Use the Google Adwords “Keyword” tab to sort by “average position” otherwise known as the Google search results page your ad is placed on. Select your target keyword and then select average position under the “Filter” tab.

Is your keyword’s average position above the “fold” for all keywords (above position five)? If not, then you will need to reconfigure your ad’s keyword content by choosing a different keyword to rank for or by raising your bid for the keyword you are targeting.

Google AdWords Keywords According to Google:

“When customers search on Google, ads can appear at the top of the page, on the side of the page, or on the bottom of the page. Only the highest ranking ads are eligible to show at the top of the page. Your ad's position on the page is determined by your Quality Score and your bid.”

By optimizing your ads to rank in the fifth position of Google’s search results or better, you will notice an increase in the amount of clicks and your campaign’s click through rate will improve. In turn, Google will reward your efforts with a higher Quality Score and lower Cost Per Click (CPC).

Step 3:

Next, using the keyword filter, sort by Cost Per Click to determine which keywords are taking up a disproportionate amount of the campaign’s daily budget. Decrease your bid on keywords with high CPC and low conversions.

*Tip: Review keywords by click through rate to determine if page position and keyword bids need adjusting. Generally, if your ad has a low click through rate then additional adjustments are necessary.

Step 4:

Last but not least, sort your keywords by Quality Score. “Pause” any keyword that is scored as a one or two. This will improve the quality score of your campaign’s ad group and improve results.

What other tactics have you used to optimize Google AdWords campaigns?