About Alliance University
Alliance University is a private university established in Karnataka State by ACT No. 34 of year 2010 and is recognized by University Grants Commission (UGC), New Delhi. Started off as Alliance Business Academy in 2001 and gradually stepping towards becoming a university with School of business as its flagship unit.
Currently it offers a wide variety of courses under various schools; Alliance School of Business (MBA, BBA, B.Com), Alliance College of Engineering and Design (B.Tech in seven specialisations), Alliance School of Law (Undergraduate programmes) and Alliance School of Performing Arts (Certificates in various dance forms). With 3 campuses in Bangalore, Karnataka, it is gaining wide range of popularity and creating a strong brand in the academia world.
Alliance University’s Business Objectives
The prime objective of adopting advanced Digital Media Marketing was to generate quality leads with the best Cost per Lead (CPC). The usage of Digital media was prevalent but not much importance was given to it earlier. Leads which are generated through the offline mode (education fairs, offline print media, walk-ins, travelling to locations etc.), the ratio of quality leads gets low and investment is high on each lead. So apart from quality leads the next motive was to bring down the marketing budget. From an overall Business point that economics makes more sense.
Strategy adopted by Alliance University
Alliance University initiated a new campaign structure and revised their old marketing strategy to improve the lead numbers of prospective students. This time the focus was given more on Remarketing Campaign. Top performing placement sites were obtained in the first few months and later they used them as managed placements.
The tools which they used for Digital Marketing activities were:
- Search Network
- Display Ads
- Display Network
- Remarketing through social media
- Social Media Marketing
- Google AdWords
- Affiliate marketing- SEO, PPC, Email marketing and display advertising
They started monitoring their Keywords and Adwords more closely. Non-performing keywords and ads were paused. Non-performing campaigns were paused as well. Proper bids were maintained in order to improve the search visibility and leads count. Simultaneously they also laid more stress on display ads than newspaper/ print ads.
Results Achieved by Alliance University
Following the above pattern consistently for six to eight months, below given tables show the numbers achieved by Alliance University:
Table 1.1
Campaign | Impressions | Clicks | CTR | Avg. CPC | Leads |
Alliance – Remarketing | 11,040,082 | 25,638 | 0.23% | 29.54 | 1164 |
MBA – Display-June16th | 2,942,101 | 10,985 | 0.37% | 21.32 | 304 |
Note: Figures shared by the in-house marketing team
Table 1.2
Tools | % of Lead contribution |
Search Network | 15% of the leads |
Display Ads | 45% of the leads |
Display Network | 10% of the leads |
Remarketing | 15% of the leads |
Google AdWords | 15% of the leads |
Note: Figures shared by the in-house marketing team
- Further to above figures, in terms of leads and Admissions there was a notable increment of 15% than the previous marketing campaigns.
Learnings from the above Digital Marketing strategies adopted by Alliance University
- Experimenting is the key: There are ample options and tools within Digital Marketing arena. Proper utilisation of them will produce definite positive results or would definitely help in achieving the goals been set. For example if you notice in the above case, the marketing team of Alliance University had adopted 7 tools to achieve their set targets. It would help in creating a backup, if one does not work the other might and so on.
- Continuously monitoring the activity: Once the activity is up and live, we have to continuously monitor the process. The tools would not do the trick without a physical monitoring. The tools have to be reviewed at equal intervals; which one is performing and which is not. This would help in achieving the set targets. For ex- in the above example they closely monitored the AD word campaigns. They had paused the non-performing ads and keywords, began new campaigns and new ads.
- Make analytics your friend: Analytics has to be strong for the entire Digital marketing strategy. In order to see which part/ element of campaign is contributing how much towards achieving the set targets. The team has to know what figures should be analysed, that should be one of the set criteria right from the beginning of the campaign.
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Perseverance: The digital marketing campaign would not do the magic right from day 1. The marketing team would have to show patience and along with continuously experimenting and closely monitoring would gradually show positive signs. For ex- if you notice the marketing team at Alliance University worked on campaigns for 6-8 months and eventually it showed a positive result.
Image Credits: Alliance University