Michael McEuen, Director of Marketing at AdStage, gave a presentation on driving better enrollment quality with multi-channel marketing. He covered elements of an effective education marketing stack including data programs, infrastructure, and CRM. He discussed setting up cross-network tracking and optimizing marketing across the entire enrollment funnel. McEuen also reviewed different cross-channel attribution models and took questions from Liz Rossi of Pearson.
Digital Marketing Spotlight: Lifecycle Advertising Strategies.pdf
Driving Enrollment Quality with Multi-Channel Marketing
1. Michael McEuen
Director of Marketing
AdStage
@lonohead
#inEDU16
Driving Better Enrollment Quality with
Multi-Channel Marketing
2. What
We’ll
Cover
• Elements of the Perfect EDU Stack
• Setting Up Cross-Network Tracking
• Optimizing Across the Entire Funnel
• Cross-Channel Attribution Models
• Q&A with Liz Rossi of Pearson
4. Prospect Engage Analyze & Report Evangelize
Data & Programs
Predictive
Outreach
Nurture
Acquire
Events
Digital
CRO
Direct
Web
BI
Attribution
Infrastructure CRM
Advocacy
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7. Online advertising spend by education brands
in the US stood at $120 million by end of
2015, accounting for 0.2% of total online
advertising.
Socintel360
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20. 3. Consideration
Search Queries:
{keyword} prices,
{keyword} reviews,
{keyword] vs. {keyword},
competitor terms,
best category keywords
Unpublished Sponsored Tweet
Direct Sponsored Content
Dark Sponsored Post
Search Text Ads
21. 4. Decision
Search & RLSA Text Ads
Search Queries:
Brand keywords
High buying intent keywords
Specific product line, service, or
offering keywords
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22. Retargeting Can Be Used to Help Accelerate Each Stage
Example retargeting funnel stages, triggered by web custom/tailored audience buckets
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24. Visits
LinkedIn
Clicks on ad,
downloads a guide
Nurture Campaigns Across
Channels
Visits
Site
Does not convert Sees content or CTAs from your
desired goal
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30. Linear
0
25
50
75
100
%Attributed
Touch Number
1 2 3 4 5
Great for:
• Setting up
custom
models
• # of touch
points to sale
Not ideal for:
• Budget
allocation
• Pipeline
prediction
25%25%25%25%25%
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34. Three Top Takeaways
Holistically think about:
1. Your ideal student profile and end goals
2. How data passes through systems
3. How to better align budgets to revenue
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Editor's Notes
Instead of approaching different network campaigns separately, take more of a holistic approach. Start thinking about and assigning your ad campaigns, aligned with certain stages in the buying process – from simple awareness, to the engagement, consideration, and decision making stage. Now, it’s unrealistic to expect a buyer to perfectly go through the buyer’s journey in this progression. Prospects will skip, pass through, and go back steps – that’s digital for you. However, aligning your campaigns to the buying process will provide a succint
Let’s start from the very first step – Brand Awareness. This is all about reaching great fit prospects who likely has never heard of your brand before. This step is about providing an initial impression of your brand. Social video, display banner ads, and fan/follower growth campaigns work well here.
Once your brand is somewhat known to the prospect, the next step is to engage with them in a light and helpful way. Altruistic, sharable packaged content works well here. Take advantage of native sponsored ads that show in the main feeds of the major social networks. Your goals are to increase views, and shares on the web content, and increase engagement on the actual post itself (interactions, comments, shares). Some of the content will be open, such as blog posts, while others will have light lead capture (email, name) for gated assets such as Whitepapers.
You’ve produced and promoted some great content that helps to solve/speak to pain points in the industry. Next, is more of a direct approach, using Dark Sponsored Posts/Tweets/Content in order to drive a form fill conversion – capturing the prospect’s information. While also targeting comparative, pricing, review, and competitive queries on the search engines (google, bing).
Finally, we’re at the decision making step. Using a mix of tightly themed ad groups targeting brand, high buying intent, and specific product line/service keywords and driving a hard conversions such as a demo request or sale. Take advantage of consideration and drop off decision themed keywords by layering in Remarketing Lists for Search Ads ad groups to drive more conversions.
As I mentioned before, it can take 7 – 13+ touches between sales and marketing to drive a sale. Retargeting can be layered across each stage of the buying funnel, accelerating the cycles, increasing engagement and conversions with visitors who would of normally bounced and not returned. Retargeting can be built into funnels to keep from having too high of frequency and align ad content to what the prospect actually cares about. Prospects just introduced to the brand by social display may not yet be ready to purchase. A hard driving retargeting ad might be too aggressive. Start spending more time thinking about your retargeting strategy and how it fits within your overall lead nurturing eco-system.