Content Strategy ROI: A case study

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142 percent increase in sales due to McGovern Method

Study Group is a leading company in the international education industry. It specializes in providing a wide range of educational opportunities for individuals who want to study in English-speaking countries. About 35,000 students from 150 countries benefit from its programs every year.

Almost all of Study Group’s revenues are agent-mediated. In this sense, the website is used primarily to support students find the right agent, rather than in generating direct sales. 

The history of Study Group’s websites reflects the history of website development. “In 1999, we had a corporate site and a site for one of our key academic products, Bellerbys College, with no clear business objectives for either,” states Ricard Giner, Manager for the Study Group Internet Business Department. “Both contained brochure ware only. The contact details were basic, and there was no monitoring of traffic or contact.” 

The challenge

Between 1999 and 2003, the number of Study Group websites and webpages grew substantially. However, the content remained brochure ware. Most of it was directly translated from print with little thought about how best to make it work online. 

Towards the end of 2003, Study Group was facing a number of challenges with its websites:

• No growth in traffic since 2002.
• No growth in enquiries since 2002.
• Broadly flat traffic and visitor behavior metrics.
• Gradual decline in Google ranking for key search terms.
• Increasing competition from other websites in the sector.
• As can be seen from the images, the old homepages for Embassy CES and Bellerbys College were pretty much a copy of what you would see on the front cover of a brochure.

Embassy CES old homepage

Bellerbys College old homepage

Study Group had come to realize that simply placing print content on its website wasn’t a viable web strategy. It quite simply wasn’t delivering a return. As a result of a number of workshops, audits and discussions, it decided to adapt the McGovern Method. 

The actions

Study Group used the McGovern Method to develop a new web strategy, with a focus on killer web content, rather than filler print content. This strategy needed to achieve the following key objectives:

1. To increase the number of potential students visiting its websites.
2. To increase the number of potential students returning to the website, as research indicated that the decision to take a Study Group course was made over a period of time.
3. To increase the page views per visitor so that visitors would be better informed when they made an inquiry.
4. To increase the quality of students’ enquiries.
5. To ensure that the cost of the exercise was proportional to the additional revenue generated by the websites.
6. To ensure that the websites delivered a quantifiable increase in sales.

The key action points that the McGovern Method proposed were as follows:

1. Better define the target reader for each website.
2. Focus on the killer content for the target readers and get rid of the filler content. (Write web content, not print content.)
3. Focus on the core tasks that readers came to the website to complete, and the carewords that they pursued these tasks with.
4. Improve the publishing processes. Start commissioning and scheduling content creation. Put proper editing and review processes in place. Motivate and reward those who edit and write content.
5. Create content that improves the chances of being found in the first page of major search engines. Have an ongoing strategy to acquire new links from third parties.

The following section outlines how Study Group went about these tasks.

Define target readers

• Carried out market analysis
• Consulted with market specialists
• Asked readers (students) what they wanted
• Examined successful competitor websites

Define killer content

• Distinguished clearly between the “killer” and the “filler”.
• Structured publication plan around what students want to see and need to see, rather than what Study Group want to give them.

Tasks and carewords

• Found that what students care about most is hearing the stories of other students.
• Wrote for the students, rather than at them, and where possible got students to write content that recounted their experience of studying with Study Group.
• Overhauled classification entirely to create a smaller set of classifications that were careword-focused.

Improve publishing process

• Appointed a fulltime web editor and writers who had web writing as part of their job profile. (This addressed motivation and reward.)
• Turned web publishing into a more rigorous discipline with deadlines and a defined editing process.
• Separated the print publishing process from the web publishing process.
• Rewrote all web content based on web writing rules as articulated by the killer web content approach.
• Gave web writing seminars to all those involved in the web process.

Get found in search

• Active strategy to research and go after appropriate third party links.
• Wrote all page titles and other relevant metadata from the point of view of how students searched.
• Made sure that navigation and all other links were coherent and consistent throughout the websites.

The results

Here are the new homepages for Embassy CES and Bellerbys College that were subsequently launched.

Embassy CES 2005 homepage

Bellerbys College 2005 homepage

Study Group found that the real killer web content was carefully crafted student stories. Potential students often found themselves in a situation where they would be leaving home for the first time for a prolonged period. In an uncertain world, they needed to know that they would fit it, and that they would be comfortable and safe in their new surroundings.

Seeing a face of a student—and better still a face of a student of their own nationality—on the homepage of the Study Group was a great start. However, it was much more than a face. This wasn’t some face from a brochure, some nameless student that might have attended a course many years ago. This was a face and a name of a student who was attending a Study Group course now. And they were telling it like it was, in their own words. 

To create such killer web content on a consistent basis, Study Group has started a “Student Club” initiative. According to Ricard Giner, “this will offer a rich online experience tailored to the needs of individuals wishing to study abroad, and publishing students’ own perspectives on the study abroad experience via forums, community-style web environments, testimonials, quizzes, questionnaires, competitions and “rate the school”-type pages.”

Embassyces.com and Bellerbys.com were the first two Study Group websites to implement the McGovern Method. Year-on-year, here are some of the measurable outcomes (as at January 2005):

Embassyces.com

1. From the 10th page to the 1st page of search results—and often the 1st result—for many important carewords
2. Unique visitors up 68 percent
3. Visits up 172 percent
4. Page views up 83 percent
5. Returning visitors up 127 percent
6. Unique enquirers up 47 percent
7. Sales up 37 percent

Bellerbys.com

1. From the 10th page to the 1st page of search results—and quite often the very first result—for many important carewords
2. Unique visitors up 84 percent
3. Visits up 208 percent
4. Page views up 129 percent
5. Returning visitors up 194 percent
6. Unique enquirers (remarkably) down 10 percent
7. ... but sales up 142 percent

By focusing on the killer rather than the filler content, Study Group were able to get more qualified enquires coming through. For Bellerbys, while the number of unique enquires actually dropped by 10 percent, the sales went up by 142 percent. Fewer tire kickers, less cost of sales, more profit. That’s what killer web content is about.

The ranking for important Study Group carewords in major search engines has also improved substantially. “For key search phrases such as "English schools in London" or "English courses in Oxford" in the market languages that matter, such as Italian, Spanish or Japanese, we have gone from being over 100 in the rank (i.e. ten pages in) to being in the top ten (i.e. in the first page), and in many cases first,” Ricard Giner states.

“I think these figures speak for themselves,” Mr. Giner continues. “We have carried out almost no promotion, but have rather focused almost entirely on Gerry McGovern’s advice. We can safely attribute these significant improvements in our key metrics and the sales growth to the McGovern approach to web content publication.”