Business Challenge
Digital content is becoming more and more prominent in our day-to-day lives. As movies, music, software, images and other digital content become easier to find and use, the line between ethical and unethical use can become blurred. This has become an important issue, especially for students who may not be aware of the creative rights associated with digital content and the ways they can be violated.
In response to this, Microsoft launched the Digital Citizenship and Creative Content program to provide teachers and educators with a resource to teach students about the complex issues surrounding creative rights. The curriculum includes comprehensive lesson plans, downloadable reproducible materials and classroom-based assessments. But how to let teachers know that this free program is available, and get them to adopt the curriculum?
Search Market Challenge
The program needed to be marketed expertly online to reach the target demographic as well as meet the tight goals set forth by the DCCC group. The program had already been marketed through email and direct marketing campaigns to drive visitors to the DigitalCitizenshipEd.com site. Microsoft’s DCCC group brought in Point It to drive acquisitions through the paid search channel.
Solution
The Point It team started the program targeting a wide sweep of keywords on Google’s search network. The campaign was targeting such a niche audience, however, that generating clicks was a challenge. It was time to increase the program’s reach.
Expansive testing on Yahoo and Bing revealed that Yahoo’s more consumer-focused user base was not producing the desired results. Now focused on Google and Bing, Point It looked for other areas of traffic.
Since the target audience was so specific, Point It expanded the existing Google campaign to include the Content network of contextual advertising. Rather than allowing AdWords to auto-match to web content, Point It targeted specific sites aimed at teachers who were researching lesson planning.
Results
To date, over 2,000 educators have seized the opportunity to teach youth about digital content and copyright. The team has taken the program from a tiny, text-only effort to a fully functioning, multi-channel and multimedia campaign. The concept of perpetual testing and striving for further excellence is a lasting one.
Over a 6 month period:
- Conversion rate improved from 3.41% to 13.14%, a difference of 285.3%
- Cost per conversion decreased from $31.80 to $8.19, a difference of -74.2%
- Total conversions for the week improved from 3 to 137, a difference of 4600%
