When I was a kid, I loved Albert Einstein.Tiny five-year-old Jeff didn’t dream of being a social media strategist when he grew up, but, instead, of growing into a crazy-haired physicist that was prone to sticking his tongue out  (Hey, two out of three ain’t bad, as Meat Loaf would say). So, imagine my horror when I saw the above image relating to social media ROI. How could my hero, the dude who came up with a scientific equation for something we couldn’t even measure, suggest such a thing?

Thankfully, it turns out Einstein didn’t actually say this (that honor actually goes to sociologist William Bruce Cameron). Phew! Geek BSOD averted.

Don’t get me wrong, the quote is still a good one, because we’re probably not measuring the right things yet when it comes to social media return-on-investment, and many of the things we do measure, like Klout, assign a value to something which is worthless (at least according to folks like Duncan Watts). But the quote also opens the door for all of those self-proclaimed social media gurus to suggest that attempting to measure social media success is like kicking dead whales down the beach – something messy, time-consuming and, ultimately, pointless.

There was a time, maybe about five years ago, when us social media folks could get away with waving our magic social media wand and enchanting people to people that the intangible social media fairies were going to come and grant everyone’s wishes. That time, while entertaining, is thankfully gone. I’m still a big believer in the value of social media for social media’s sake (in the same way that I think customer service for customer service’s sake is valuable), but today we need to prove success. We need to face the question, “how do you track the ROI of social media?” with more than just a deer-in-the-headlights stare. If you’re in charge of your school’s social media program, you had better be prepared to answer this question. As schools dedicate more and more resources to social media channels,  it’s increasingly important to have clear ways to track and measure success in this area. Yet many enrollment marketers have trouble providing a clear explanation for why their social media efforts are working .

There are certainly schools out there which, essentially, believe that social media engagements with customers are intrinsically valuable and so they don’t try to track them back to a revenue generation, but instead look purely at engagement metrics (things like number comments, customer service questions answered, things like that). If you’re in one of those schools, you’re in a good spot, and measurement is a relatively straightforward thing to do.

If you’re like most school marketers, and you’re not in an environment like that, you have a bigger challenge ahead.  Selling the idea that social media is implicitly important is a hard thing to do, but not impossible. In this post, I’ll walk you through a couple of solutions.

Method 1: Measuring social media engagement against key business metrics

The first method involves thinking about the overall goals of the specific social media campaign and what type of business metrics you might see that affect. Then, measuring both social media engagement metrics and the business metrics, you can look for correlations over campaign length when compared to time periods where the social media campaign was inactive. This isn’t a perfect solution because there could be other things that affect the business metrics besides the social media campaign. Even though it isn’t exact, it is one way to demonstrate value.

Method 2: Tracking metrics around social media presence

Alternatively, depending on exactly what the objective of the campaign is, there’s quite a few ways that we can track metrics regarding a business’s social media presence. Things like reach, content reseeding and engagement are pretty simple. We also have the ability to actually integrate social monitoring and publishing solutions with some types of website analytics software, so we can see, say, how a post generates conversions on a website, or which topics and conversation styles work are effective on individual social media venue.

Of course, being a big believer in social media’s influence on perception, I would say that the failure of this type of model is that it doesn’t account for some of the brand loyalty and perception benefits of social media.

A great example of what this would miss out on are the really positive social media experiences I had with Radio Shack and Nike Fuel recently. I complained about Radio Shack on Twitter and they responded not only asking about my complaint, but also took the time to see that I’d built a lamp that changes color every minute depending on the prevailing mood across all of Twitter. They complemented me on the lamp and we discussed how I built it (which, as it turns out, was mostly with parts provided by them).

Did this mean they ended up with my business regarding the complaint? No. Did they give me a solution that fixed my issue? No. But you better believe that not only do I have a very favorable view of the company (Just because they didn’t solve that one specific issue I had doesn’t remove the warm fuzzy feeling that I got when they actually displayed interest in me), but, when I talk to clients about effective Twitter engagements, I show screen captures of that exchange. And, lo and behold, I actually just snuck it into a post on our company blog.

