Category: Education Marketing

How do you measure the success of an enrollment marketing campaign? The obvious answer is, “How many enrollments did we get?” and while that may be the ultimate goal, there are several other metrics to consider. A typical student enrollment journey involves multiple touchpoints including search, PPC ads, social media posts, and email campaigns. This path generates a ton of actionable data.

Used smartly, data helps higher education marketing professionals justify marketing efforts and prove the value of marketing to the stakeholders. However, it can be difficult to decide which metrics to focus on and a common mistake is to measure activity, not results. Anything that doesn’t translate into new inquiries, enrollments, or overall profit, we refer to as a soft goal. While these data points – including social media followers, page views, or comments – may look impressive on the paper, they are not hard goals that drive the business forward.

In this article we have listed the five best KPIs for higher education marketing professionals who want to run effective campaigns. 

Student Enrollment Funnel

First, let’s take a look at the student enrollment funnel, or the admissions funnel. Often used by student recruitment and admissions professionals, it shows each stage a prospective student takes along the decision-making process from the initial stage when they first learn about your institution, to enrolling as a student. The purpose of marketing and admissions teams is to move prospects down the funnel, and provide useful content that reflects what prospects at each stage are looking to learn. While every stage of the funnel has its own marketing goals, they all share the same KPIs that track performance from top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel. 

1. Search Ranking 

The value of SEO is often underestimated, however, looking at analytics of any website, organic traffic is usually the best converting channel. Getting on top of the search engine result page (SERP) is important because the higher your website ranks, the more prospective students will find your institution and land on your website, eventually increasing your enrollment. In fact, only 4.8% of searchers make it to the second page of search results, and only 1.1% to the third. 

Track your institution’s position in search results, on domain and on individual page level, by using specific search queries you want to rank for. If your website is buried beyond the first page of search results, it’s time to do some optimization to increase your website’s visibility. 

We recommend using tools like Google Analytics or SEMrush that offer tons of information about your website traffic, bounce rates, domain authority, conversions, backlinks and other important factors that contribute to your overall search ranking. 

2. Click-Through Rates

As a higher education marketer, you probably use multiple channels to attract prospective students to your website or a landing page. A click-through rate (CTR) will tell you how many of the users who have seen your ad, email, social media post, or a website call-to-action (CTA), have clicked on your content. A high CTR typically indicates that you have done a good job with your website or landing page design, you have the right messaging that interests the user, or that you have reached the right audience with your ads or emails. Some of the most common reasons for low CTR are poor page optimization, misplaced CTAs, or wrong target audience.  

3. Conversion Rates

We all love seeing our website traffic numbers spike, but what truly matters is the quality of that traffic. The best way to measure quality is looking at your conversion rates. It measures the percentage of visitors who have taken an action in comparison to the total number of website visitors. Depending on which stage of the funnel the visitor is, the desired action typically includes submitting a form for more information, downloading content, or registering for an event. 

By tracking conversion rates you get information on the quality of your website content, your landing pages, and most importantly, the quality of traffic. We recommend to keep track of following KPIs:

• Traffic-to-Inquiry Ratio
• Inquiries-to-Enrollment Ratio
• Landing Page Conversion Rates

4. Cost Per Enrollment

Your marketing efforts did what they were supposed to and as a result, you have reached the desired number of enrollments. From there, take a few steps back and track the enrollment journey from a prospect to an enrolled student, with all the touchpoints, to measure how much you have spent on each enrollment. By breaking down the cost not only by program, but also by platform and by campaign will help you recognize how successful and profitable each activity is, and where you need improvement.

Some channels will carry higher conversion costs, whereas some have lower conversion rates. It is important to analyze both metrics and optimize your marketing efforts to cost per enrollment.

5. ROI

Last but certainly not the least, take time to calculate your marketing return on investment (ROI). ROI will help you identify how much revenue your marketing efforts have generated in comparison to the money you have spent. Whether measured holistically or on a campaign-basis, use ROI to justify marketing spend, analyze campaign success, and secure budget for future campaigns. A high ROI indicates success (and keeps your boss happy), whereas little return means it is time to adjust your strategy.

Knowing your marketing metrics will help you make better informed decisions with your enrollment strategy. Align the higher education marketing KPIs to your goals and measure them regularly to track the progress of your marketing efforts.

If you want to learn more about setting your goals and tracking KPIs, talk to our digital experts today. 

Higher Education is undergoing a surge in demand in the midst of ongoing economic uncertainty. If there is a silver lining to this environment, it’s that colleges and universities have an entirely new audience of prospective students. Dynamic schools are thriving.

We interviewed Andrew Womble, the leader of the education media team at Mason Interactive, for expert insights on education trends. Andrew has been working closely with our higher education clients through the pandemic to pivot their advertising strategies, and optimize campaigns for best performance. He shared the tactics his team used to tap into this new market opportunity and help our clients exceed their goals – with reduced budgets. 

Andrew, what does the higher education market look like today?

Higher education is in huge demand. We have seen a significant increase in education-related search queries over the past 6 weeks. With a rising number of people left home without a job, whether unemployed or furloughed, the education market has an entirely new audience looking to explore alternative career paths. Historical data supports this trend; we saw a similar education boom during the 2008 market crash.

The best way to demonstrate this upward trend is to look at our client data. Historically, March through June is a quiet period for education, and the search volumes typically drop during these months. This April, however, our clients saw a significant spike in performance and as much as doubled conversions in comparison to April 2019. As an example, our top performing client achieved a 60% YoY increase in impressions. Without a doubt, May will bring similar, if not even better, results.

How has this impacted on our clients campaigns?

Typically, campaigns that focus on brand keywords [keywords around the school name] are the best-performing, most-efficient campaigns for our education clients. When the pandemic first hit the economy in mid March, we saw a significant drop in the impression volume and brand leads. 

Around the same time, Cost Per Lead (CPL) for brand campaigns skyrocketed when students and families searched for the school name to get updates on campus closures. Our team reacted immediately to and shifted the focus on top-of-the funnel campaigns.

Why do top of the funnel campaigns perform so well in the current landscape?

Today’s audience is in exploratory mode, which creates a new market.  People are searching generic keywords  – things like “online degree” – at a massively increased scale. Prospective students who have recently become unemployed and thus decided to pursue higher education, don’t yet know a particular school they want to apply to. They will begin their research by typing in broad search terms such as “cooking degree” or “business school”  to get an idea of the degrees and schools available. Top of the funnel campaigns are built around these generic, broad keywords and focus on introducing the school to a new audience for the first time. 

Historically a campaign like this is very expensive to run, but because of the increased demand, generic keywords have become more cost effective. 

Can you drive results even with a reduced budget?

As a result of the high search volumes and increased demand, you can now achieve more with a smaller budget, as long as you have the right strategy in place. Compared to the data from April 2019, our clients have reached the same, and some even better, results this April, with a significantly smaller budget.  

If you are struggling to justify advertising spend at the current time, focus on setting up your strategy to the upcoming peak season, which typically runs from July to October. Letting your sales funnel dry down between now and July, can damage your entire marketing ecosystem and take you back to the square one. As a rule of thumb, it is always more cost (and time) effective to nurture existing prospects in your funnel than it is to attract new ones when your funnel is empty.

You said even a smaller budget can take you further than ever before. Why is that? 

Simply put, with so much demand out there, advertising is cheaper. Our education clients have seen a huge increase in impressions, which in turn increases conversions, and therefore the Cost Per Click (CPC) will decrease. This means schools can now generate more conversions at a lower cost. 

Naturally, Google algorithm plays part in the entire scenario. Google Ads Auction determines the cost for each keyword based on how many advertisers [schools] are bidding for it – the fewer advertisers there are, the lower the cost. With so many schools pulling back on advertising, there is a huge opportunity to advertise at cheaper cost in a less competitive environment. In addition to this, the high volume of education related search queries, has dropped the Cost Per Impression (CPM). When you combine all these factors with the growing demand, you get an ideal environment to drive success.

Achieving great advertising ROI will ultimately come down to selecting the right strategy for your school. Work with your agency, or contact our education team at Mason Interactive to build strategy for you. 

What are your recommendations for education marketing professionals?

Most importantly, continue advertising and invest in filling your sales funnel with future students. The biggest mistake would be to pause all advertising because when your school reopens you are going to need those students.  

Work with your agency to pivot your strategy, edit existing campaigns and revise your creatives and ad copy accordingly. My recommendation is to shift to upper funnel advertising tactics in order to introduce your school to new audiences. This approach has delivered great results for our education clients, when combined with highly-personalized remarketing tactics. 

Thirdly, expand and invest in your entire online structure. Naturally, online programs are thriving in the current environment. On-campus degrees still get some interest, but it doesn’t mean a school can solely rely on them with so much uncertainty around reopenings. If your school doesn’t offer online programs, but you have a campus in a remote location, consider emphasizing the location as a safe place to study throughout your messaging.

After chatting with Andrew, one thing is clear: low advertising cost and increased demand has created a huge opportunity for higher education institutions. Schedule a call with our experts today to get advice on how you can tap on this new opportunity.