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Google Ads can help schools find new students. Here’s how.

Picture of Sabrina Martinez

Sabrina Martinez

For a lot of people, advertising on Google seems like a no-brainer, but many people may wonder how effective it really is. In this blog, we’ll show you that Google Ads really are effective. It’s a very powerful tool to help your school reach new students.

If you don’t already believe that Google advertising is can help, consider this: Google users account for 77% of all search engine usage. That’s more than 1 billion people!

It’s also important to remember that most people will never look at the second page of their Google results. Many won’t even scroll to the bottom of the first page. This is why Google Ads are so effective, it puts your business right in people’s eye-line at the top of their search results.

How should private schools set up Google Ads?

Google Ads come in two types: search ads and display ads. You’re probably familiar with both types as they are anyone who uses Google search will have seen both kinds.

Search ads are the paid search results that appear right at the top of the results list. Usually, one or two ads appear here, but for competitive industries this section can be as much as half the results page. Search ads can be distinguished from “organic” results by the presence of the word “ad” in a green box next to the URL.

Display ads allow a lot more creative freedom. These are the ads that appear on websites, and typically come as a banner on the side of the webpage, or across the top or bottom of a page. They provide an opportunity to draw people in using both graphics and text.

Pay-per-click

Google advertising uses a payment model called pay-per-click (PPC). This means that you’re only charged when someone clicks on the ad. The amount you are charged each time someone clicks is called the cost-per-click. The cost is determined by the following equation:

Next Highest Ad Rank / Quality Score + $0.01 = CPC*

As you can see, this means that the higher your quality score, the lower your cost will be. This is because Google has its own financial incentive to provide users with good quality content.

Navigating the Google Ads algorithm

The word algorithm has started to enter common language much more in recent years as people become aware of the ways in which their content is delivered to them.

In terms of Google Ads, the algorithm used to determine the rank of your ad is actually very simple. This rank then determines who sees your ad, and how effective it will be. We’ll discuss the algorithm itself in a bit, but first let’s talk about how Google uses it.

In the moments between you hitting the search button and Google providing your results, a huge amount happens. In that split second, Google takes an inventory of all the ad accounts that contain the keywords or phrases used in the search.

For example, perhaps your private school is trying to rank for the keywords “Best high school for college acceptance.” When someone searches “What schools in my area have the best college acceptance rates?” your advertising account will be included in Google’s inventory.

In order to tell Google what keywords and phrases to rank your website against, you bid a monetary amount that you would be willing to pay if someone clicked on your ad, hence the name pay-per-click.

This process works a bit like an auction, with the winner determined by two factors:

  • The maximum bid you have set for your keyword
  • The quality score of your advertisement

The second point here we’ve already touched on. Google is here to make money, and the best way to do that is to be the search engine with the biggest user base. The main reason that Google has such a massive market share is because it has a reputation for providing the most relevant results.

Therefore, it is more likely to show your ad, and your content, if it’s of good quality and relevant to its users. Therefore, you should take special care to remember this when creating your ads.

The quality score of your advertisement is itself determined by two factors:

  • Past performance of your ad, ad group, and your account in general
  • The relevance of your chosen keyword, ad (title, URL, and description), and landing page to the search and to each other

Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with the terms “ad group” and “landing page.”

An ad group is a group of keywords that you are trying to rank your ad for, and your landing page is the webpage that your ad sends people to when they click on it. Both the ad itself and the landing page should be relevant to each other, use the same keywords, and be well-made and fast-loading.

All these factors add up to a single equation that determines the rank of your ad:

CPC Bid x Quality Score = Ad Rank

For display ads, the process is slightly different. Instead of bidding on keywords, you bid on ad groups. There is also the option to bid on impressions rather than clicks. Impression in this context just refers to when your ad is displayed to someone on a webpage, every time it is “seen.”

For this reason, it’s called “cost-per-impression” or “CPM” bidding.

Can Google Ads really help private schools?

Yes, they can!

However, there are factors which mean that this can never be a guarantee.

One of the most significant of these factors is competition. This varies by area and high competition will mean your ads have a lower chance of winning the “auction” we talked about earlier. Competition also varies by industry. For example, the legal industry in Anchorage, Alaska (where we are based), has seen costs-per-click as high as $50!