Method 3: The hybrid approach

Depending upon exactly what you’re attempting to accomplish, I usually recommend a hybrid approach to this. Measure all of the metrics that you can that make sense (Reach, content reseeding, engagement both in terms of click-through and response, etc.) and, if possible, attempt to correlate trends in social media metrics with business metrics. At the same time, if possible, conduct brand perception surveys both before and after a campaign to see if there is a correlation, and conduct surveys of people that have actually engaged with you over social media.

Some of the more compelling case studies that I’ve seen involve presenting results like, “One in four of the entire student body found the social media presence helpful in making a business decision. 87 percent of students who used it said it enabled them to connect with staff members better. And students that engaged with the social media presence were six times as likely to enroll as students that didn’t.” Basically, “Overall perception. Perception of users. Measure result metrics.”

Ideally, whatever method you use is specifically tailored to the goals of each individual social media campaign. The unfortunate part of this is that it requires a comprehensive knowledge of what’s trackable in social media, how you track it, what types of engagements correlate to business metrics, how you correlate them, and, ultimately, how you tailor it for specific business goals. At the same time, that’s the reason that people like me exist. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.

Greetings, earthlings! It’s been another exciting week in the higher education world, and we’ve got another tasty serving of news for you. This week, we saw APSCU President and CEO Steve Gunderson responding to suggestions that for-profit colleges do not role in philanthropy (for fairness, I’m also going to include links to the article he was responding to as well as the original author’s response to him), a former University of Phoenix student chimes in on the for-profit debate in Iowa (home of Sen. Tom Harkin and, more importantly, where I grew up, Go Trojans!), a look at potential methods for hybrid for-profit/non-profit schools, the first school investigation from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, CATO’s primer on college policy, and some discussion about one of the speakers at the upcoming APSCU conference.

And, yes, for those wondering about the above image, it’s from a t-shirt titled “AT-AT the Rodeo,” available for purchase at RedBubble (go ahead and order one for your humble editor).

• For-Profits and Philanthropy ( Inside Higher Ed)
• Vilifying All For-Profit College Is Not Fair ( Des Moines Register)
• The Right Questions: For-Profit/Non-Profit Hybrids ( Confessions of a Community College Dean)
• CFPB’s First For-Profit Salvo ( CAPPS)
• A Quick College Policy Primer ( CATO@Liberty)
• Education Expert Michelle Rhee Criticized for Speaking at Education-Related Conference ( Reason)

When it comes to generating inquiries, focusing on the right metrics, tying everything together, and figuring out how to drive improvements can be challenging; higher education media buyers sometimes find themselves using subjectivity in their decision making or missing important information altogether.

In this week’s webinar, our experts tackled the question: Is it possible to buy inquiries and execute on media plans based on analytics and data instead of subjectivity?

The answer? Absolutely.

The webinar focused on key marketing and media planning concepts, including the basics of measurement, key performance indicators that marketers need to pay attention to, marketing segmentation and optimization, and some more advanced measurement of planning techniques used by schools. It also showed participants how these concepts can be applied in action, by drawing from examples in Sparkroom, CUnet’s enrollment marketing automation platform.

If you missed the webinar or if you’d just like to watch it again, view the recorded version here. And stay tuned for news about next month’s webinar!

Increasing PPC Spending

Over the past year, our paid search team has been working with one of our schools to gradually increase spend. As a result, they also succeeded in growing inquiry and start volume at a consistent inquiry-start rate of around 10 percent. The school’s media spend in Q1 of 2011 was around $127k, and that grew over 300 percent to $534k by Q1 of 2012. This was accomplished by increasing geo-targeting radii, expanding keyword lists to include more general phrases (e.g. “career school in PA”) to capture users at earlier stages of the search funnel, bidding more aggressively on core program keywords, launching campaigns on the Google Content Network, and testing 3^rd tier search channels.

