Challenge
Career Treks was a new career education program that introduced rising college seniors to regional employers during summer road trips. With a marketing launch near spring break, the venture only had one chance to sign up a critical mass of students to fill its buses and hit break-even.
Approach
The company used Webtrends software to track and analyze traffic on its website, the primary channel for registration. Empirical Path consultants helped management adjust site design, marketing, and PR efforts on the fly.
For example, each page of the student section of CareerTreks.com was intended to encourage completion of a rigorous online application form. Empirical Path ranked each informational page on its ability not only to drive students to the application form, but to influence submission of an application. A program map page was revealed to be a hindrance, driving a high level of site exits, so Career Treks eliminated the page to streamline the navigation. On the other hand, the circular navigation pattern of some visitors indicated a need for a Frequently Asked Questions page and more visible Contact Us options.
Empirical Path steered the firm’s guerrilla media relations efforts around Webtrends geographic statistics, especially when they revealed that Midwestern students had the greatest interest in a program that connected them to jobs in the East. College newspapers in the region received a press release noting the trend. We also calculated the depth of site visits from various colleges in order to influence Career Treks’ on-campus media buying decisions.
Similarly, referring URL data helped Empirical Path optimize an online media buy with Facebook: each Facebook college was represented with its own URL, revealing that Indiana University students had a disproportionate response to ads while University of North Carolina students couldn’t have cared less. Career Treks adjusted the targeted schools mid-way through the campaign to take advantage of these findings.
Results
Careful analysis of site traffic data helped Career Treks shift its focus from the schools and regions that it expected to be most receptive, to those that had the greatest interest in the program’s training and connections with recruiters.
See capsules of other Campaign Measurement or Service sector projects.
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