Segmenting and Targeting 

We’re going to start from the assumption that you’ve already defined your goals and objectives—whether it’s brand awareness, lead generation, etc. If you haven’t, bookmark your spot here and go do that before reading on. Once you have, you’re ready to talk about audience segmentation, personalization, and targeting.  

You’re likely already doing this to some degree—we definitely talk about personalization all the time—but the number of tools and strategies has grown, many of which are paired with AI to make it easier than ever. Take a look at what types of information and insight you’re collecting about your audience, analyze it, and tailor your paid social content to speak more directly to each segment. 

Retargeting 

Users who have already expressed interest in you and your brand are more likely to be receptive to your messaging and more likely to turn into conversions. Make sure when you’re managing audience segmentation that you build retargeting audiences into it. 

Stopping the Scroll 

It’s the era of the attention economy, and capturing it is one of the biggest challenges in the social media landscape. It’s so easy for users to quickly scroll past your content, so you need to really invest in compelling, visually eye-catching creative. Think: clean, engaging designs, no clutter; a strong hook; messaging that’s direct and to-the-point; and a clear call-to-action. 

Develop multiple versions of your creative assets so you can run A/B comparison tests and collect information about what makes your audience do a double-take. 

Ad-Supported Streaming 

YouTube, Netflix, Disney, Tubi—streaming video currently reigns supreme. Almost all of these companies have ad-supported tiers for customers who can’t or won’t pay for premium levels, and many of them offer very sophisticated targeting. It’s worth it for you to take a look and maybe experiment in this area to see how it helps you reach consumers. 

Measuring, Adapting and Updating 

Measure twice, cut once. Except, in marketing, it’s more like: measure twice, adjust your tool, try a few cuts, go back and measure again. This is especially true for social media because there’s such an opportunity there for real-time data gathering, monitoring, and adapting. Many social platforms have their own dashboards to show you engagement and efficacy, which means you can quickly start gleaning insights to inform your ad spend. 

That’s where all those different creative versions come in handy for testing because you can get nerdy and granular with it. How does this visual compare to that one; what about this headline versus that headline; which CTA performs better, etc. 

Chasing Trends 

As much as social media shifts constantly, we don’t advise our partner clients to go out of their way to chase trends either. Most of the time, a viral fad is over before brands are even aware of it, and the high number of views it drives are not necessarily going to result in conversions. 

Budgeting Smart 

The best way to avoid wasting time, energy, and money throwing spaghetti at the social media wall is to start small and focused. Perform tests that target specific platforms, specific audience segments, specific goals, and don’t invest big numbers until you know something works.  

What Is Paid Media? 

Paid media is exactly what it says on the tin: it’s the ads, posts, and marketing that you pay for in order to get it to your ideal customers. Unlike traditional advertising, it’s aimed at boosting brand reputation and visibility and not just about selling a particular product or service.  

Paid media includes things like: 

• Paid search and pay-per-click
• Social media ads
• Sponsored podcast ads
• TV and radio advertising
• Ads for YouTube and streaming platforms
• Online display ads and banners
• Direct mail 

The benefits of paid media are that it can be implemented and scaled up quickly and targeted to specific demographics. It’s an especially effective way to reach customers who might already be interested in or actively searching for you. 

The biggest challenge with paid media is that it relies on you having the budget to keep it going, whether it’s for Google AdSense or an ad spot during the local news or a paid YouTube sponsorship. 

What Is Owned Media? 

Owned media is the advertising and content you produce and share on your own website, socials, and audience. It’s the long-term strategy for establishing your brand image and building authority in your industry.  

Owned media includes things like: 

• Your website
• Blogs and articles
• Whitepapers and ebooks
• Brochures
• Your social media accounts
• Email newsletters and subscriber lists 

The benefits of owned media are right there in the name—it’s owned, it’s yours. You have control of what’s being posted and the messages and values you’re portraying to consumers. It also doesn’t incur the same costs as paid media. 

The biggest challenge of owned media is that your own website and platforms likely won’t have the same reach, so there is less chance for discoverability for brand-new consumers who aren’t familiar with you. 

What Is Earned Media? 

Earned media is different from sponsored spots or paid ad reads; it is, instead, free coverage from an independent third party.  

Earned media includes things like: 

• Coverage on news programs or talk shows
• Endorsements on podcasts or radio
• Social media influencers naming and recommending your brand
• Customers naturally sharing and reviewing you online 

The benefits of earned media—sometimes also called user-generated content (UGC)—are that it carries the most credibility and weight with other consumers and can be extraordinarily beneficial to your marketing.  

The biggest challenge with earned media is that you can’t control it; it is entirely organic. It relies on well-crafted public relations and relationship-building, not just with journalists and influencers, but also with your own current customers. 

