Using Content Marketing to Drive Student Applications

The American Institute of Medical Sciences & Education (AIMS College) is one of the United State’s premiere training colleges for Allied Healthcare professionals. Located in New Jersey, the college draws a diverse mix of students from throughout the US and internationally.

AIMS graduates go on to fill critical technical and administrative jobs in hospitals and medical clinics throughout the United States.

Challenge

Barry Ferguson, Admissions and Marketing Specialist of AIMS College, had 2 major goals:

1. Enhance the online presence and branding of AIMS college
2. Boost online inquires on the AIMS website and thereby increase applications to the college

When we started working with Barry, AIMS College had a very inactive blog and social media profiles. Their inbound website traffic from organic, referral and direct sources was anemic.

AIMS needed a content solution for their blog and social media accounts that would attract prospective students, engage current students, and reactivate alumni. These three groups represent their core customer personas.

Solution

Our team prepared a strategy that addressed all the needs of the client and their personas. The strategy consisted of the following tactics:

1. Blogging 1-2 times per week, with in-depth articles that were deeply researched, authoritative and targeted at keywords that personas used in Google to research allied healthcare training programs.
2. Reaching out to blogs in the healthcare industry and guest blogging 1-2 times per month (check out this example that earned 400+ social shares and 43 links).
3. Posting daily updates of carefully curated content on AIMS Facebook page, Twitter account and Google Plus page.
4. Actively sharing and promoting our team’s original content throughout social media, with special attention given to influential people in the Allied Healthcare industry.

Results

After completing a SEO audit and fixing many on-site issues, we proceed with content marketing beginning from January 2013.

Between February and October 2013, organic search traffic increased by over 150%, and the increase in non-branded organic keyword traffic has risen by over 200%. The following chart from Google Analytics demonstrates this growth: