GOOGLE ADWORDS: A PRIMER ON HIGHER EDUCATION DIGITAL ADVERTISING
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Google AdWords: A Primer on Higher Education Digital Advertising H a y l e y S u p p l e | Paid Media Specialist at Converge Consulting In higher education, your website is your storefront. Your goal is to get qualified traffic to your website and convert these visits into prospective students, increase the engagement of your alumni, and much more. Your website design and optimization tactics can sometimes do only so much— this is where Google AdWords comes into play. Higher education is becoming one of The white paper below is a primer on the top industries using Google AdWords Google AdWords – one of the most to drive traffic to their websites. More popular paid advertising mediums in and more colleges are using paid search higher education. It will walk you through tactics to generate leads due to high search the process of setting up and building a volume, specific targeting opportunities, search engine marketing campaign and and transparent tracking tools. However, will also advise you of the key strategies simply building and starting a Google and tactics to consider when starting AdWords campaign can be costly if you your campaign. have no experience running and optimizing previous search campaigns.
Getting Started
You’ve decided that you want to start a Google AdWords campaign now
what? First, you will need to make sure you have a Google account or Gmail
in order to move forward. Once you have that taken care of, go to adwords.
google.com to get started. You will create a campaign, choose your budget,
submit your billing information, and start building your campaign.
Ad Groups Settings
When it comes to deciding how to divide your campaign There are a variety of settings you can use for your
into different Ad Groups, the main things you’ll want to campaign, with the more important ones being the
consider are the differences you want to showcase in the campaign type, locations and bid strategy.
campaign. If your landing page, keywords, or ad copy need
to be different, you will want to use separate Ad Groups. campaign type
For example, With your AdWords campaign, you can choose to advertise
if you are on the Search Network, Display Network, or both. This
advertising for decision is based on user preference. Some choose to
a variety of MBA advertise only on the Search Network because the ads are
programs at your targeted specifically to Internet users who are searching
institution, you for your keywords on the Google search engine. When
will want different advertising on the Display Network, your ads are eligible
keywords and ads to appear on a variety of websites that are relevant to
relating to the your keywords. In addition to your text ads, you can also
specific programs create and/or use banner, video and other types of ads on
and will also want the Display Network. If you aren’t sure what networks are
your landing best for your campaign, start out advertising on both the
page to differ Search and Display Networks, monitor the differences in
by program. performance, and adjust accordingly if needed. You could
By having your also consider running a separate campaign for each network
campaign split if you want to better control how much you are spending.
into more spe-
cific Ad Groups, your ads will appear more relevant to the
Internet user’s search query and your click through rate (CTR)
should increase. Having a higher CTR helps improve your
quality score, which can greatly benefit your campaign when
it comes to positioning and cost per click (CPC).
convergeconsulting.org | 2
bid strategy You can also utilize ad
scheduling to control
When choosing a bidding strategy, consider how much what time of the day
time you will have to manage your campaign. If you plan on and/or day(s) of the
being very involved, you can select “I’ll manually set my bids week you want to
for clicks”. With this option, you will manually set cost per advertise. It’s recom-
click (CPC) bids and are able to adjust them frequently mended not to set
based on performance. If you do not have as much time specific ad scheduling
to manage your campaign, you can select bidding options when first starting your
where AdWords will set bids based on your budget or campaign; once you
conversion goals. You can also create your own unique have sufficient data
Flexible Bidding Strategy to target a specific position on on the performance of
the search results, maximize click counts, and more. your campaign, setting
specific ad scheduling
may make more sense
based on traffic and
conversion rates.
Ads
When writing ads for your campaign, there a few key things
to keep in mind.
locations
When deciding on the location targeting for your campaign, relevancy
consider the goals of your campaign and also characteristics You want the ad to be as relevant as possible to your
of your institution. For example, if your institution does keywords and landing page. Keep in mind what you are
well with attracting prospective students locally, focus your trying to advertise and rely heavily on your keyword list
advertising on geographic areas you want to draw more and text from your landing page when developing ad text.
students from. On the other hand, you can analyze your
current student body to determine the likelihood of where grammar , punctuation , and capitalization
you believe prospective students will come from and then Make sure your ad text makes sense and is free of grammar
base your location targeting on that. errors before going live with the campaign. Be consistent
with what words you choose to capitalize, and don’t forget
you can use only one exclamation point per ad.
call to action
It is important to include a call to action in every ad so
prospective students know what you want them to do next.
When determining what call to action to use, keep in mind
what you are trying to accomplish with the campaign.
“Request More
Information!”, “Apply
Today!”, and “Schedule
schedule Your Campus Visit!”