Best Practices for Using Paid, Owned and Earned Media 

For all the pros and cons of each, the best marketing strategy will utilize a balance of all three of these media types to achieve the best results in your campaign. Your budget, your resources, and your goals all will factor into the overall makeup of your sales funnel.  

When you’re developing your strategy, it’s important to stay flexible so you can adjust and pivot as needed depending on your key performance indicators. It’s okay for these three types of media to interact and overlap; they should work together.  

Earned media is difficult to track, but there are tools like Brandwatch that offer media monitoring and reporting, plus Google Alerts, which alert you of media coverage for free. Measure the effectiveness of earned media through metrics like third-party backlinks, quality press mentions, social shares and mentions, influencer shoutouts, and reviews. 

The challenge is that most home service companies approach marketing reactively instead of strategically. They run random ads, post inconsistently on social media, occasionally send emails, and hope referrals continue to carry the business. That approach may sustain a business for a while, but it rarely creates scalable growth. 

At EdwardsSchoen, we build and implement marketing strategies for home service companies designed to generate leads consistently, strengthen local brand recognition, improve customer retention, and maximize return on ad spend. 

In this guide, we reveal the key elements of a high-performing marketing plan for a home service company, including the tactics and timelines, budgets that drive measurable growth.

Why Home Services Require a Different Marketing Strategy

Marketing for home service businesses is unique because customers often search with urgency. Someone searching for: 

• “Emergency plumber near me”
• “AC repair open now”
• “Roof leak repair company”
• “Electrician in [city]”

…is usually ready to buy immediately. That means your marketing strategy must accomplish three goals simultaneously: generate immediate demand; build long-term brand awareness; create recurring customer relationships.  

The most successful home service companies understand that marketing is not a one-time campaign. It is a comprehensive ecosystem.

Step 1: Define Your Business Goals 

Most home service companies say they “want more leads”, but that’s too vague. Instead, a strong marketing plan begins with measurable business objectives. These could be lead generation goals, revenue goals, brand goals, or retention goals. Some examples include increasing annual revenue by 20%; increasing average ticket size by 15%; generating 100 more qualified leads per month; or being the most recognizable AC company in the city. 

Make sure all company decision-makers are included in these decisions. Ask yourself if they are reasonable. Do they align with your overall company mission? Wanting to achieve a goal and knowing you have the infrastructure to achieve it don’t always match up. 

Step 4: Optimize Your Website for Conversions 

Even though home services companies aren’t always selling tangible items, your website is your digital storefront. And where most home service websites fail is in the conversion optimization. Yes, looking pretty is nice, but if it isn’t optimized to be a lead-generating machine, looks won’t matter. 

Essential Website Elements 

• Clear Calls-to-Action: Every page and many times on a page, web visitors should be encouraged to call now, schedule service, book now, or request an estimate.
• Mobile Optimization: Most home service searches happen on mobile devices, so your site should load quickly, be easy to navigate, feature many CTA buttons and have short forms to gather lead information.
• Service Pages: Each service you provide should have its own, dedicated web page. This makes it easier for search engines to find your content and return it to people searching for that content.
• Trust Signals: Your website should include reviews, testimonials, guarantees, awards, certifications, and financing options to let the visitor know you are trustworthy and safe to do business with.
• Local SEO Optimization: Your website should not be generic! The more local, search keywords you can include, the better. For example: Plumbing Experts in Kansas City.  

Step 5: Create a Local SEO Strategy 

As mentioned above, local SEO is one of the highest-ROI marketing channels. When homeowners search for services nearby, Google prioritizes businesses with strong local relevance. Creating a comprehensive local SEO strategy includes more than just a few local keywords on your website. Here is a list of local SEO tactics that should be used: 

• An accurate and updated Google Business Profile
• Reviews, reviews, reviews—get more!
• Location pages dedicated to specific cities
• Blogs that delivers helpful content specific to your location  

Step 6: Run High-Intent Paid Advertising Campaigns 

SEO takes time, typically 90 days to 6 months before true traffic change is noticed from website edits. Paid advertising, on the other hand, generates leads immediately. The most successful home service companies use a combination of: 

• Google Ads: Campaigns built to appear in Google search results targeting specific keywords for high-intent buyers actively searching for home services. Ex: emergency plumber near me
• Local Services Ads: These ads often generate some of the best qualified leads in the home services category; the ads appear above the traditional search ads and feature the Google Guaranteed badge
• Meta Ads: Social media ads to generate awareness and demand 

Step 8: Develop a Social Media Strategy 

No, this isn’t about randomly posting photos of your team. This is about building credibility. Homeowners want to hire companies that appear active, trustworthy, and well-established. Creating a social media calendar that delivers educational videos, before and after photos of completed installations or services, testimonials and your company’s community involvement all contribute to building your brand and generating leads.  

Step 9: Track the Right Metrics 

One of the biggest marketing mistakes home service companies make is failing to track performance. If you do not know where your leads originate, you cannot scale effectively. Here are some examples of metrics to track and how you quantify them. 

Step 10: Build a 12-Month Marketing Calendar 

The best marketing plans are proactive, not reactive. Seasonality plays a major role in home services. After you have identified and defined all the key elements above, now it’s time to create a calendar to implement these tactics at the right time in the appropriate order. Then assess, track, and watch over time how these tactics perform. 

What Do We Mean When We Say “Video Marketing”? 

If you haven’t been keeping up with the ways that online video marketing has evolved, you might associate the term with annoying YouTube ads and not much more than that. In truth, there are a lot of different ways that businesses are leveraging video as a marketing tool in order to create engaging stories and content around their brands. How that looks exactly varies – long form, short form, website videos, social media content, etc. – but the goal is the same: 

Creating eye-catching visual narratives that evoke an emotional reaction and encourage engagement with the targeted audience 

Why Should Schools Integrate Video Marketing? 

So what benefits can video marketing bring to the higher education space? Why exactly should schools invest in it? 

Let’s start with the basics: Video marketing is where your future students are at. In a December 2025 survey of 1,000 U.S. residents aged 21 to 27, 73% spend an hour or more per day on paid streaming services, and 81% of them use social media daily, many for 3 hours or more. And what are they doing on social media? Watching short-form content, gravitating toward Tiktok, Reels, and Shorts. 

The numbers hit even harder when you look at the Video Marketing Statistics 2026 survey conducted by Wyzowl: 

• 96% of respondents have watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service
• 85% of respondents have been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a video
• 84% of respondents want to see more videos from brands in the coming year 

On the flipside, the marketers leveraging video reported positive effects as well: 

• 93% said video has helped increase brand awareness
• 82% said video has helped increase web traffic 
• 85% said video has helped generate leads
• 83% said video has directly increased sales 

The world moves fast, and our attention spans these days move even faster. That’s even more true when it comes to up-and-coming generations. Brands have to step it up in order to perform in this attention economy. By having engaging and appealing video as part of their marketing campaign, schools and colleges increase their chances of making a prospective student stop, watch, and listen. 

Both paid and organic video content can potentially help schools see: 

• Higher click-thru rates as compared to static ads
• Increased brand recognition and awareness
• Improved SEO and algorithmic reach 

What Types of Videos Should Schools Use to Boost Enrollment? 

As with most marketing tools, the exact answer varies depending on the audience, the platform, and your goals. Video marketing is very adaptable and can be specifically targeted to different segments of your prospective students, depending on the topic and where they are in the awareness funnel.  

Today’s consumers want authenticity; they want to be able make informed decisions about where they put their time and money. Nothing covers those two points quite like a campus tour video that gives them an active, in-depth look at your campus. This shouldn’t be a silent walkthrough. Take viewers into classrooms, show them where students are interacting, and have a charismatic person act as their guide. 

Prospective students want to know that the school they’re choosing will be a good fit for them, a place where they will be comfortable. This is where branding work comes in, showcasing the community and learning environment of your institution. Demonstrate to them how they will be able to make connections and be supported. 

Testimonials 

People can spot a slick marketing video. What is more impactful for most consumers is hearing from real people about their real experiences with the school. This means student testimonials, yes, but also testimonials and interviews with parents, faculty, staff, and alumni.  

Behind-the-Scenes 

People love being in-the-know, having access to exclusive information, so giving prospective students a peek behind the curtain can be incredibly effective.This could mean a lot of different things – clips from the classroom, course deep-dives, access to livestreamed events or webinars. You could even do interviews with faculty about how they go about planning for the classroom or staff members about how they tackle things like connecting students with financial aid resources. 

Process and How-tos 

This is especially helpful for active leads, applicants, and enrollees. You can keep them engaged with how-to videos on a whole range of topics, including a guide on the application process, advice from admissions counselors, what to expect from your first day on-campus, tips for setting yourself up for success, etc. 

User-Generated Content 

This one isn’t fully under your control, but it’s absolutely worth discussing. Because most consumers are going to put more weight behind videos, reviews, and content that come from users just like them. Remember that mention of authenticity? It’s why UGC is so important. So while you can’t force anyone to make their own videos about your school, you can and should absolutely encourage it. Set up promotion campaigns that incentivize student-created content, and boost/repost videos that come across your feed. 

It’s Time to Meet Future Students Where They Are 

If you haven’t factored video marketing into your campaign plan for 2026, you could be shortchanging yourself. Millennials, Gen Z, even Gen Alpha – they’re gravitating toward video for their research, understanding, and decision-making. You should be making moves now to meet them there. And if you need a partner to help your school make the most of your video advertising platforms, feel free to reach out to us at EdwardsSchoen, and we’d love to discuss where we can level up your marketing in 2026. 

Google Ads operates primarily through search advertising, where businesses bid on keywords related to their products or services. When users search these keywords, the business’s ads appear prominently on Google’s search results pages.

Strengths:

1. High Intent Audience: Google Ads targets users actively searching for specific products or services. This makes it highly effective for capturing leads at the moment they are ready to buy.
2. Broad Reach: With billions of searches conducted daily, Google Ads can provide businesses access to a massive global audience.
3. Immediate Results: Ads can start generating traffic as soon as they’re launched, making Google Ads excellent for businesses needing quick visibility and results.
4. Detailed Analytics: Google provides extensive data on campaign performance, helping businesses continuously optimize their ads and achieve better ROI.

1. Costly Competition: Popular keywords can be expensive, especially in competitive industries like insurance, legal services, or healthcare.
2. Learning Curve: Managing a Google Ads campaign requires expertise and regular optimization to remain cost-effective and competitive.
3. Limited Visual Appeal: Text-based search ads lack visual impact, limiting opportunities for branding compared to more visually rich formats.

Facebook Ads, on the other hand, excel in their ability to reach targeted demographics using vast user data. Ads appear on Facebook and its associated platforms (Instagram, Messenger), in various formats including images, videos, carousel ads, and stories.

Strengths:

1. Robust Targeting Options: Facebook’s detailed demographic and behavioral data allows precise targeting based on interests, behaviors, life events, and more.
2. Highly Visual and Engaging: Facebook Ads leverage visually appealing content formats, ideal for brand building and emotional storytelling.
3. Cost Efficiency: Often more budget-friendly for broader audiences or niche markets, especially beneficial for small businesses and startups.
4. Community Building: Facebook Ads are excellent for building communities and maintaining ongoing customer relationships through engagement.

1. Lower Buying Intent: Users typically don’t browse Facebook with purchasing intent, making conversions slower compared to Google Ads.
2. Ad Fatigue: Ads can quickly become repetitive, potentially decreasing effectiveness if not regularly refreshed or managed correctly.
3. Privacy Challenges: Increasing privacy regulations can limit targeting accuracy, impacting ad effectiveness over time.

While both platforms are powerful, each suits different marketing strategies and industries. Here’s a guide to determining the best fit for your campaign:

• High-Intent Services: Industries like plumbing, HVAC, legal services, or healthcare benefit significantly from Google Ads, where customers actively seek specific solutions.
• E-commerce and Retail: Google Shopping ads help directly showcase products, facilitating quick and direct conversions.
• Local Businesses: Google Ads are extremely effective for businesses targeting local searches like restaurants, salons, or service providers.

• Brand Awareness Campaigns: Industries such as fashion, food and beverage, beauty products, and entertainment often see excellent results on Facebook due to visual content and emotional connections.
• Lifestyle and Personal Interests: Products or services that are purchased based on personal preferences, social influence, or impulse decisions—such as fitness products, home decor, or travel experiences—thrive on Facebook.
• Community and Event Promotion: Businesses aiming to build ongoing relationships or promote events find Facebook highly effective due to its engagement-focused environment.

Leveraging Both Platforms Together

Rather than choosing exclusively between Google and Facebook Ads, many businesses effectively combine both platforms for maximum results:

• Awareness and Retargeting: Generate brand awareness on Facebook and use Google Ads to retarget users actively searching for your products or services later.
• Diversified Marketing Strategy: Allocate budget strategically based on your business goals—using Facebook for long-term branding and community building, while leveraging Google Ads for direct, immediate sales conversions.

Understanding the distinct advantages and limitations of Google Ads and Facebook Ads enables businesses to make informed decisions tailored to their unique marketing objectives and industries. Whether focusing on immediate sales, brand awareness, or a combination of both, recognizing the nuanced strengths of each platform ensures that your digital marketing efforts are strategic, cost-effective, and impactful.

Where We’re at Right Now

When it comes to looking at channel mix at a high level, most of the schools that we talk to and work with at EdwardsSchoen are understandably focused on the conversion bucket at the very end of the funnel. This is where the vast majority of their budgets go to, and it makes sense because we see the most immediate return on investment through direct response within paid search. Someone actively searches for you or for one of your relevant terms, they go to your webpage, and TA DA! Lead generation.

