Building on the previous post on PPC campaigns in higher ed, I wanted to talk a bit more about my disdain PPC. Not so much as a practice, since I understand its use for collecting leads. But about the importance it puts on such a limited web presence.

I’m not sure about others, but our web team is rather small. Two people in the communications office to be exact. When it comes to really being able to build out pages, that narrows it down to one. When that person is left to build out pages for such specific information gathering campaigns, it kind of irks me. Here’s why: the same attention is not paid to the rest of the content on the web.

I’m sure we all agree that more engaged users come through organic search. In my mind, this is because people that come to our site searched and found that we actually HAVE the content they are looking for. Or at least have pages that rank for it. Now for landing pages, people come in and bounce out. They may fill out a form, which was the goal, but do they stay and find out more on their own? Shouldnt this be the true measure of if they are interested in us or just the subject?

Point being, my confusion around leads: leads are great, applications are great, but if they dont translate into enrolled, retained students, whats the point? If someones not really interested in you, are you spending money for leads that never blossom into graduates?