WWU's MBA Program and Paid Search Advertising
This week’s blog post looks a bit different - rather than highlighting the ins and outs of a marketing activity, I’ll be discussing how it relates to a specific entity, in this case, Western Washington University’s Masters of Business Administration program. I’ll highlight how the program can use paid search advertising to meet their goals as well as a bit about what paid search/price-per-click is all about.
What is Price-Per-Click?
Price Per Click, or PPC, is a form of online advertising that lives on various search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing. PPC is also known by a few other names, such as Cost-Per-Click (CPC), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), or paid search. For simplicity, this blog post will be using only PPC or paid search - just know that all of these terms are synonymous.
For most search queries (terms typed into the search bar) there are endless pages of results. These search engine result pages, or SERPs, are a lot for the average consumer to sift through. If your website isn’t listed on the first page, then there’s a high chance that there will be very few hits/views. Although this could be combated by working on your website’s SEO, many companies choose to opt for PPC.
PPC guarantees your website a spot on the first page of SERPs. These ads look like a typical search result, just with the addition of “Ad” before the URL. They display the webpage’s title, as well as a few lines of text and additional related links from the same website. Here’s an example of one when I searched the term “MBA programs.”
There are many benefits to PPC advertising, the main one being affordability. Brands only pay as much as they are willing to, and only for the users that actually click on their ad, hence, the name price-per-click. Let’s dive a bit more into how PPC works.
How does PPC work?
As mentioned earlier, brands set their prices for PPC which is contrary to traditional advertising pricing methods. The way this is done is through bidding (Sparrow Boost). Essentially, companies pick out keywords that are relevant to their brands and develop an ad for those keywords. Remember how I mentioned that they only pay when a user actually clicks on the link? Well, they then set a maximum price that they are willing to pay for someone to click on their link. The search engine then chooses bidders and places them on the page based on price, quality, and a few other factors. The actual process of this is a bit more complex because there are multiple ad placements with varying levels of visibility, but this provides a general understanding. It’s important to mention that the advertisers don’t always pay their max amount due to page placement, amount of bidders, and other factors.
As I brought up earlier, bidding price is not the only thing that search engines consider when selecting advertisers for each slot. Another important factor that is considered is an ad’s quality score. Quality scores influence how effective a PPC campaign is and is determined by elements such as:
Click-through rate
Keyword relevance
Quality of landing page
Relevance of ad text
Search engines have yet to reveal exactly how much of an effect these factors each have, so it’s important to work on all of them. Each one helps make the most out of your PPC campaign by targeting the right people and increasing conversions once they get to your website.
Now that there’s a basic understanding of how paid search works, let’s discuss how Western Washington University’s (WWU) MBA program could use PPC to their advantage.
Western Washington University’s MBA Program and PPC
As with any marketing campaign, it’s important to first define your goals. The faculty advisor for WWU’s MBA program, Dr. Mark Staton, wants to emphasize increasing awareness and applications after a majority of US business schools witnessed an average 2.2% decline in applications from 2021 to 2022 (Graduate Management Admission Council). With this goal in mind, let’s take a look at the next steps the MBA program should take.
Budgeting is a major aspect of PPC advertising. Although I don’t have access to WWU’s financial report for each program, it’s safe to assume that the MBA program doesn’t have a huge amount of funding provided by the school, considering that graduate students only make up 7% of WWU’s total population (WWU Admissions). That being said, they must use their advertising budget wisely. Although there are many search engines they could advertise through, I would recommend Google, as they currently make up 92.58% of the global market share for search engines (StatCounter).
Keywords have a major impact on the amount of money needed for a PPC campaign. More popular search terms will cost more, while less popular ones will be more affordable. Google Keyword Planner provides historical price ranges for top-of-page placement bids. Here are a few relevant examples:
MBA program: ($13.41 - $45.00)
MBA: ($7.68 - $22.32)
MBA degree: ($9.62 - $30.13)
MBA colleges: ($10.09 - $36.52)
As a quick reminder, these prices reflect how much it costs a company per click. Someone could accidentally tap the link and cost the business a significant chunk of change! For this reason, I would recommend that the WWU MBA program takes advantage of cheaper, more niche keywords, such as:
Best business schools in Washington state: ($2.42 - $18.70)
Best part time MBA: ($4.82 - $21.78)
Best weekend MBA: ($5.20 - $15.73)
UW evening MBA: ($6.24 - $25.00)
Washington state MBA cost: ($6.48 - $24.02)
Not only are these keywords cheaper to advertise on, but they’re also more relevant to potential students - they are location specific or highlight certain benefits of WWU’s MBA program. This means that users who click on the ad are more likely to perform a conversion of some sort, considering that they are already interested in aspects of what the program has to offer.
Once they select keywords that are both relevant and affordable, the program should begin placing bids. It’s important to consider both their daily and long-term budget when selecting their max bidding amount. I would also recommend choosing a value within the historical range, so that their ad will actually be chosen by Google and not ignored.
The next step is to develop the ad itself. Ads are limited to only a few lines of text, so it’s important to highlight key points of differentiation in this space - what makes WWU’s MBA program special? Here’s some ideas that I came up with through browsing their website:
Flexible environment: three programs are offered - daytime, evening, and weekend
AACSB accreditation: only 5% of business programs worldwide possess this distinction
Multiple locations: daytime and evening programs are offered in Bellingham whereas the weekend program is offered in Everett
Program requirements: certain programs don’t require internships and/or capstone projects
Course diversity: in addition to graduate-level courses, students of certain programs are permitted to take 400 level undergraduate electives
Once the ad itself is written, the next step is to optimize the landing page. Having this page in tip-top shape is key because it’s what you’re paying for people to see! Make sure that it is engaging, includes a call-to-action, and is relevant to the advertising campaign. Groove Commerce has a wonderful PPC landing page resource that highlights 10 best practices for every company to implement.
The last step to wrap this all up is to launch the campaign! Select a timeframe to run the campaign for - WebFX recommends about three months to begin seeing results. After the initial campaign, perform some data analytics and determine what the next steps are - whether it be choosing a new advertising method completely or refining the PPC campaign.
I hope you found this blog post about paid search and how it relates to WWU’s MBA program both informative and interesting. Thank you for reading and happy advertising!