But if you’re in the position where there is less demand or less awareness of your school, it’s worth looking at the rest of those elements of the digital landscape:

• Affiliates: We’ve done several audits over the past years, and we see a lot of schools that heavily rely on the affiliate channel for anywhere from 50 to 90 percent of their leads. These days, while there are still some volume players out there, affiliates aren’t quite the giant category they used to be. In fact, we’ve done audits where we’ve seen conversions at less than half a percent, even as thousands of dollars are being allocated to these sources.
• Paid Social: This can be hit and miss for a lot of schools, although we still believe it should be a part of your ongoing efforts. Partnering with an agency that can help you evaluate your paid social efforts and pinpoint reasons why it might not be converting can help you maximize this part of your budget allocation.
• Website: This is probably the area that we emphasize the most when we first onboard new clients, and it breaks down into three core things: SEO and general website optimizations; user experience and how you’re evaluating conversion of traffic; and content and having a strategic plan to regularly add new content to your site, whether via blogs or other things of that nature.
• Awareness Strategy: If people aren’t aware of you, they can’t search for you or research you, so make sure you have a plan in place for building brand awareness. Whether that’s a YouTube campaign, investing in OTT, etc.
• Messaging Strategy: Do you understand who your audience is, where they are, and what you have to offer them? You need to be able to break down your Unique Selling Propositions (USPs), and it needs to go beyond the basics like “individual attention” and “financial aid available.” You might even need to survey your student population to help you build out fleshed out, thoughtful USPs.

What’s New

Automated Bidding

In the beginning, the main tactic for Google ads was the buy the most relevant keywords possible and then bid against them in ways that provided the best results. But recently, the Google Ads platform has become more sophisticated, and there are now several automated bidding options for how leads can be purchased:

• Maximize clicks — automatically sets your bids to help get as many clicks as possible within your budget
• Target impression share — automatically sets bids with the goal of showing your ad on the absolute top of the page, on the top of the page, or anywhere on the page of Google search results
• Target CPA — automatically sets bids to help get as many conversions as possible at the target cost-per-action you set (some conversions may cost more or less than your target)
• Target ROAS — automatically sets bids to help get as much conversion value as possible at the target return on ad spend (ROAS) you set (some conversions may cost more or less than your target)
• Maximize conversions — automatically sets bids to help you optimize toward conversions
• Maximize conversion value — automatically sets bids to help you get the most conversion value for your campaign while spending your budget

Some of the pieces that Google is now automating include ad creatives and how they are delivered, removing keywords for redundancies or low performance, and even testing new headlines or other parts of creative that they can just insert automatically and run through the gauntlet to see what might convert best.

Updated Attribution Models

At the start, advertisers typically measured the success of their online advertising on a last-click basis, meaning we would give all credit for a conversion to the last ad clicked or last corresponding keyword, ignoring the other ad interactions along the way. This really downplays the overall customer journey and doesn’t give you a complete view of how the funnel might work.

Enter: Google and their updated attribution models. These provide us with more control over how much credit each ad interaction gets for conversions and lets us see the larger picture of the overall funnel. It would give us the chance to find opportunities to influence prospects earlier on their path to conversion. It can also help us improve our bidding strategies.

These new attribution models include:

• First click —Gives all credit for the conversion to the first-clicked ad and corresponding keyword​
• Linear — Distributes the credit for the conversion equally across all ad interactions on the path.
• Time decay — Gives more credit to ad interactions that happened closer in time to the conversion. Credit is distributed using a 7-day half-life. In other words, an ad interaction 8 days before a conversion gets half as much credit as an ad interaction 1 day before a conversion.​
• Position-based — Gives 40% of credit to both the first and last ad interactions and corresponding keywords, with the remaining 20% spread out across the other ad interactions on the path.​
• Data-driven (default as of 6/2022) — Distributes credit for the conversion based on your past data for this conversion action. It’s different from the other models, in that it uses your account’s data to calculate the actual contribution of each interaction across the conversion path.​

Google Performance Max

Google Performance Max is relatively new on the scene, having launched in late 2021, and it’s the latest product offering in the company’s march toward automation. Performance Max is a goal-based campaign type that allows advertisers to access all of the Google Ads inventory from a single campaign. They are designed to complement keyword-based search campaigns to help find more converting customers across all of Google’s channels.

Results from these campaigns so far have been mixed, but we see it as a huge area of opportunity. They’re seen as more of a hands-off approach once your settings are in place because of their overall level of automation, so you’ll need to pay close attention to them and specifically how each of your assets is performing. You can add photos, videos, specific search terms, and even very specific audience signals, and it adds value by optimizing performance in real time across all channels. Essentially, Google knows who your audience likely is based on various signals, and they’re saying, “Hey, we know when your audience is online and what they’re doing, so let’s reach out to them,” regardless of whether or not they’re currently searching for a school. It’s a great way for more awareness at the top of the funnel, and to date, we’ve seen significantly lower CPLs from Performance Max campaigns.