Evaluating Performance

Continual testing throughout the past year has allowed our paid search experts to pinpoint the initiatives that performed well for a given campus location or program category, and adjust from there. Campaigns were optimized as needed to keep the cost-per-inquiry within the school’s expectations. Inquiry volume followed suit, growing approximately 85 percent from Q1 2011 to Q2 2012:

More Bang for the Marketing Buck

The end goal for most schools is to have their PPC inquiries convert to actual starts, at an acceptable cost-per-start. Since paid search inquiries convert at a much higher rate than those from other affiliates, schools can afford to be more aggressive and accept a higher cost-per-inquiry, knowing that the amount of starts generated throughout subsequent months will ensure an acceptable end cost-per-start. With time, our paid search team expects to see those Q1 2012 inquiries convert to starts at a comparable rate, and as the data matures, the overall cost-per-start for that quarter will continue to improve.

Schools need to keep in mind that paid search has a longer conversion cycle. While most schools see the majority of their starts come in within 90 days of the inquiry date, PPC inquiries can continue to convert to starts four, five, and six months later. So it is crucial to review PPC performance on a rolling basis, and look at a large enough date range to account for this longer conversion cycle and ensure that pre-mature data is not skewing the overall results. It is also important to specify an adequate timeframe for testing various initiatives to make sure enough data is accumulated, and potential inquiries are given enough time to convert, before the full value of that test is evaluated.

If you’re looking for presentations and recaps from the conference, head to the NAGAP conference website. They’re not up yet, but we’re told they should be soon!

And now, we thought we’d share some quotes from the conference, via Twitter (#NAGAP):

MarcusHanscom

Sean Michael Green: “Go home and kick some traditional undergraduate ass.” #NAGAP #awesome

Paredes: The most significant innovation in #highered is happening from the for-profits like Devry and Phoenix.#NAGAP

brandonlemley

“There are very few people who do research when they are doing well…” @JulieStaggs #Txgap #NAGAP

DoctorJeremiah

This workshop is also a webinar being broadcasted back on the presenters’ campus…a webinar within a workshop. Genius!! #NAGAP

Dr. Paredes says, “The current model of public higher education cannot be sustained.”#NAGAP

DrEducationBlog

Jaschik: pressure on grad schools to create new programs with “cash” potential #nagap @IHEadmissions@insidehighered

EMjennielle

“It’s time to reform #highered. A good place to start is in graduate education” Raymund Paredes #NAGAP #EMchat

“almost 50% of students in #highered start in#comm_college” -Raymund Paredes

Google Remarketing: Keep the Conversation Going Even After a User Leaves Your Site

Google Remarketing allows you to reach targeted users that have already shown some level of interest in your product or service by visiting your site, and reconnect with them by showing them an ad as they navigate across the Google Display Network (or GDN). In its simplest form, setup involves determining the type of visitors to your site you’d like to remarket to, and tagging all of the pages on your site that the user may visit with a “target” Google Remarketing pixel. It is also a best practice to tag all of the pages that a user could hit that you wouldn’t want to remarket to with a “do not target” tag, most importantly the “Thank You” page a user is shown once they complete a conversion. If they’ve already completed your goal conversion, you don’t want to continue to berate them with ads.

Once your “target” list hits 100 users, the campaign is automatically activated and you begin showing ads (a combination of text and display ads are recommended) to users as they navigate the GDN. Ads that offer a discount or something free have historically performed much stronger than those that don’t, so if you have something to offer, do it.

Google Ad Extensions: Grab As Much Real Estate As Google Allows

Google offers five free ad extensions to advertisers; Location, Call, SiteLinks, Product or Social. The extension that is right for you is really dependent on your business and goals so I’d encourage you to research them all before choosing the one that’s right for you. That being said, absolutely make sure you are taking advantage of this free offering from Google and implementing one of these extensions. Besides the obvious benefit of showing your address (Location), phone number (Call), links to more targeted LPs on your site (SiteLinks), your products (Product) or a tally of all your +1s from your Google+ page (Social) in your ad, you’re also making your ad larger and more prominent. Enlarging the size of your ad results allows you to take up valuable real estate on the Search Engine Results Page that would otherwise be occupied by your competition, pushing them further down the page or to the right rail of results. Launching a Google Extension usually equates to a CTR increase of 5 – 10%, so if you’re looking for more clicks this is a must.

