Overview
Since 1979, Ameritech College of Healthcare has been one of Utah’s leading nursing schools—offering accelerated Associate, Bachelor’s, and Master’s degree programs. With ambitious growth goals, student enrollment is always a priority and they sought a new agency partner to substantially improve their existing paid search, search engine optimization, and website optimization efforts.
Industry
Education
Services
Conversion optimization, search engine optimization, pay-per-click management
Location
Draper, UT
Background
Although nursing is an increasingly in-demand profession, even reputable institutions like Ameritech have to compete for students in a crowded marketplace and within a limited geographical region. Most prospective students look for local options to avoid relocating and some continue to work at their existing jobs while they pursue their nursing degrees.
Ameritech’s student outcomes have always been exceptional with some of the highest NCLEX exam pass rates (the RN certification exam) in the state, and over the past 41 years, they’ve earned a well-deserved reputation as one of Utah’s best allied health schools. Aligning their marketing efforts with their positioning as a leader in nursing education would be key.
Strategy
Pay-Per-Click
An audit of Ameritech’s paid search campaigns revealed opportunities to narrow keyword targeting, reallocate budget to top performing campaigns, and expand visibility via new keyword research —all focusing on increasing efficiency while expanding lead flow to the programs that needed it the most.
Search Engine Optimization
Similarly, the approach to SEO on the site would need a complete overhaul with particular attention to on-page optimization. That kicked off a gradual, steady rise in organic traffic and leads that would continue quarter-after-quarter for the past two-and-a-half years.
Conversion Rate Optimization
Reevaluating user experiences across the site combined with extensive customer research formed the basis of a conversion rate optimization campaign that led to what was effectively a redesign of the entire site, followed by incremental, ongoing A/B testing.
Results
In the first year, prospective student leads more than doubled (a 111% year-over-year increase), while advertising budgets either stayed the same or in some cases, decreased. After early, big wins in 2018, focus shifted to incremental improvements to traffic quality and conversion rates.
Since then, we’ve helped Ameritech set new records for leads generated while streamlining spend and reducing cost per lead. Even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, this upward trend has continued to this day. In fact, April and May of 2020 have been the best months in Ameritech’s history as far as lead flow, bringing that increase up to 158% compared to April and May of 2017 — the year before Decoder was brought on board.