This is obviously not going to be the case for all industries, but it does mean that Google advertising could be a poor choice as without high profit-margins you could make a loss overall. This is especially true when you consider that not all clicks convert to new clients/income.

We can determine the level of competition in an industry using industry benchmarks.

Source: WordStream (8/27/2019)

As you can see, education (in grey) has a relatively low cost-per-click compared to other industries, indicating a lower level of competition. Obviously, this isn’t taking location into account, but as a general category you will be competing with fewer schools.

This doesn’t mean that what we said about quality can be disregarded however! You should still aim to create quality ads to ensure you are ranking highly.

Our Google Ads specialists at Beacon Media + Marketing are regularly able to achieve below-average cost-per-click for our clients, saving them lots of money.

How do we do it?

  • For every service we want to advertise, we use a budget of at least $300 per month, usually more. This translates to our minimum recommended cost-per-click budget on each keyword in 1-3 ad groups.
  • We always find some way to find a niche for the services we are advertising, using nuanced keywords. We do this so that we can use keywords that are low competition but capture the internet users who search for them. For example, we market for a holistic dentist in Anchorage. When we create her Google Ads, we do not target “family dentistry,” but rather, “holistic dentistry,” because there is lower competition around this keyword, which makes the market easier to capture. We have seen incredible results for this client.
  • Our team makes it a priority to create quality, relevant ads and landing pages. There are few things better for boosting the success of your Google advertising campaign than this. Write clear, concise, compelling ads that point people to the pages that they would expect with the right keywords.

We hope this post will be helpful for you getting started with your own Google advertising!

If you want to learn more about digital marketing, you can read more of our blogs, here. Alternatively, if you’re interested in working with us, you can schedule a free consultation.

Education marketing: Best practices for starting a private school blog

Picture of Sabrina Martinez

Sabrina Martinez

Consistency. 

If there is one word that encapsulates the secret to education marketing, it’s consistency. 

We at Beacon Media + Marketing recommend that a weekly blogging strategy is best, but many of our clients have seen success with a minimal schedule of one blog per month! Although you can see results with this more minimal strategy, it will probably take longer for you to start ranking on Google, which, as we’ll explain, is one of the main goals of blogging. Here, we’ll explain some of the education marketing strategies we use to drive traffic to our clients’ website and ensure their blogs rank on Google.

Prefer to chat to a real person? Give us a call today.

What education marketing strategies will help my blogs rank on Google?

When we talk about ranking on Google, what we mean is the position of your website or post in people’s search results. There is extensive research that shows that most people don’t ever click on the second page of Google, and many won’t even scroll down the first page. One study found that only 0.78% of searchers clicked on something on the second page of Google. Clearly, it’s necessary to get on that first page, and ideally at the top of it. But how?

The answer is simple: a comprehensive, and well-researched, education marketing plan. Here are some of the methods our expert marketers use to get our clients on the top of the Google search rankings. 

Case study: Beacon blogs

Let us take the time to discuss a couple of case studies that show our success with this strategy. Obviously, we’re a digital marketing agency, but these principles are universal, and they’ll definitely work for education marketing.

Two years ago, we decided we wanted to move into the functional medicine sector. Our first steps in this direction were to start blogging about it. We wrote blogs about each of the services we offer, targeting the keyword “functional medicine”. Within a few months, we had our blog posts ranking at both #1 and #2 on Google for the search “marketing for functional medicine”, and we’re still there today.

Education Marketing

So, how did we do it? 

We used a few simple tricks of the trade that you can also use for education marketing.

  1. First, we ensured that the blogs we wrote were of the specific length that works best for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This changes every so often, depending on updates to Google’s algorithm, so make sure you research it now and then so you’re up-to-date.
  2. Second, we had a focused keyword strategy. This involves writing certain keywords that you want to target in your text and headings. For the functional medicine blogs, these included “functional medicine,” “marketing,” and “inbound marketing.”  
  3. Finally, we ensured our posts are well optimized, work on mobile, are fast-loading, and have correctly set metadata. Metadata just means the information you provide Google about the contents of your blog, so they can determine how relevant it is to searchers. 

Although we ranked these two blog posts at the top of Google, that was only part of our goal. The main objective of this was to generate leads. By having these blogs at the top of Google, we generate more leads to our website which converts into more sales. These two blogs now constitute a key part of our sales funnel! As you can see, these strategies are super simple and effective, so make sure you include them in your education marketing plan.

Case study: Mandanas Dental blogs

We don’t just keep our secrets to ourselves, either! We’ve also used these strategies to help our clients find success. One of our longest-standing clients, Dr. Owen Mandanas, decided a few years ago that she wanted to shift her focus to include integrative dentistry. Naturally, we started blogging on the subject!

Using the same techniques as for Beacon, we managed to rank Dr. Mandanas on the first page of Google. We’re so happy to have been able to achieve this for such a valued client. This approach to blog writing uses the inbound marketing philosophy, which will form the backbone of your education marketing strategy.

We’ll discuss in the next section. 

Education Marketing

 

Have we persuaded you? Let’s talk strategy.

Proven methods of education marketing

Okay, by now you’ve got a sense of the power of blogs and the impact they can make on your education marketing strategy. Next, we’re going to discuss some proven methods for writing successful blogs, including the inbound philosophy, question answering, and the waterfall method. These are all techniques you can use when writing your own blogs – whether you’re marketing a private school, a home school, or a specialty program.

Inbound philosophy of education marketing

The inbound marketing philosophy is a simple concept. People are online all day, every day, which means putting quality content in front of them is easier than ever. The core of the inbound education marketing philosophy is that if you consistently provide useful content to people, they will remember you and seek you out when they need your services. Imagine your customers are a cat. If you chase the cat it will run away from you, but if you have what the cat wants, it will come to you! So, how do you go about enticing the cat?

The first step to developing your education marketing plan is to researching what your customers are interested in. There are tools available to help you find out what searches people are making on Google (we use one called keywordtool.io). Once you’ve identified what people are researching, you can write blogs on it. People typically ask questions on Google, so answering these can be an effective way to provide quality content. 

Use education marketing to answer questions

We’ve established that people use Google to ask questions, and that answering them is a highly effective method of providing quality content through your education marketing plan. If your blog is what people are relying on when they want to know something, they’ll remember you when they want to buy something.  

Remember: Be there for them when they want to know something, and they’ll be there for you when they want to enrol in something.

Here’s a quick rundown of our process for blog writing: 

  • Keyword planning – We use Google’s keyword planner to find out what the most searched topics are, and what kind of competition there is for answering those questions. 
  • Finding questions – Next, we use Keywordtool.io to identify what questions people are asking about those topics. 
  • Writing – The next step is the most obvious, write a blog answering that question! When doing this it is important to include your keywords frequently, while flowing naturally. 
  • Setting the metadata – We’ve mentioned this before; basically, it’s the process of setting the title, description, and keywords in a format that Google can use to populate your result. 
  • Schedule – It’s important to be consistent if you want the best results. We recommend to our clients that they blog at least 1-2 times per week, but even with a minimal strategy, you can expect to see results in 6-9 months. 

Want to apply this to your marketing plan? Our team can help.

Waterfall blogging is perfect for education marketing

The waterfall method of blogging is a highly successful method of getting your posts to rank on Google. One important thing to factor into your strategy is the inclusion of backlinks. Backlinks are links to your website from other credible websites. Google highly rates backlinks, so we can set up links to other posts in our own blog posts. This is a great way to organize posts, which you can use successfully for your education marketing strategy.

Here’s an example of a waterfall we created for some recent mental health blogs: 

As you can see, this looks a bit like a descending waterfall, with multiple layers all linked to one another (and to this blog too!). You can use this to discuss your programs, teaching style, student services, and more.

Link between SEO and education marketing

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of using tools to help blogs your produce as part of your education marketing strategy rank on Google. This involves setting the keywords that we have chosen to target, and which we have used throughout the blog. We make sure to use them in the text, in the headers, and in the URL. We also set a featured image, as this boosts Google ranking, and write a custom excerpt which is displayed on the results page, this ensures that the text is displayed fully, and doesn’t end with an ellipsis. 

In addition, we chose a title of the length that is shown to be most effective in catching people’s attention and using certain power words that have been shown to gain clicks. We hope that this has been a useful insight into some of the tips and tricks that we use to drive engagement with our blogs. If you’d like to learn more you can check out other posts we’ve published on digital marketing. 

Ready to talk to the experts? Schedule a free consultation today.

Google Ads Can Help Schools Find New Students. Here's Why

Google Ads can help schools find new students. Here’s how.

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Education Marketing

Education marketing: Best practices for starting a private school blog

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