Making the Grade

Case study: CourseAdvisor teaches how to master the creative side of search

CourseAdvisor, an online education research directory that connects prospective students with more than 500 colleges and universities, had mastered the numbers of search marketing but hadn’t leveraged the creative side of search. With help from Yahoo!, CourseAdvisor wrote new ads and restructured its account—and saw its clicks go up 44% during a five-month period.

As a technology-focused company, CourseAdvisor constantly monitored its site traffic and conversion rates. The company was consumed with the technical side of the business, but other elements of its search campaigns suffered. CourseAdvisor needed help balancing the creative and technical sides of search.

“We were taking advantage of the data-driven side of search, but felt we still had great potential on the creative side,” said Addie Conner, Director of Search Marketing at CourseAdvisor. For instance, they typically had just one creative per ad group, which contained large numbers of keywords. CourseAdvisor communicated its needs to Yahoo!, which quickly took action.

About CourseAdvisor
CourseAdvisor matches students’ skills and education needs to degree and certificate programs, serving over 5 million unique visitors per month. Founded in 2004 by a group of MIT and UMass/Amherst college alumni and entrepreneurs, CourseAdvisor applies modern database marketing practices to the academic enrollment cycle. Its primary marketing objective is lead generation; 95% of CourseAdvisor’s business is driven by search marketing. 

Creative Counseling
In order to fully optimize creative, CourseAdvisor first needed to restructure its account. A Yahoo! account team member worked directly with CourseAdvisor to help reorganize its huge list of keywords; CourseAdvisor has hundreds of thousands of keywords in its account. The keywords were reorganized into topical ad groups that allowed creatives to be more relevant; that should help improve the account over time by garnering high quality scores.

Then the team turned its attention to the ad creative, beginning with adding alternative ad titles. They looked at the way keyword phrases were worded in alt text, for example, changing “Degree nursing online” to “Online Nursing Degree.” This change in wording is more readable for the user and a better representation of the brand.

Through daily follow-up phone calls, the Yahoo! Search Marketing team was highly engaged with CourseAdvisor’s search campaign.

“You get a real sense of caring from the Yahoo! team, who go above and beyond to help us out. They have a willingness to learn and grow with our business. We’re reaching a high-quality audience with a high conversion rate,” Conner said.

Results

• CourseAdvisor enjoyed a 44% increase in clicks during a five-month period.
• Due to high quality traffic on Yahoo!, the company’s Yahoo! Search Marketing campaign achieved a higher conversion rate than its campaigns with other search engines.
• CourseAdvisor was able to organize its high volume of keywords into tight, efficient ad groups.
• With better creatives, CourseAdvisor is more likely to show the right ad message to the right customer.