Archive: How Google Ads helped an online course creator sell out of seats in her new course (2020)

As a compassionate therapist deeply committed to helping others, Spring Berriman is no stranger to teaching. In 2020, together with her business partner Shelley Whitehouse, she designed a specialized online course for candidates preparing to sit the CRPO (College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario) entrance exam.

Having taken the exam herself, she was well aware of the procedures, requirements and demands of the exam. She wanted to offer assistance to other candidates by providing an informative and supportive small-group learning environment. She had full confidence in the course content but lacked qualified leads to fill the course seats. So she decided to turn to Google Ads with SMM Headquarters’ help.

Challenge: Quickly Reach and Convert a Highly Specific Target Audience Preparing to Sit the CRPO Exam

The goal

Spring wanted to find new leads for her course and sell more seats for both time slots available. We had a limited amount of time and a very conservative budget to work with.

WILL WE REACH PEOPLE IN TIME?

Google Ads are the perfect solution for reaching highly specialized audiences who are actively searching for something online. In this case, however, the monthly search volumes were extremely low given how niche the offering and the industry itself were.

WILL WE REACH PEOPLE AT A REASONABLE COST?

Google Ads can be extremely effective for projects with time constraints. Blitz ad campaigns concentrate the ad budget and reach more people more quickly. However, given the low search volumes, we had little data on potential costs for relevant keywords.

Solution: A Targeted Google Search Ad Campaign with Carefully Selected Keywords and Laser-Sharp Copy

We converted about 90% of leads into sales for the class.

Spring Berriman

Registered Psychotherapist, The Beach Psychotherapy

KEYWORDS WERE KEY

SMM Headquarters identified the keywords that struck the right balance between being relevant to the target audience and having enough search volume for the ads to be shown. This meant targeting people who were looking for the CRPO exam generally and not study tips specifically as we were hoping to capture a highly specific subset of all psychotherapists familiar with CRPO.

A CAUTIOUS APPROACH TO BUDGETING

SMM Headquarters recommended a moderately conservative daily budget of $10 to be able to capture most of the relevant search queries yet keep the spend in check in case the cost per click proved to be higher than expected. We were ready to adjust the budget as needed, but in the end, the starting spend was the one we continued with throughout the campaign.

a logical campaign structure

The campaign included one ad group with 5 highly specific keywords with the broad match type to account for any related searches. The group contained two ads, each highlighting a different selling point of Spring’s course.

Careful keyword research and optimization of the ad copy and the landing page content was key in maximizing the reach and impact of the campaign.

Results: A Sold-Out Course with 90% of Traffic Converted into Leads

great metrics

In just three weeks, the campaign:

• Accumulated over 1600 impressions and received 192 clicks
• Had an average CTR of 12.7%
• Maintained the Quality Score of the keywords between 7/10 and 10/10
• Maintained the Landing Page Experience at Above Average across the board

tangible Results

The real value of the campaign, of course, lied not in the impressive metrics, but in actual conversions of potential leads into students.

The campaign:

• Brought in over 50 leads, well over the number of available spots in the course.
• Resulted in the course being completely sold out in advance of its start date.

Google Ads was the perfect fit for promoting this very niche offering. Spring was extremely happy with the result… and so were we!