Today we’re launching the first in a series of articles about Paid Social Media Marketing, specifically as it affects higher education marketing. In this post, we’ll take a look at some hard data. We compare baseline metrics in the two dominant online marketing platforms, Facebook and Google, to see how they stack up for a group of our .edu clients. “Schools who choose to not advertise on Facebook, are choosing to ignore the exact people that want to buy what they sell.” – Emily Clifford, Senior Account Manager, Social Media.
We took a look at 10 .edu’s – a mix of for-profit and not-for-profit, online and ground, and compared some key metrics. This data covers 90 days. Metric Google Facebook Take Away Cost per Click: $1.82, $.71 Visitors cost– 39% of what Google costs. Click-to-lead %: 1.24%, .82% Google converts clicks into leads 52% better than Facebook. CPL: $145, $86 Facebook leads cost 59%, compared to Google. This is just the jumping-off point, and we’ll get into the people and .edu’s behind these numbers next week. For now, here are the key take-aways: 1 Facebook costs an astounding 39% of what Google does. For every $1,000 you spend on Google Adwords, you can get the same amount of visitors from Facebook for $390. 2 Google does convert those clicks into inquiries better – – – but not by enough of a margin to win in a head-to-head competition. 3 Because the cost per visitor is so much lower, Facebook’s average Cost per lead is 59% of Google’s.