Welcome to part one of a three-part series on digital advertising trends. It’s a new year, which means new marketplace data. We recently released our survey of Inbound Marketing Trends during a presentation at the annual Omni Update User Training Conference and at our Lunch and Learn event in Denver. This past month, several other industry surveys have also been released, including a report on digital advertising benchmarks from Keypath Education. This blog series will provide our thoughts on the trends highlighted in this study and conclude with industry benchmarks we have observed for 2015.

This study observed PPC metrics across several programs, including click-through-rate (how often an ad was clicked) and cost per lead (the cost of a prospect inquiring about a program on a landing page). Perhaps the most striking trend that emerged from this data was how suitable niche academic programs are for search engine marketing. The more common programs observed in this study tended to have greater difficulty generating healthy click-through rates. For example, Keypath found click-through rates for truck driver/CDL licenses to be three times that of marketing degrees (2.24% vs. 0.67%). Options for where and how to earn a marketing degree are far more widespread, so naturally click-through was much lower. We have noticed a similar correlation between click-through rate and program specialization with our partners.

Highly specialized programs also saw lower costs per inquiry in this study. Again, the most jarring example is the drastically lower cost per inquiry for a truck driver/CDL license compared to more generic programs. Most of our clients don’t necessarily have this program, so we have no benchmark data to corroborate this finding directly. However, we have seen a similar trend with certificate programs for business colleges like Loyola University in Chicago that offer more specialized and condensed curricula.

Due to lower competition and a higher intent to enroll, certificates and similar types of niche programs can experience tremendous ROI from search engine marketing. As the trend in higher education moves towards offering more customized curricula and abbreviated courses, search engine marketing will become an increasingly important tool to consider when trying to reach potential students.

Are you interested in learning more about trends in digital advertising and how it can benefit your inquiry, application and matriculated student pool? Join us for our upcoming webinar Digital Advertising: Ask Us Anything on March 31st at 2 PM EST.