Higher-Ed Growth and Efficiency
The Granular team has extensive hands-on experience managing full marketing strategies for higher-ed clients with 7 and 8-figure annual digital marketing budgets. Our Founder, Jordon Meyer ran PPC in-house for two leading Midwest for-profit colleges and our team has collectively managed higher-ed PPC for over a dozen colleges and universities.Background:
This university was seeking to improve the performance of its paid search. Management of the paid search accounts was previously handled by a prominent Seattle-based agency, and the university had a hunch that they were getting “the B team”. Granular conducted an extensive paid PPC audit where we uncovered extreme amounts of neglect and inefficiency.
The Opportunity:
Step one was to stop the bleeding caused by a national PPC agency. CPCs over $100 per click were rampant throughout the account…when the average of our other higher-ed clients was much lower for similar targeting. After we restructured the entire account, it only took one month to reap the rewards of granular, data-driven account management.
Granular’s Solution:
- We performed a comprehensive PPC audit and found areas for immediate cost-cutting and efficiency gains
- The restructuring of the accounts saw immediate positive returns that set the groundwork for continued success
- CPC reduction with Ad Quality Score improvements based on architecture and keyword mapping
- Advanced reporting dashboards and value-based bidding to ensure that we aim to attract the most valuable students
The Approach:
- Identify areas of waste, reduce media budget, and pay for Granular’s services through efficiency
- Develop a roadmap for growth
- Prove that PPC can be scalable while remaining efficient
The Results:
- Google Ads Leads increased by +61% year-over-year
- Google Ads Cost Per Lead reduced by –28% year-over-year