What’s Next

Google Analytics 4

In July 2023, Google will be getting rid of what has been their analytics profile for pretty much forever in favor their new analytics: GA4. If you haven’t built profiles for these in your overall Analytics accounts, you should definitely look into doing that. Google keeps updating and changing some of the things they’re offering over time, so as long as you’re ready to go by July, you should be good.

Store Visit Conversions

This is one of the newer things that our Google reps have been pushing recently. They want us to allow Google to see users that interact with our ads and also visit the location or the school. Essentially, Google wants to be able to compare data sets of people who’ve walked through your doors (via cell phone location) to those they’ve been showing your ads to recently or who clicked on your ads recently so they can update and refine their audience segments. Which feeds into…

Updated Audience Targeting and Keyword Strategy

There is a planned update to audience targeting coming in May 2023. Google will no longer have audience segments similar to those you might see with Facebook because of privacy concerns. Instead, they will be upgrading to more powerful automated solutions like optimized targeting audience expansion and smart bidding.

Google is now also pushing for the use of more broad-match keywords in every format rather than just phrase-match. Google has become more an intent engine, and they claim to be able to see what users are really looking for in the context of their recent search history, etc. Broad-match keywords help give them a larger community to do what they do in terms of finding the conversions everyone is looking for.

How to Evaluate Your Marketing Efforts

When we sit down to talk to a client about their digital marketing strategy, we always start with identifying their institutional goals. Looking at things like cost per start, cost per enrollment, cost per inquiry, how many inquiries do we need — these are all definitely important things to measure, they don’t tell the full story insofar as how optimized your marketing campaign is.

Within your digital strategy and execution, you should be constantly evaluating to ensure you’re performing at the best level. So if CPIs are lower or enrollments are up, some things might get neglected before overall performance looks good, but you have to consider how much better could it be, how much more you could yield. This means having a deeper understanding of each channel’s specific opportunities and conducting formal reviews to help ensure you’re effectively driving performance.

Here are a few of the common pitfalls we come across, whether we’re doing a first-time audit or a peer review or just an overall performance check of our campaigns:

Paid Search/Video/Display

• Make sure you develop a 1:1:1 strategy, including the ad quality and RSAs. Meaning, not only are you picking the most relevant keywords, but those keywords are also in your ad content and your landing pages. If Google sees that, it will increase your overall ad quality and responsive search ad strategy.
• Analyze your conversion value strategy and ensure that your form completion conversions are worth more than, for example, your phone call conversions
• Utilize automated bidding and audience targeting and making sure that you’re selecting the type for each of those different things with consideration for your budget

Paid Social

• Let Meta/Facebook do its thing. The more you can allow it to be automated, the more you’re hands off, the better we’ve seen those results come through
• Keep an eye on impression frequency. Don’t allow ad frequency per user to go over 2-3 because the platform will start to suppress you ads, so once you hit that limit, it’s time to get some fresh creative into the mix
• Update your audiences so that you’re not advertising to people who have already become leads, as well as growing customer lists to help better target for lookalike audiences

SEO

• Watch out for thin or non-comprehensive content because Google still wants to see robust posts, pages, and blogs to bring traffic to your site
• Take advantage of all the different pieces that go into your Google Business profiles so that if they’re looking at your map location or Google Business, they’re seeing as much as possible and you’re controlling that content
• Keep up with internal redirects as your sites age as this can have a big impact on overall site quality and how Google is ranking you

The EdwardsSchoen Advantage

ES has developed a comprehensive scorecard that covers all assets of digital marketing, from PPC to Paid Social to SEO, and the tools we use to assess and analyze them. Whether you’re a new, current, or prospective client, when we do an audit, this is an example of what you’ll receive as a result. The idea is to ensure we’re evaluating all of the various facets of each of these campaigns regularly. We want you to have a firm handle on how we’re meeting expectations for all of these individual elements of our strategy.

If you’re looking for a true partner in education who can do a deep-dive assessment of your marketing mix and help you identify new opportunities, we’re ready to have a conversation. Contact EdwardsSchoen or give us a call today.

In this guide, we’ll walk through how to select a PPC agency in detail, what makes a particular agency ideal for education marketing, and how to assess potential PPC service providers. Our goal is to equip you with the knowledge you need to identify the best agency for your organization for the long term. Let’s jump right in!

What Is Pay Per Click (PPC), and Why Is It Important for Higher Education?

Pay Per Click (PPC) is an online advertising model where advertisers pay a fee each time their ad is clicked. For higher education organizations, PPC can be an effective way to reach the right audience and increase website traffic.

