Google Ads is a powerful platform that allows you to reach your target audience with precision. It’s crucial to understand how to optimise your campaigns for maximum results. Done incorrectly, it can quickly become a money pit with few resources.
Utilise Search Campaigns
If you’re just starting out with Google Ads, a search campaign has several advantages over other campaign types. Besides allowing your school to place ads at the top of relevant searches, they often generate more qualified leads for schools compared to other types of ads.
When running search ads, as a school you should:
Turn off partner networks and display extensions:While they may be appropriate for some businesses, these tend to use more ad spend and bring in low quality leads for schools.
Use exact and phrase match keyword types: There are too many different intents for school related searches. Allowing Google more licence to show ads with related keywords often means your ad shows on the wrong search terms. For example, a broad match for “IB school [city]” could show your ad on “IB School Jobs [city]” .
Once you are generating enough enquiries via search campaigns you may wish to add other campaign types to your account to enhance your school’s online presence. Google may even assign you an expert to try and optimise your ad account. They will likely recommend that you switch to a more automated approach with a performance max campaign or using broad match keywords. By all means, meet with these reps, but understand that they are 3rd party contractors (not google employees), whose primary goal is to generate revenue for google.
Conversion Tracking
To measure the effectiveness of your Google Ads campaign, you need to track conversions. A conversion can be any action a user takes on your website, like filling out an application form or requesting a campus tour. To track conversions, you need to set up conversion tracking in your Google Ads account. This involves adding a piece of code, or tag, to your website.
Once you’ve set up conversion tracking, you can see how many conversions your ads are driving and what keywords or ads are most effective.
Utilise Enhanced Conversion Tracking
Google Chrome and many other browsers are gradually phasing out the use of cookies in favour of other ways of analysing user interests. Google’s Enhanced Conversion Tracking aims to understand user behaviour in a more user privacy oriented way than traditional cookies. Setting this up may require some small code changes to your website but the long-term benefit of better quality leads is worth it.
Build a Negative Keyword List
Choosing the right keywords is the foundation of a successful Google Ads campaign, however, even with exact and phrase match keywords, sometimes your ads can show on irrelevant searches. This can result in your school paying for clicks where the user has no intention of enrolling at your school. The best way to prevent this is to regularly check the search terms report for irrelevant terms and add them to a negative keywords list.
Craft Admissions Specific Copy
The text of your ad is what will persuade the user to click on it. It should be clear, engaging, and highlight the unique selling points of your school. Your ad’s headline is the first thing users see, so it should be compelling and relevant. The description should provide additional information and include a call to action, urging the user to take a specific action.
There are several reasons that a user might search for an international school and click on your ad. As your school only pays for an ad when someone clicks on it, your ad copy is an important tool for separating out users with the wrong intent from those seeking to enrol their child in your school. By crafting admissions specific copy, users looking for employment or to see your school services, are less likely to click on the ad. This will likely reduce ad clicks but increase the relevancy of your ad to your intended audience. Phrases such as the following can be highly effective:
- Contact our admissions team…
- Start your application…
- Learn more about enrollment…
Utilise Display Remarketing
Once your search campaigns have been running a while and have been optimised, consider adding a display remarketing campaign. Remarketing allows you to show ads to users who have previously visited your website. It’s a powerful strategy to keep your school in the minds of potential students and parents.
Remarketing Lists
You can create different remarketing lists for different groups of visitors. For example, you could create separate lists for people who visited your admissions page and those who checked out your academic programs. Remember to do this ahead of time as your audiences will need to reach a minimum of 1000 users before they can show ads. Given the long sales cycle for schools and the niche nature of the services offered, for some schools, it can take months to reach a large enough audience to remarket to.
Your remarketing ads should be tailored to the audience. For example, if your remarketing list is for people who visited your admissions page, your ad could highlight the benefits of enrolling at your school.