You can utilize the ad scheduling option to set start and end are examples of calls
dates for your campaigns. This is commonly used in higher to action that are
education when advertising for events such as open houses, frequently used in
grad fairs, webinars, and more. higher education.
convergeconsulting.org | 3multiple ads Ad Extensions
It is important to create at least two ads per Ad Group
in order to test and evaluate what ad text and strategies
work best for your institution. Some things to test out Ad Extensions are a great tool to use when creating
are different descriptive phrases, different calls to action, campaigns. Ad Extensions are additional features that can
and dynamic vs. static ad headlines. appear with your ad in order to help differentiate your ad
from your competitor’s ad. The Ad Extensions most com-
monly used are location, call, sitelinks and social extensions.
Keywords Setting up these Ad Extensions is pretty self-explanatory,
but there are some important things to keep in mind.
When developing your keyword list, use your landing page
and Google AdWords Keyword Planner tool to develop
keyword ideas. It is important to also use your personal
knowledge and common sense. For example, what keyword
phrase would you search when considering a masters in
accounting? Some other keyword strategies to consider are
using different keyword match types and geographically
modified keywords.
Ad Extensions appear more often with your ad when you
As your campaign runs, use the Search Query Report to
have top ad positioning. While location and call extensions
determine which searches are leading to visits to your
can be triggered at any ad position, sitelinks are triggered
website. Based on this information, consider adding
only when they appear in top positions due to top placement
keywords and negative keywords, or deleting keywords
formatting. For this reason, it is imperative to consider this
that are not performing well.
when determining your bids. Ad Extensions can significantly
improve your click through rate (CTR), which can lead to a
higher quality score. A higher quality score can benefit your
Audiences campaign in a variety of ways, including better positioning,
a lower cost per click (CPC), and more.
The Audiences tab is a newer feature in Google AdWords
where you can use remarketing lists to cater search ads to Dimensions
Internet users who have visited your website before. With
your remarketing list search ads (RLSA) you can create
customized ad text, adjust bids and use broader keywords
You can use the Dimensions tab to segment campaign
to target these Internet users. RLSA can be confusing and
reporting in a variety of ways. Segment the reporting based
requires coding be inserted on your website — I suggest
on time of day, user location, search term, and more. Then
listening to the Google+ Your Business webinar “Improving
use this information to optimize your campaign accordingly.
Your Search Campaigns with Remarketing Lists for Search
For example, if
Ads” before trying this out with your campaign.
you see that your
ads receive the
most impressions
between 7 a.m.
and 1 p.m., use
ad scheduling to
allocate a higher
percentage of
your campaign
budget during
this time frame.
convergeconsulting.org | 4Tracking In Conclusion
Regardless of what you are trying to accomplish with your When building and optimizing your campaign, it is impor-
campaign, it is important to track results for future analysis. tant to keep in mind that there are not necessarily ‘‘right’’
You can use Cconversion tracking within Google AdWords and ‘‘wrong’’ ways to do things. As long as you track and
or use Google Analytics to track online conversions. You can measure your results, it is good to test out a variety of ideas
also set up a Google forwarding number to monitor the calls based on the goals of your campaign.
you are receiving from your AdWords campaign. Analyze and
compare your conversion metrics to your costs to help you
make future advertising decisions.
About the Author
Hayley Supple is a Paid Media Specialist at Converge Consulting. Before joining Converge,
Hayley worked for a large marketing firm where she handled over 200 paid media campaigns
for small and medium-sized businesses. Hayley’s focus is to not only be dedicated to
her clients’ marketing needs, but to also find creative, innovative marketing solutions that
set them apart from their competitors. Hayley earned her B.B.A. in Marketing and an
Entrepreneurial Management Certificate from the University of Iowa.Here are some of my favorite resources when it comes Twitter
to learning about search engine marketing trends Search Engine Land - @sengineland
and staying up-to-date on new and upcoming Google
Google AdWords - @adwords
AdWords features.
PPC Hero - @ppchero
Webinars
White Papers
Learn with Google Webinars - www.google.com/ads/
experienced/webinars Navigating The Google Display Network: How to Succeed
& Gain Conversions
WordStream Search Marketing Webinars www.hanapinmarketing.com/resources/whitepaper/navigating-
www.wordstream.com/webinar display-network
Hanapin Marketing - www.hanapinmarketing.com/ Hanapin Marketing
resources/webinars AdWords White Paper: Getting Maximum Value from
AdWords Pay-Per-Click
Blogs www.wordstream.com/adwords-white-paper
WordStream
Search Engine Journal - www.searchenginejournal.com
Bid Like a Pro: Strategies for Success with AdWords
Search Engine Roundtable - www.seroundtable.com Enhanced Campaigns
PerryMarshall.com - www.perrymarshall.com www.google.com/adwords/enhancedcampaigns/resources/
whitepaper
PPC Hero - www.ppchero.com
Google
WordStream - www.wordstream.com/blog
Books
Websites “Google AdWords For Dummies” by Howie Jacobson
Google Trends - www.google.com/trends “Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords” by Bryan Todd
AdWords Help Center - support.google.com/adwords/
KeywordSpy - www.keywordspy.com
Google AdWords Ad Preview and Diagnosis
adwords.google.com/d/AdPreview/
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