By targeting specific audiences with relevant ads tailored to their interests, educational institutions can maximize response rates while minimizing costs. PPC campaigns enable organizations to test multiple messages, track results in real-time, and quickly optimize their campaigns for maximum conversion potential.

When choosing a Pay Per Click agency for your higher education institution, it’s critical to find one that’ll provide quality service and great value for the money. An experienced PPC agency should have the technical expertise to set up and run campaigns effectively but also the strategic insight to understand how best to target prospective students and measure success. The right agency will be able to customize its services to fit your organization’s needs while also providing creative solutions to ensure maximum return on investment.

Ultimately, PPC can be an invaluable tool for higher education marketers; it’s essential to choose the right partner with the skill and experience to deliver tangible results.

Steps to Choosing a PPC Agency for Higher Education Marketing

Selecting the right PPC agency is an important decision that shouldn’t be taken lightly. With so many agencies out there, it can be difficult to determine which one is the best fit for your needs.

In this section, we provide a step-by-step approach to choosing a PPC agency for higher education marketing – one that’ll help you select the perfect partner for your unique needs and goals.

Identify your organization’s needs and goals

Before anything else, it’s important to recognize what your organization needs in terms of marketing strategy, budget, and resources to make an effective campaign a reality.

Identifying your goals is the first step; this could involve targeting specific demographic groups, improving brand recognition, or increasing student enrollment. After setting your goals, research prospective agencies and review their portfolio of work. Carefully consider the services each agency provides, its fee structure, track record of success, and client reviews.

It’s important to make sure the agency understands the complexities of higher education marketing, such as tuition-based lead generation and compliance with industry regulations.

Research PPC agencies that specialize in higher education marketing

Do the necessary research to find an agency with a proven track record of success.

Start by asking for references from other higher education institutions that have used the agency’s services, and inquire about the following:

• Determine what strategies the agency uses to target potential students and make sure that their approach fits the institution’s goals.
• Request a PPC Audit to gain insights into your program and get recommendations on how to improve it.
• Ask about the agency’s process for selecting keywords, setting budgets, using ad extensions, and testing ads.
• Request their pricing model and the duration of their contracts.
• Make sure that the agency’s team is knowledgeable on topics such as automated bidding, remarketing, and conversion attribution.

Doing this research upfront can help ensure your institution finds the right partner to support its digital marketing needs.

Talk to references

Research their credentials and talk to references who can provide you with an honest opinion on the quality of your prospective agency’s work.

Ask questions related to their experience managing higher ed campaigns and inquire about the strategies they use to ensure success.

Interview potential PPC agencies and ask the right questions

It’s vital to interview potential agencies you’re considering, understand their offerings, and ask the right questions about their experience and expertise.

Make sure to vet their track record of working with other universities on similar initiatives and request case studies to get an inside look into their techniques as well as the results they achieved. Ask about team size and the approach they would bring to your project, as communication and collaboration are key factors in successful campaigns. Discuss terms of payment and timelines, and consider what guarantees or milestones the agency might be willing to offer you.

Finally, make sure you feel comfortable with the agency’s commitment to creating campaigns that align with your educational values and desired results.

Compare and contrast pricing, services offered, and performance metrics

When selecting a PPC agency, it’s important to compare and contrast the pricing, services offered, and performance metrics of each available option. Thoroughly evaluating each provider’s offerings can save money and ensure maximum value for budget investments.

The most important part of the selection process you should emphasize is to ensure that the agency specializes in higher education marketing; this requires confirming that each option has experience in helping schools create effective campaigns.

Familiarize yourself with the various campaign management models your potential agency uses, including fee structures, platform support, optimization approaches, and reporting capabilities.

Additionally, as a prospective client, you should predominantly focus on performance metrics such as click-through rates (CTRs), conversion rates, cost per acquisition (CPA), organic search rates, and return on ad spend (ROAS) as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to watch in your campaigns.

By researching each agency carefully and comparing their offerings across the board, your organization can make an informed decision on which partner best meets its marketing needs.

Unlock the Future of Education Marketing

When it comes to marketing for higher education, partnering with the right PPC agency is an essential part of long-term success.

By understanding your organization’s needs and goals, evaluating their expertise and track record, and asking the right questions, you can ensure that you’ve chosen the perfect agency to meet your specific goals for the long term.

Doing this process right and not skipping essential vetting steps will help unlock the future of education marketing for your institution—and beyond.

In another attempt to take control back from the advertiser, Google is recommending the use of broad match keywords in Smart Bidding campaigns. “If you’re using Smart Bidding, we’ll identify existing keywords that are likely to improve performance if you switch them to broad match,” Google said in their Monday blog post. While this would certainly give the AI more information to do its thing, it is another step towards more data going into the black box that marketers need to understand what works and what does not. Previously, you would not dream of putting in broad match keywords. However, if Google gets it right this time, we may be knocking on that door.

