In the competitive space of MBA enrollments—particularly for online programs—you need to effectively leverage every weapon in your digital marketing arsenal to find and enroll new students. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns can help, but only if you comprehend the multidimensional layers of strategic PPC management. From immersing yourself in the higher education PPC ecosystem to mastering the art of ad crafting for maximum engagement, you need to explore the options that will provide the most promise to enhance your campaigns’ performance. What role does audience segmentation play in optimizing your ad spend? How can analytics drive smarter, data-informed decisions in real-time? Check out our comprehensive guidelines to a better PPC for MBAs.

Analyze Higher Education Keyword Competition

MBA keywords are competitive and expensive. To launch effective campaigns, you need to conduct a thorough keyword competition analysis. Pinpoint keywords that are valuable without being adversely competitive and prohibitively costly. That means you need to examine search trends, investigate competitor strategies, and consider the search intent of prospective students. For example, targeting specific phrases like “part-time MBA nearby” or “executive MBA courses” could yield more qualified and affordable leads than the broader “MBA programs.”

Review PPC Cost Dynamics

Cost dynamics play a significant role in shaping PPC strategies. The cost per click (CPC) for education-related keywords is on the rise, making optimized spending essential. Implementing strategies such as dayparting (scheduling ads to run during optimal times) and geo-targeting, while enhancing your Quality Score can help manage costs effectively. By diligently connecting ad relevancy to your landing pages, you can improve your Quality Score and lower bid costs.

Segment Student Audiences for Tailored PPC Campaigns

Audience segmentation helps you understand the diverse needs of prospective students so you can craft campaigns that cater specifically to those needs. For example, the student who continues straight from a bachelor’s degree to an MBA would be one segmented audience. Another might include professionals seeking executive MBA programs. Still another might target international students interested in specific accreditations. Effective segmentation leads to more personalized ad campaigns, which are more likely to capture the interest of the target audience and get the results you want.

Craft Strategic MBA Ads for Maximum Engagement

Your ads need to stand out from online clutter. Compelling ads are essential for successful higher ed PPC campaigns. You need visuals that conform to institutional brand guidelines but also push the envelope. And the copy needs to grab user attention with a clear and concise call-to-action (CTA). Your message should also effectively communicate what differentiates your MBA program from all others. Is it your institutional reputation, distinguished faculty, unique curriculum, or program flexibility. And what is the end goal of your prospective students? Consider their aspirations and challenges and how you can help them overcome obstacles to achieve their goals. 

Produce Stellar Landing Pages for PPC Campaigns

A well-designed landing page improves brand reputation, user experience, and conversion rates. It should succinctly provide all necessary information about your MBA program, differentiate your offerings, and include strong CTAs. Visual elements like campus images, student testimonials, and infographics about program outcomes can further enhance engagement.

Refining PPC Campaigns with A/B Testing

A/B Testing is a data-driven technique to optimize your PPC campaigns. By testing different versions of ad copy, visuals, and landing pages, you can determine what resonates best with your audience. Some key elements to test include:

• Headline variations
• CTA wording and placement
• Button colors, size, and shape
• Images and video content
• Landing page layouts

Set Goals and Leverage Analytics for PPC Campaigns

You can’t produce great results if you don’t set goals, measure conversions, and adjust campaigns based on analytics. By establishing specific conversion goals, such as form submissions, brochure downloads, and virtual or on-campus visits, you can better pinpoint which ads generate interest, applications, and enrollments. Your data facilitates a detailed analysis of campaign performance and offers insights into user behavior and preferences.

Conduct ROI Analysis for PPC Campaigns

ROI analysis connects your PPC campaigns directly to the tuition revenue they generate for the programs you promote. By calculating the cost-per-acquisition and comparing it to the lifetime value of a student, you can determine whether your PPC spend leads to tangible enrollment increases. A full analysis can prove the value of PPC for MBA enrollments and can justify an increased digital marketing budget, that in turn can produce more enrollments.

Optimize PPC Campaigns to Improve Enrollment Yield

Based on your data and analysis, make real-time optimizations to sustain the effectiveness of your PPC campaigns. Continuous campaign monitoring lets you adjust to performance fluctuations or test new opportunities. On any given day, you may reallocate budgets toward high-performing keywords, pause underperforming ads, swap out creative, or modify ad schedules based on user engagement patterns.

Explore Alternate Targeting with PPC Campaigns

Because many MBA programs have geographic limitations, such as in-person classes or residency requirements, geo and local targeting can help you better attract right-fit students to your programs. Even online programs tend to attract students within a certain geographical location. Tailor your messaging to very specific regions, using colloquial language and local references. The more personalized and relevant your messaging, the more likely it will resonate with your intended audience and get them to respond in the way you want.

Integrate PPC Campaigns with Other Digital Marketing Efforts

PPC campaigns perform particularly well when they are part of an omnichannel approach. Use PPC with other digital marketing strategies to ensure brand consistency, cohesive marketing, and maximum ROI. When you align PPC with SEO, for example, you can better optimize spend. Because MBA-related keywords can be so expensive, having your SEO team target longer-tailed keywords that answer user queries can augment your paid efforts. Also, insights gathered from PPC campaigns, such as just which keywords are the most expensive, can help you optimize spend across channels. It’s a win-win.

