I once worked for a media education company that matched students with mentors in fields like film, radio broadcasting and audio engineering. I was the Web content manager and online marketer. The company was running some PPC ads on Yahoo! and Google Adwords as well as Miva which was a very small content network.
By looking at the Web analytics for the three company websites I could see there were very few visitors coming from Miva, but the monthly spend was $1,500. So I reduced that amount to less than $300 a month with an eye toward stopping altogether.
The mentoring programs were not run in physical spaces with classrooms, they took place on real film sets, and in radio broadcasting studios and recording studios. These real-world venues are in many cities around the country.
The Google Adwords campaigns were set up around more general keywords like film school, recording school and broadcasting training. These keywords could cost more than $10 per click and there was a lot of competition. Typically, the most well-known film schools are in cities like LA, NYC and Chicago.
So, I tried the long-tail approach. I entered hundreds of keywords that were geo-targeted where the company had mentors. I ran ads for keywords like Cleveland film school, Kansas City recording program, Miami radio broadcasting school, Portland film school and so on. There was almost no competition for them because they are much smaller markets that do not have that many media schools or educational programs for media. In fact, sometimes the cost per click was $1 and there were no competitor running ads for the smaller market keywords. I entered well over 500 geo-targeted small market keywords and the results were much lower costs with click-thru rates sometimes of 100%. While a CTR of 100% might seem like something that couldn’t be true, it was.
The LA Film School would not run ads on keywords like Pittsburg film school or Seattle film school but the media education company had mentors in those cities so I could run ads and generate some very low-cost leads with high to very high click-thru rates.
One issue to consider if you hire a PPC specialist is how interested they are in your business. If he or she does have a high interest level this person might be able to devise such a strategy. When you are talking with them, if it seems to you that they are not interested in your business or organization’s work then you might do much better to find someone who is.
Some online marketers might actually tell you that they aren’t interested in your business. Do you want to work with someone like that?
Others might tell you they can drive traffic to your site but aren’t responsible for impacting the bottom line. Wouldn’t you rather work with someone who does want to try to impact your bottom line in a beneficial way?