MediaWhiz’s director of SEO, Marc Purtell, spoke to PI about how the US-founded business used a mix of paid and organic search, coupled with local search optimisation, in a campaign for the Miami-based College of Business Technology (CBT).

Q: What was the challenge MediaWhiz faced?

MP: Our challenge was to grow student enrolment at CBT. The education institution faced a need to grow new student enrollments at a much faster rate. The college required a marketing partner that could provide new insights and ideas to improve its organic and paid search visibility within the greater Miami area, while delivering deeper customer analytics and helping it navigate the ever-changing online marketing landscape.

Q: What was MediaWhiz’s solution?

MP: Our solution was a local optimisation programme. We developed and deployed an ongoing citation building programme (local listing websites that discuss CBT) to boost visibility of location-based properties.

We optimised both on- and off-site location pages to improve authority and reach, and normalised data across local listing websites to improve relevancy.

We also worked with CBT to develop and publish a content creation and editorial calendar, to produce high-quality authoritative content for its demographic base, such as blog posts and infographics.

In addition we conducted a series of detailed audits to understand and address key areas of on-site improvement that www.CBT.edu needed to acquire more organic visibility. These included:

Improved organic authority and visibility:

  • Technical architecture audit and site updates
  • Content audit and ongoing content optimisation
  • Authority signal audit
  • Ongoing on-site content optimisation
  • User experience analysis and updates

Paid search optimisation:

  • Optimised brand keywords to gain more impression share by improving the quality score to raise the average position.
  • Ongoing ad copy testing to determine the best-converting ad copy for branded terms with strong calls-to-action.
  • Incorporated dynamic keyword insertion to ads, where appropriate, to improve relevancy with searchers’ intent.
  • A/B and multivariate landing-page testing for all campaigns to create a better user experience.
  • Tested banner images and button colours to determine the winning variation.

Q: What were the results of this?

MP:  We improved conversion rates and decreased cost-per-lead. Performance is a thing of beauty and MediaWhiz delivered beautiful results for CBT College:

Q1 2012 versus Q1 2013

Organic Search

51% increase in total organic acquisitions
20% increase in organic lead conversion rate
34% decrease in cost-per-lead
52% increase in non-branded organic traffic

Paid Search

With 18% less media spend, increased paid search acquisitions by 4%
22% decrease in cost-per-lead
12% increase in paid lead conversion rate

The education vertical is one in which MediaWhiz has demonstrated success in SEO, PPC and across the suite of digital and performance marketing channels. Our cross-channel capabilities in EDU have allowed MediaWhiz to successfully recruit for both campus-based and online programs, increasing lead volume while lowering CPA.

Do you have an interesting case study to tell PI readers about? If so email me pippa.chambers@performancein.com