Mobile Paid Search: Take Advantage Of An Under Utilized Opportunity

Global Mobile traffic is expected to grow 26 times over the next five years according to Google and Cisco VNI, at which point Google is predicting mobile search will outpace desktop. Despite this information, many advertisers still aren’t utilizing mobile, resulting in a huge benefit for current advertisers – cheap CPCs. In some instances I see CPCs in Mobile that are half the price of their more expensive desktop counterpart despite performing similarly from a CVR standpoint.

As more advertisers slowly migrate over to Mobile we’ll surely see CPCs rise, so take advantage of the current market while it lasts. Go ahead and build out a separate mobile campaign (so you can optimize desktop and mobile separately by performance) and assign 17 percent of your desktop budget for mobile (Google’s recommendation). Ideally, you should be building out a mobile-optimized site as an end point for this traffic as well. Finally, keep in mind that the majority of mobile traffic goes to the advertiser in position one or two, so be aggressive with your bidding to maximize traffic.

Tier 2 Channels: Don’t Neglect the Little Guys

The majority of advertisers are spending their entire Paid Search budget on Google and Bing, ignoring the lower-volume Tier 2 channels like LookSmart, AdMarketPlace, eZanga, Kontera, etc. Because of the lack of competition on these channels, you will see CPCs that are a fraction of what you’d see on Google or Bing (generally less than a dollar). You’ll also be expanding your reach to customers you may not be reaching with Google and Bing. A couple tips for navigating the Tier 2 channels:

1. Most channels will say they require a minimum deposit of $XXX to launch, but if you present your budget as a “test budget” they will generally cave and allow you to test with whatever amount you feel comfortable.
2. Ask for a breakout of their sources of traffic. Unlike Google and Bing (who are providing pure Search traffic), the majority of Tier 2 channels use a blend of search, display, email and in-text advertising to drive traffic. The higher the blend of search and in-text, the more qualified traffic you can expect.

Your faithful editor has arrived back from his temporary vacation in Southern California (where he participated in a 5k charity run that involved being covered in multi-colored cornstarch) and, because he’s in such a good mood, we’re giving you a break from the standard cowboy-themed round-up photos. Instead, above, you have his modern day reimagining of Magritte’s “The Treachery of Images” and, below, you have President Obama doing a slow-jam about student loans.

And now for the news!

• Colleges ponder the pros and cons of Pinterest as a marketing tool ( Inside Higher Ed)
• Obama Administration Wants To Trademark ‘GI Bill’ Term ( CBS)
• Politicians consider for-profit college for New Bedford ( SouthCoastToday.com)
• Community Colleges Should Emulate For-Profit Institutions’ Innovation ( Los Angeles Times)
• Tokuyama Dental America Partners with Viva Learning for Online Dental CE ( The Houston Chronicle)
• Open for business? Why universities must collaborate on OpenCourseWare ( The Guardian)

This reality has led marketing and recruitment professionals to flock to Paid Search, creating a very competitive landscape. In fact, higher education is the 4^th largest industry in terms of Google Adword spend, after insurance, retailers, and travel and tourism.

Regardless of the industry you’re in, or whether your campaigns are managed internally or by an agency, in this two-part series of posts, I’ll provide seven actionable tactics that you can apply today to improve your paid search campaigns (and keep your agencies honest).

Granularity: Focus On A Single Keyword In Each Ad

A primary focus when building out your paid search campaign should be maximizing your keyword’s quality score. The Keyword Quality Score (scale of 1 – 10) is what Google and Bing use to determine the actual cost-per-click(CPC) you will pay when your keyword receives a click. The Quality Score is broadly determined by three main factors: relevancy of the keyword to the ads in its ad group and to the actual search query, the keyword’s click-through rate(CTR), and landing page (LP) quality. Because creating a paid search campaign does not include optimizing your LP to improve quality, we’ll instead focus on the first two components, relevancy and CTR.

In order to write ads that are as relevant as possible to the keyword being searched, I only put one unique keyword (two if the other is the plural version of the first) in each of my ad groups. This enables me to write headlines and descriptions for each group that speaks directly to the exact keyword that was queried. Google and Bing see a keyword-rich ad and reward me in the form of a high Keyword Quality Score (and by Bolding all occurrences of the queried keyword in the Ad). The user doing the search sees an Ad that is speaking directly to what they’re looking for and rewards me by clicking, thus improving my CTR and quality score. Though this step is extremely time consuming, it is imperative for the long-term success of your program.