Navigating the complexities of PPC campaigns in the competitive field of MBA enrollment requires strategic, data-driven tactics that are innovative and client-centric. CloudControlMedia takes that exact approach. If you’re ready to enroll more students into your MBA programs, contact our paid media team today. We can start with a complimentary audit of your existing campaigns and then explain the potential we see in your future. Reach out today.

~Linda Emma, Storyteller-in-Chief

By Sam Silverman, Senior Account Manager

Marketing for your school is a lot like recruiting for a job. You’re not just trying to get potential candidates through the door. You want a real-life employee that fits with your company mission and culture. Likewise, in higher education marketing, you don’t just want to drive “leads” and “application submits.” You are looking for qualified applicants who will be accepted to your programs and reflect the successful student body that makes up your college brand.

But how can you find and effectively spend marketing budget on just these types of prospective students and not waste spend on leads that won’t convert?

Start with Paid Media Campaign Parameters

The first thing to do is to create a set of parameters based on your minimum criteria for acceptance to your programs. This makes sure everyone is on the same page as to what defines a “quality candidate.”

Let us say you are looking to enroll candidates to an online MBA program. You will need to choose parameters based on your institution and its unique MBA program, but you’ll also want to consider a few general criteria, such as:

• Age
• Years of Work Experience
• Required Degree (Minimum Bachelor’s Degree)
• Excluded Degrees (Overqualified Ph.D.)
• Grade Point Average
• Previous School Quality
• Essay Quality
• Letter of Recommendation

These are all potential criteria from which to find your quality applicants. However, you’ll also want to consider where you need to be restrictive and where you can be a little bit more flexible. How much control you have over this will depend on which marketing channels you utilize.

Where to Be Restrictive with Paid Media Campaigns

Any minimum requirement is a place to be restrictive. From the parameters list above, that would include conditions like:

• Age
• Years of Work Experience
• Required degree (e.g. bachelor’s degree before graduate degree).
• Overqualified people (CEOs, applicants who already have the degree, etc.)

But how can you include these restrictions in your campaign targeting? It depends on the channel. Let’s look at how this plays out in Google Ads, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

What Paid Media Channels to Utilize with Your Campaigns

Google Ads: You can set parameters for Google Ads based on age…. theoretically. However, a common misconception is that there is full demographic data available for everyone on Google just like LinkedIn and Facebook. This is not necessarily the case. You can say that you don’t want to send ads to 15-24-year-olds, but Google does not know everyone’s age accurately. If you put in this constraint, you may cut off a significant portion of your potential audience. So, while we know you do not want to target a 15-year-old kid, if your option is to have some unqualified candidates in the mix so you don’t miss out on potentially qualified candidates, it is best to choose the former.

Parameters like Years of Work Experience, Required Degree, and Overqualifications—these are all not typically requirements you want to put in Google Ads. These are much better explained through ad copy, landing pages, or even during the application process.

LinkedIn & Facebook: Facebook and LinkedIn are social media advertising channels that are built upon demographic data. Contrary to Google’s keyword and search strategy, these channels use campaign structure that is built around targeting for demographically relevant users.

So, can you use the required degree parameters for LinkedIn and Facebook, right?

Yes and no. Again, the answer is technically yes, but with several caveats.

Facebook users are not always known to give full, up-to-date, accurate personal information on the site. For example, if users do not include their high school, then the Facebook algorithm assumes they don’t have a high school diploma. Depending on users’ publicly available information and privacy settings, accuracy can vary wildly.

On the other hand, LinkedIn users are much more heavily incentivized to have accurate, relevant personal and career information since the site functions as a place to build a professional network. Degrees on LinkedIn are usually relatively accurate. You may choose degree here as to restrict and qualify your audience. That said, sometimes a better way to target than by degree is with “years of work experience.” This allows you to make sure the person has been working for 2-12 years before applying to your graduate school.

So, even if these are great potential ways to qualify students, it’s still channel-dependent on how they can be effectively implemented.

Where Not to Be Restrictive with Paid Media Campaigns

If minimum restrictions are tricky on Paid Media channels, that means that other parameters are even more difficult to incorporate.

• Application Quality
• Grade Point Average
• Letter of Recommendation Quality
• …anything you have wiggle room on

These are not targeting parameters you can choose on any major marketing channel, but they are certainly considerations for your internal team and should be communicated throughout other parts of the funnel.

You can use landing page to stress the requirements of your program and preferred qualities of applicants. This helps students self-select before filling in the request for information form on the page. Based on their actions—or inaction—your marketing channels will machine learn to find more users like those who convert. So, in a way, even putting these requirements on the landing page is improving your paid marketing channels efforts and efficiencies.

Importance of Paid Media Strategy

At the end of the day, it’s not possible to only market to perfectly qualified candidates with your Paid Media team. However, you should always be striving toward bringing in as many “qualified leads” as possible.

The best thing to do is make both your school and your agency as aware as possible about the program requirements and attributes of your ideal candidate. From there, appropriate learnings and parameters can be put into individual marketing channels that will work together with the down funnel processes of Admissions, culminating in the best crop of students your program can have.

 

If you’d like to learn more about the paid media strategies that help schools find students who start at click and stay to graduation, contact the search marketing experts at Cloud Control Media today.