Client Success Story
Content Marketing
Challenge
Amidst growing interest in “green” and sustainable careers, Unity College (now Unity Environmental University) wanted to reach potential students at the earliest stage in their buyer’s journey. The goal was to capture the growing demand for sustainable career content by addressing common questions posed through Search, particularly those that emphasized work with animals. Demand for such career-specific content was not being met by competitors, leaving the client an opportunity to become the definitive resource for high-level queries.
Solution
Augurian worked collaboratively with the client to develop a robust content marketing campaign delivering authoritative, evergreen content designed to capture potential students high in the marketing funnel. Initial efforts were aimed at filling the gaps in career-specific content. Career guides for specific jobs, including the degrees they required, led to gradual improvements in keyword ranking over time.
500+
Relevant Keywords
95%
Traffic Attributable To SEO
Pillar page
Augurian subsequently recognized the need for a pillar page to connect the established portfolio of career guides in a comprehensive list, complete with descriptions and internal links. Internal linking served the dual purpose of improving reader experience and transferring SEO equity to boost rankings on linked pages.
This pillar page was larger in scope, and designed to drive potential students through to established content and ultimately push them further down the marketing funnel. The content marketing team developed a winning playbook through research into previous successes and presented this plan to the client. With all stakeholders on board, the page was developed and launched.
The Results
From the start, the career guide hub article began ranking well for over 500 relevant keywords. Since then, this post has continued to perform exceptionally well, with 95% of its traffic attributable to SEO.
Other Metrics Include:
- $175,650 of conversion value, where the post played any part in a potential student’s interaction
- 90% of conversions happening within 7 days of first clicking on the post, and 75% of conversions happening on the same day as the first visit.
- Estimated cost-per-click value of $15,000.
- 27% of potential students who first interacted with the site through this post went on to explore the college further through internal links.
- 56,669 total pageviews in under six months, and 48,382 total visits.
In September 2020, following the execution of this content marketing plan, Unity Environmental University (at the time, Unity College) reported its largest-ever enrollment. Even as COVID-19 has rocked the world of higher education, this client has continued to grow, thanks in part to its collaboration with Augurian.
The recipe for success isn’t, on the surface, complicated. Find out what content buyers want and need at each stage of their journey and develop a strategy to reach them every step of the way. Then, watch the numbers go up; it’s almost deceptively simple. Of course, in practice, there’s an enormous amount of planning and work required.
Augurian is particularly proud of the shared ownership between all stakeholders for this case, as well as the highly successful execution of well-thought-out strategy. The client came to the table with a clear goal, to increase engagement and conversion through organic search. Throughout the collaboration a rising interest in animal-aligned careers was observed, and that interest was captured first through career-specific content clusters, then ultimately through a perfectly executed pillar page.
The process wasn’t without its hiccups. Shortly after launching, the client’s website migration led to the post having to be re-launched and start again from square one. In a testament to the quality of both strategy and content, the post once again ranked high from day one. Though the migration made it impossible to control every aspect of the user experience, that’s proven to be no barrier to conversion or click-through rates.