Higher Education PPC: Why To Partner With An Agency

At Chair 10 Marketing, we’ve worked with a variety of higher education institutions from large public universities, to small community colleges, to private schools. Each university has their own unique structure for their marketing team. Some have an internal agency that manages a portfolio of programs, sometimes there’s a specific role within a department that handles marketing, and in other cases there is a small but mighty team taking on a wide variety of marketing initiatives. No matter how your team is structured, working with an agency to deliver on your paid digital campaigns can make a positive impact on your day-to-day. Here are some of the benefits of partnering with an agency. 

They Stay Up To Date on Advertising Changes 

In the world of digital marketing, change is a constant. In 2023, advertisers are navigating new privacy laws that affect the ways they can advertise online, web cookies will soon be phased out of common use, and, what’s more, there is a constant influx of beneficial new ad types and targeting options available on popular advertising platforms. When you partner with an agency for PPC, they stay on top of all of these platform and industry changes so your team can focus on the bigger picture, instead of spending hours researching the latest Google Ads update. Working with an agency means you have a resource ready to help you, answer your questions, and take on to-do items for you. 

Access To Betas and Advanced Support 

When you work with a Google Premier Partner Agency, there are some great benefits that are passed along to you as a client. For example, a new logo extension was recently launched on Google Ads and as Google Premier Partner, our clients have early access to this and many other betas. Working with an agency puts your institution ahead of the curve with access to new features that can give you an edge. Beyond that, Google will assign an in-house team specifically to your ad account that serves as a strategy and support resource. Want a Google Strategist to join a meeting as well and answer your questions? You got it. Have an issue or frustrating roadblock? Don’t just call support, have a meeting with an expert who can resolve the issue in that same meeting. This level of support truly makes a difference for higher education clients using Google Ads. 

Your Team Isn’t Bogged Down Optimizing Campaigns 

There’s a lot of work that goes into successful PPC campaigns behind the scenes. Some of the under the hood tasks we take on include: selecting and managing the correct bid strategy for each campaign, creating careful conversion tracking to track incremental conversions as well as completed applications and enrollments, testing new ad copy and ad extensions, adjusting keyword strategy, making landing page optimizations, and executing on new campaign buildouts with careful testing. Of course, we also provide clearly communicated results so that you have access to data and reporting anytime you log into your dashboard. 

You Have Help With Strategy

At Chair 10 Marketing, we believe it is vital to have an intentional strategy built to meet your goals. While we may have 70 program-specific campaigns running, there are larger insights and new opportunities to explore. An important aspect of our role is meeting regularly to bring new ideas, insights, and strategies to the table. We’re there to help you solve new challenges that arise. 

Have a program that’s struggled to get applicants? Launching a brand new program and not sure where to advertise? We are experts at strategically managing large (and small!) budgets across multi-platform campaigns to maximize results. We’ll help you figure out the right mix of campaigns to generate awareness within relevant audiences, be there when someone searches, and remarket effectively as deadlines approach. At the end of the run for each program we provide a data-driven roadmap for the next year: what worked, what could be improved, and what new strategies we can try. 

More Affordable Than You Think

Maybe you’ve gotten this far and you’re thinking “this sounds great but we don’t have the budget to work with an agency – our budget is just too small!” This is where Chair 10 Marketing really shines in the higher education PPC advertising space. There are lots of higher ed marketing agencies that offer a whole software solution for enrollment, which frequently entails a large upfront investment and a several-year commitment. That’s not us. We manage your paid digital campaigns to make them as successful as possible. You retain control over your budgets month to month, and you won’t be locked into a long contract. 

Sometimes we start small, advertising for a single program. Other times we’ve taken over management of 160 certificate and degree programs overnight. Some universities have more budget allocated for each fiscal year, but frequently we partner with educational organizations working with tight budgets; we are experts at maximizing return on your ad spend. To find out more about working with us feel free to get in touch, or check out some other higher ed content on our blog! We’d love to help you reach your goals!