Automotive Training School SEM Case Study

Company Overview

The automotive training school specializes in preparing students for a career as an Automotive Finance and Insurance Manager or Service Advisor.  Their target market consists of current automotive professionals and individuals ready transition to a new career.

Since the company’s inception, all marketing dollars were spent on print advertising.  These ads were placed in local newspapers, job guides, and magazines in the metropolitan Phoenix and Tucson areas.  Due to the narrow focus, these markets quickly became saturated.  In September of 2006, the decision was made to expand beyond the Arizona market.  To reach a wider customer base in an economical manner, The school implemented its first Internet marketing campaign.  This campaign was initially developed and managed by internal IT personnel.  Upon the loss of this employee, the school outsourced the project to Vista Web Media.
In January of 2007, Vista Web Media was tasked to:

1. Increase the number of leads for the sales team.
2. Increase the number of leads originating from outside of Arizona.

The methodology for implementation was left to VWM’s discretion with a monthly budget allocated for Pay Per Click expenditures and banner/link purchases.  The school’s management determined that the core metric for evaluating performance would be the number of information form submissions.  This offered easy tracking and complete transparency, using existing statistic software running on the website as well as tracking techniques implemented by Vista Web Media. 

Internet Marketing Strategy Prior to January 2007

As mentioned previously, the entire Internet marketing campaign and website design was developed and managed in-house.  In September of 2006, an active SEO campaign began.  This campaign consisted of both organic and Pay Per Click campaigns on Google, ASK, and Yahoo. 

The primary strategy of the organic campaign was to submit the website to all major search engines and various search engine submission websites.  The net effect was a 116% increase in unique visitors between September and October.

Unfortunately, the majority of the increase was a result of “bots” or other search engines/scripts visiting the site as a result of the daily submissions.

Overall, the campaign’s results were mixed. In October and November, requests for information submissions were lower than they were prior to the campaign.  December of 2006 netted the highest number of information form submissions at 16.  The second highest form submission month occurred in July, two months prior to the SEO campaign.  

Earlier in the year, they allocated funds for PPC marketing on Google, Yahoo, and Ask.  Data for Ask and Yahoo is incomplete for 2006, so Google’s results, which account for more than half of the PPC spent, will be used for this evaluation.  Between April and December, the cost per click increased by 108.75%. During that same period, information form submissions rose 61%.

In December, the organic SEO campaign ended with the loss of the internal employee.  In January 2007, Vista Web Media was secured to take over the campaign.

Initial Evaluation of the School’s Internet Marketing Campaign

The administration faced a number of challenges when Vista Web Media took control of their search engine marketing campaign.  Their website was not initially designed with solid search engine-friendly principles.  Some of the challenges included:

1. Pages and copy lacked keyword focus.
2. The web site was coded inefficiently, resulting in large page size and sub-optimal ratio of code to text.
3. Images were not optimized for the web.  Some page elements exceed 100K, which contributed to the overall load time.  This led to an increase in abandonment rates.
4. Copy was presented as an image instead of text, which effectively made the content of entire pages invisible to search engines.
5. URL’s and file naming conventions were not optimized.
6. None of the company’s press releases or student testimonials were visible to the search engines, due to dynamically generated pages utilizing JavaScript linking.
7. A large number of low-quality back links remained from the previous SEO campaign; there were also very few high-quality links from industry relevant sites.

Additionally, the Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns were not properly developed or maintained.  This caused the monthly increase in PPC costs.  However, these costs did not translate into a proportional increase in information form submissions.  Every keyword that was bid upon used the same generic sales text.  The lack of focus on a specific demographic, coupled with the generalized keywords led to a spike in impressions, but very few clicks.  Lower click through rates caused the ads to fall in the rankings.  In order to compensate for the falling rank, the bid per click was increased. 

Vista Web Media’s Solution

To get them back on track with their Internet marketing campaigns, drastic action was needed to:

1. Reduce PPC costs while maintaining top ranking.
2. Provide a solid foundation upon which to build an organic search campaign. 
3. Generate leads for the sales team that included out-of-state students.

The first step VWM took was to interview key sales staff in order to understand the school’s target market.  Once that was identified, VWM conducted keyword research and mapped a strategy to specifically target this audience. 

Next, the website had to be modified to make it search engine friendly, as well as optimized to move visitors to the Request for Information form or the Enrollment Application.  Along with addressing these technical problems, the navigational structure of the site was modified, ensuring visitors were no more than 1 click away from contact information or 2 clicks away from the information submission form.  

Once the most pressing site modifications were complete, the Google, Ask, and Yahoo PPC campaigns were addressed.  Since the school offers two distinctly different classes, the generic ads were replaced with course-specific ad copy, and then matched to the appropriate keywords developed during the research phase.  

In addition to new ads, landing pages were created for each keyword grouping in order to further refine the sales pitch.  Due to a number of factors, such as click through rate and landing page quality, the cost for all three campaigns dropped while maintaining top position in the rankings.  In December of 2006, the average cost per click for the Google campaign was $1.67.  In January 2007, that cost dropped to $1.02 and steadily lowered to $.85 per click. 

Throughout the time that VWM managed the PPC campaigns, the position of the ads remained the same and the number of clicks increased 63.24%.

Organic search engine optimization was performed at the same time as the Pay Per Click optimization.  VWM aggressively pursued link trades, generated one way links, and developed the school’s social media presence.  To take advantage of social media and the Web 2.0 trend, VWM developed a newsletter and a subsequent blog that acts as a keyword-rich archive of the school’s original research.  

The results of the organic search engine optimization were apparent in just 4 months.  Their website ranked in Google’s top 10 for all targeted phrases.  More than half of those rankings are in the top 5 spots.  The Yahoo optimization campaign was equally successful.

The result of Vista Web Media’s management of the SEM campaign has resulted in a 716.67% increase in the core metric of information form submissions since January of 2007.

The number of unique visitors grew by 98.3% from January 1st through August 31st, with as many as 83% originating from outside of Arizona. 

Conclusion

With the help of Vista Web Media, the school increased the traffic to its web site by 98.3% over a period of 8 months.  In addition to the increased volume of traffic, the quality of traffic improved as well.  This is reflected in the 716% increase in requests for information form submissions.  At the same time, Pay Per Click costs were reduced and the number of clicks generated increased. 
To date, the school’s sales staff has more leads on a monthly basis than it has had in the history of the company.

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