Get Ready to Optimize for Visual Search

Written by The Enrollify Team | 1/21/20 12:12 PM

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT GOOGLE’S DISCOVERY ADS: Discovery Ads were launched in May of 2019, but here are some things you need to know before the ads come out of beta and into the mainstream. These ads come with a new ad format called Discovery carousel ads, giving the user the ability to swipe through a series of images in one ad. Also, Discovery ads are shown on Gmail, YouTube, Google's Display Network of websites, and Google Discover, a pre-search feed of relevant articles related to a user’s Google history. Currently, Discover Ads come with two bidding options: maximize conversions or target CPA.

Why you should care: Discovery Ads are still relatively new, so the cost per click associated with these ads is generally cheaper than ads on Google’s Display Network. This means it's a great opportunity for enrollment marketers to test drive this format and reach an audience of 800 million Google Discover users who aren’t yet being inundated with ads.

WHAT IS MARKETING ATTRIBUTION?: Marketers promote content, events, products, videos, and more across several marketing channels like social media, email, advertising, and landing pages. But just how well are each of those marketing channels performing? Attribution, or the reporting strategy that allows teams to see the impact that marketing made on a purchase or sale, is key to evaluating the success of marketing channels. HubSpot breaks down more than half a dozen attribution models for marketers needing key attribution data in order to measure high vs. low ROI marketing tactics.

Why you should care: The prospective student journey is complex and no one student follows the same pathway. Attribution marketing helps enrollment marketers gain better insight into the success of an open house, program guide, and Google Ads campaign. That results in more efficient spending year after year and the focusing of time and energy on channels that are actually yielding new students.

GET READY TO OPTIMIZE FOR VISUAL SEARCH: You see a picture of a sleek, comfy jacket, but can’t quite remember who sells it or what brand it is. Enter visual search - the ability to snap a picture of something and let a visual search engine direct you to a webpage, product listing, or even blog article with all of the information and product details you need on that jacket. While visual search technology isn’t yet mainstream, it solves a real issue for consumers: that of finding something you saw in real life online.

Why you should care: With visual search, not only will there become a need to optimize content for a visual search engine, there will likely be advertising opportunities too (similar to Google). Imagine a prospective student conducting a visual search with an image of a GRE prep book and seeing your program’s advertisement in the visual search engine’s results page.

Looking for more great content?

Each week, The Enrollify Podcast equips you with insights into how the latest trends in marketing and technology are affecting enrollment managers. Every episode is designed to inspire new, creative ideas for how to optimize the resources you have to generate the results you need.

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