Customized Display URLs: Target Your Display URLs To Match User Interest

Treat your display URL like another line of ad copy and take advantage of the maximum of 35 characters you’re allowed. Per the Google Display URL policy, the domain in the Display URL must match that of the landing page you’re sending traffic to, but anything after that is fair game. I recommend putting the keyword or ad group’s theme after the domain to give the user the perception that they’re being sent to a Landing Page that is specifically targeted to what they’ve searched on. For example, a user querying “online business degree” would ideally be shown an ad with the following display URL:

abschool.edu/Online_Business_Degree

The benefits of having a targeted display URL are a higher CTR as a result of the perceived targeted landing page (and Google bolding all keywordss that were queried that show in the ad) and a possible increase in Keyword Quality Score as a result of the higher CTRs and additional keyword relevance of your ad.

Ad Copy Testing: Test Out Your Ads Every Quarter

No, setting your Google AdWords account to “Optimize for Clicks” or “Optimize for Conversions” is not ad copy testing. On a quarterly basis (ad copy performance varies with seasonality), you should set your ad rotation to “Rotate” and measure a minimum of three ads in each ad group against each other over at least a month (the length of test needed to get statistically significant learnings will vary based on traffic volume and number of ads). I measure performance based on a metric called “Conversions per Impression” (CPI) as opposed to the traditional CTR and CVR metrics. CPI takes into account both CTR and CVR because the only way to get a conversion off of an impression is if the user clicks (CTR), and of course converts (CVR). This way, you’re not just optimizing to get clicks or conversions, you’re maximizing both.

Happy Friday! Here’s your weekly dose of all things higher ed news. Yee-haw!

• Department of Education Program Integrity Rules: What Schools and Vendors Need to Know (APSCU webinar)
• Colleges Could Be Banned From Using U.S. Tax Money for Ads (Bloomberg)
• Top Schools from Berkeley to Yale Now Offer Free Online Courses (Mashable)
• Declining Investment in Higher Education Hurts Students  (US News)
• Top 12 Ways Facebook’s “Groups for Schools” Will Change Higher Ed (Digital Journal)

While the elimination of AtB is not the only change to the Pell Grants program this year*, it is arguably the most significant one, directly impacting access to education for some of the most needy, and underserved populations in the country.

AtB has allowed colleges and universities, particularly in the for-profit sector, to provide crucial training for low-income, low-skilled students – a market typically underserved by traditional schools. With the elimination of this program, those schools may need to make changes to both their program offerings and their recruitment efforts.

AtB Checklist for Schools

At CUnet, we are supporting a number of our clients through this change, helping them to understand the impact of the elimination of AtB, develop a plan to address the change, and finally look for ways to fill the void that will be left when these students are no longer able to access the necessary support to allow them to enroll in higher education.

If your school currently serves AtB students, you should start by considering the following questions:

• What % of your students are AtB students?
• Are you currently generating inquiries from AtB students?
• If yes, what % of your inquiries are AtB students?
• Have you made plans to stop the generation of AtB student inquiries? If yes, are you taking a phased approach?
• Do you need to find new sources of inquiries to replace the inquiries you have eliminated?

If you currently receive inquiries from AtB students, you may need to alter your media mix to address this Pell Grant change. Shifting over to affiliates specializing in high school graduates is an obvious approach. However, now is also a good time to consider other recruitment channels, including paid search, mobile and call products. With just over two months to go before the program is eliminated, it’s important to start transitioning now.

Finally, you should consider how your school can continue to serve and support the ATB market – an important group that desperately needs access to education to advance in their careers and lives. What creative initiatives can your school develop to support this group? Perhaps you can offer free GED study sessions in your cafeteria? We’d love to hear your ideas and plans to continue to address the needs of this group. A little creativity may result in loyal students who, GED in hand, now qualify for Pell Grants.

*Additional July 1 changes to the Pell Grants program include:
· Maximum duration to receive grants decreased from nine years to six (effective retroactively)
· Maximum annual income to qualify reduced from $30,000 to $23,000