Digital marketing strategies for online education companies: Phlearn teams up with AdHawk
Online education comes in many forms. Whether it’s online college courses, downloadable eBooks, language learning apps, or even YouTube tutorials, education is going digital.
In 2011, Aaron Nance began posting Photoshop tutorials to YouTube. Seven years later, his online education company Phlearn has amassed one of the largest audiences of design-focused learners on the web.
When it came to marketing premium course material, though, Aaron and Phlearn CEO Seth Kravitz struggled to monetize their online courses after years of producing professional-grade free content. The Phlearn team turned to Facebook Ads and Google AdWords to promote their paid Photoshop courses online.
Aaron, Seth, and his team of Photoshop professionals had no shortage of jaw-dropping creative assets, but when it came to driving returns, they ran into a couple of major issues. “We found ourselves constantly struggling to test and create the necessary amount of Facebook ad variations needed to get the lowest CPCs and highest CTRs” Seth admits.
Professional-grade ad creatives aren’t enough
Many advertisers believe an eye-catching creative image and clear offer are all you need to have success on Facebook and Google. But for Seth and Phlearn, “Managing everything manually was a painful process.” They struggled to find out what was truly working.
Seth read about “savvy marketers automating much of their bidding and their ad copy testing, all while driving incredibly low cost traffic” which is when he realized they were doing something “very wrong.”
Phlearn wanted to test their ads, drive more traffic, and most importantly, spend less time doing it.
Achieving a 7x return with AdHawk managed services
Seth needed a combination of automated ad optimization and hands-on support from marketing professionals who could help build a solid foundation for success. After a quick onboarding phone call, the AdHawk Algorithm immediately started processing Phlearn’s historical ad data while a dedicated account manager brainstormed ad strategy, structured campaigns, and confirmed conversion tracking was running properly.
Since integrating AdHawk into their digital advertising strategy, Phlearn’s Facebook retargeting campaigns have been producing a “ridiculous” five to seven times return on ad spend leading to new and wider audiences and more students in the program. Phlearn’s uptick in performance is proof of AdHawk’s ability to greatly improve campaign performance while reducing the man hours required to operate a full Adwords or Facebook campaign.
We wanted to have our cake and eat it too. I didn’t think that was possible until I saw AdHawk and their PRO services, so I figured it had to be worth a try.
But AdHawk is doing much more than just converting past website visitors for Phlearn. “AdHawk is allowing us to reach a much broader audience on Facebook and helping us capture even more Google traffic we might have missed otherwise,” Seth says. “We are expanding beyond our existing customer base and reaching new customers consistently.”
For Seth, it’s the “phenomenal performance and quality of service” that sets AdHawk apart from the other tools out there to manage PPC ads. He now has 15 hours of his week back, and a newfound understanding of how to grow his business through paid advertising.
