In a production environment, even the best-planned projects being executed through the most streamlined of teams can make mistakes. Here’s a story about how an elite digital marketing team made a small error that resulted in outstanding results for a small private school and a fresh look at location targeting for me personally.
Background:
I was working with a private school client who was very particular about how they ran their digital marketing campaigns. Rightfully so as their school was located in a highly competitive area where even a commute of a handful of miles could be hours in the car. They had done a ton of work to try and target their best-fit students. This included huge keyword lists that I thought were way too long and a location-targeting strategy that relied completely on zip code targeting.
During the early stages of our working relationship, I suggested whittling down the keyword lists (both negative and positive) and opening up location targeting by switching to radius targeting rather than zip code targeting. I reasoned that we would be able to net more clicks, and cheaper if we opened up who we were serving ads to. The client though, maintained that even if clicks became highly expensive they were hoping that since the targeting was so robust, only best-fit families would be served our ads. Theoretically, both of us were right but since the client is the ultimate shot-caller, we launched campaigns according to their specification.
The Mess Up:
For several months, we ran campaigns as per the client’s instructions and didn’t veer away from their tactical playbook too much. The results were mediocre. During a refresh of their campaigns that included our highest-performing assets and a new Call-To-Action, an error occurred during the final inputting stage of our campaigns. We didn’t use zip code targeting and instead shifted to a radius that encompassed all of the zip codes that the client wanted to use. Now, this should have been avoided in the first place as the client profile clearly stated that we would only be using zip code targeting and then the quality control team should have caught it after it had been done, but as I said earlier – even the best teams make mistakes.
The Results of our “Mess Up”:
A few days after launch I was checking in on how the campaigns were doing, mostly to make sure they had exited the learning phase and were being served at appropriate volumes within the approved budget. Then something caught my eye. Our Cost per Click (CPC) had taken a tremendous nose dive and there was a noticeable uptick in Click thru Rate (CTR)! Each click was costing us half of what they were previously. This was a huge positive change. I needed to find out what caused this so I immediately dove deep into the campaigns to find out what was different and I quickly found that the only difference was that in our previous campaigns, we were using zip code targeting and in the new campaigns we had switched to radius targeting.
Hoping the client wouldn’t be too upset with us, I notified them of the mistake and also included several screenshots and data points that showed how much of a performance improvement we were enjoying due to this mistake.
The client wasn’t upset. Instead, they were happy that performance had increased so drastically and asked that we use radius targeting for all campaigns moving forward. As far as what happened with my own team, we addressed the shortcomings in our workflow and also explained that it ended up being a “happy mistake”. We then made sure that radius targeting was a part of our stock playbook when it came to setting up location targeting moving forward. I’ve been told that you can’t just do a good thing once, you have to be able to recognize that a good thing is happening, find out why it’s happening, and then make it the new norm moving forward.
Why is Radius Targeting Superior to Zip Code Targeting?
Do you know how often zip codes are changed? Well according to the USPS, 1 in every 20 zip codes changes annually and zip code boundaries are being changed constantly. So much so that in 2000 the U.S. Census Bureau stopped using zip codes for their data collection purposes. Doesn’t seem like a very reliable targeting source for a private or independent school who is primarily concerned with hyperlocal advertising, does it?
Beyond the actual inconsistencies of zip codes themselves. The data that is available to our digital advertising platforms can be inconsistent and easily outdated since the source data (the zip codes themselves) are constantly changing. When a mile could make a difference, I would definitely suggest sticking to radius location targeting across all platforms.
Digital marketers have had their gripes about zip code targeting for years and you may well know this, but now you have some scientific evidence to back it.
What else did we learn?
“Failure is success in progress” – Albert Einstein.
Organizationally, this was a great practice in patience. I was perturbed that we had missed this error when building our campaigns but the results were extraordinary and ultimately, this failure was a huge net positive. It’s important as a marketing leader to sometimes just take a deep breath, let go, and objectively judge results.
Private School marketers can often get too focused on geographic location. The client’s justification for not spreading out targeting was because the school was “too far to drive to”. This sort of self-disqualification can be a bit misguided. Your school may be right on the route that parents take to work. This would make your location perfect for them. The school who’s the subject of this blog continued to expand their location targeting and now they recruit from 23 different cities and are experiencing all-time highs in enrollment. So if you’ve ever said “We’ll never get enrollment from that area” you may want to rethink it and run some experimental ads in those areas. Digital marketing is a great way to gain cheap market research. A few hundred dollars spent over the span of a month can tell you if the area you’re targeting is responding to your messaging. If you’re getting good traction in this new area with your ads, you can assume interest is high. If your ads fall flat, you can say “Hey, I was right!” and move on. Good digital marketing is ultimately a verification of your hypothesis.
A huge amount of trust was gained from the client after this mistake was brought to their attention. They were gracious about our failure and excited about the results. Trust is key in any relationship and the trust we had earned by being transparent about our mistakes and our results strengthened the relationship overall. I mentioned that the keyword lists were too long in our initial campaigns. Once this location targeting shift occurred, the client let us whittle down their keyword lists which resulted in better-performing ads. This was a change that we may not have been able to make if not for the change in location targeting acting as a catalyst for improvement.
I hope that this story helps you in your digital marketing tactics. I’ve made the “happy mistake” for you so you don’t have to! If you have questions or would like to discuss how Mind Meld Marketing can help your school, don’t hesitate to reach out to me at Jeremy@mmmarketing.io.