To test, or not to test?

As always, ES is testing. We will certainly be exploring this new recommendation and how it can benefit our clients. Our prediction is that we’ll find success in adding broad match keywords to ad groups however, still utilizing Smart Bidding which will guide the overall strategy rather than making a complete switch. In higher education, we need to be careful as to not pay for clicks from people searching for jobs, receive dental work, or to get plumber to fix their leaky faucet. Although this recommendation poses some glaring concerns to budget-conscious advertisers, Google has shown that their adjustments can prove mutually agreeable under the right circumstances. Let’s find out.

So what?

Outside of the small headaches that this change may cause for reporting or automation tools, is this a big a deal?  We don’t think so. One of EdwardsStrategies’ best practices is to consider the economy of impressions when optimizing search campaigns.  With search ads, charges only occur when someone “clicks” on your ad.  When it comes to updating various campaign settings to garner a lower cost per lead, it can be easy to overlook impressions as they do not directly relate to ad spend. However, this ignores the fact that specific portions of your ad spend could be spread too thin by covering too many keywords.  Afterall, when you run out of daily budget Google will no longer show your ads (no more impressions). If your ads cannot be seen, they certainly can’t continue to drive traffic to your site.

The good news here is that a few quick filters applied to your data set will show you exactly where certain keywords are siphoning money away from your top performers.  Simply take a look at the words that convert at a rate less than your campaign average (or desired goal) and calculate the amount of spend for these words vs the account as a whole.  Our guess is that you may easily find 15% or more of your budget is being wasted on available impressions, and thus clicks, for terms that are not as likely to convert as their counterparts.  Unless you are running an unlimited budget, the impact of this is likely costing you lead volume. Throw in a few more filters to see exact match impression share and lost impression share and you can start to see the big picture of how to squeeze more leads out of your current budget.

The removal of the average position metric, potentially taking away the crutch of relying on knowing that 1.2 means that your ad is in the top spot more often than not (when it shows), will assist in providing an even better understanding of where your ads actually show within the search results pages. Not only can you see how many impressions are coming in for ads above the “organic fold”, you can also see what portion are falling in the #1 position overall. Couple this with your impression share data and your bid decisions can now be based on the likelihood of your ads to show as well as which position you are likely to receive when they do.

But there is hope! ES is here to walk you through some optimizations that will get your Facebook and Instagram paid campaigns back on the right track!

Targeting

Interest-based targeting seems to be the default targeting method that we see in most campaigns we audit. It seems logical to figure out what your prospective students are interested in and then target those behaviors, interests, and demographics. But there is another way…

What we at Edwards Strategies have found to be even more successful is lookalike targeting. Lookalike targeting is basically taking a list of your current students’ or enrollments’ email addresses and upload them to Facebook to create a custom audience. Facebook then takes that custom audience and identifies common qualities among those people (demographic info or interests). Then Facebook finds people who are similar to them.

We’ve found lookalike audiences to be most effective when parsing them out by program. Each program’s students will look different, so splitting them up that way will give you a clearer picture.  Lookalike audiences have produced double digit percentage improvements in lead volume and CPL.

Messaging

Each program is different. And the demographics of the students for each program will vary as well. That means your messaging has to be tailored specifically to the prospective students in each program you are trying to reach. For instance, if you student demo skews 18-25 and female, that’s who you need to speak to in your copy and represent in your photos and or videos. This seems simple but we see this detail missed in so many campaigns.

Capturing

When Facebook first launched their ad platform, it was all about sending traffic off of the platform and to a landing page where you hoped people would fill out your contact form. In the last couple of years Facebook has introduced forms on their platform so interested users can fill out a form for more information without ever having to leave the Facebook platform.

While there have been some hiccups in this process (large amounts of spammy submissions), Facebook has taken steps to improve the quality of inquiries they are generating. One of the main ways they have improved the quality is by introducing two-step form confirmation.

Testing

In order to get the most out of your paid social campaigns, you should always be testing different elements of your ads. From the types of pictures you are using to the copy in your headline or in the body, there is always opportunity to improve performance. Here are a few tests that we have recently run:

• Stock photos vs. real company photos
• Headline test:
  • “Classes Start Soon” vs specific start dates
  • Open House Dates
• Display URL
  • Generic vs Program-specific
• Ad Copy
  • Generic vs Program-specific
  • No location vs including location

These are just a few examples of where you can start your testing process.

Following these optimizations should help improve the performance of your paid social campaigns and get the back on the right track.  If you need any help making these optimizations, you can reach out to us at Edwards Strategies here.