Solid Digital’s Digital Growth Marketing program is a consulting service that uses a proprietary Digital Value index, measuring the performance of digital marketing efforts. It was created to help marketing teams engage and grow their teams, audience and leads over time. When Calbright reached the highest possible Digital Growth score, it showed their dedication—and the impact from their marketing growth translated into student enrollment growth and success.
We’ll outline how the Digital Growth marketing program helped Calbright College reach its full potential by meeting every target across four key metrics.
Understanding Digital Growth
In order to understand the success Calbright achieved, it’s vital to understand Solid Digital’s Digital Growth Marketing program in detail.
Metrics Overview
There are four metrics by which clients’ Digital Values are measured:
- Number of pieces of content published each month
- Number of monthly organic website visitors
- Number of keywords ranking in the top 20
- Number of online conversions
Each of these four metrics can be worth up to 10 points. So, the maximum Digital Value that can be achieved is 40 points.
Calbright’s Achievement
By using these four metrics, Calbright and Solid Digital developed a vision and strategy together for digital efforts, and goal tracking, measurement, and actions all became habits. When Calbright reached a Digital Value of 40—a maximum for the program—it showed optimal performance across each metric.
Getting to Maximum Digital Value
Calbright College’s achievement didn’t happen in a matter of days or weeks, though sustained growth over a period of time is its own kind of success. Over the course of two years, there were challenges to overcome before they could max out their marketing success through a higher Digital Value. Calbright was new—in fact a free online community college was a brand-new idea. In order to change the lives of more adult learners, they had to actually reach more of their target audience.
Starting Point
When Calbright began its Digital Growth journey in May 2022, its Digital Value was 11 (out of 40). Calbright College was just coming on the scene, and with a brand new website, maintaining momentum was important to their overall growth strategy.
In May 2022, Calbright began with a relatively strong month, but with some room to grow:
- 8 pieces of content published per month
- 2,535 monthly organic web visitors
- 14 keywords ranking in the top 20
- 1,857 conversions on their website
Progress Over Time
Slowly and steadily, Calbright stuck with the strategy and gained an average of 1.3 Digital Value points month-over-month. One year after starting, Calbright had hit a few of its goals, producing 12 content pieces on their website, and obtaining:
- 5,917 organic website visitors
- 18 keywords ranking in the top 20
- 5,387 online conversions
This effort took their 2,500 organic visitors to 6,000 in one year, and doubled their keyword rankings. Hitting these metrics more than doubled their Digital Value to 26.7. Using paid search allowed them to boost their conversions as well. That level of growth in just 12 months gave our team a hint at what was yet to come. And sure enough: they reached a maxed-out Digital Value of 40 one year later, by meeting or far exceeding the set metric goals.
Key Digital Marketing Strategies for Success
The impact of consistency and following a clear objective put together by both teams was key for Calbright’s boosted Digital Value. More specifically:
Consistent content creation – By creating 10+ new pieces of content each month and adding website new pages such as faculty bios, Calbright was able to pump up their SEO power.
Leveraging the .edu domain – Going from a .org to a .edu helped with organic traffic and keyword rankings—Google sees .edu domains as more trustworthy and Calbright’s rankings reaped the benefits. In addition to focusing and prioritizing keywords that were close to ranking in the top 20, organic traffic and the number of ranking keywords begin to rise consistently.
Building the right habits – Sticking to a guided plan and creating the right habits allowed Calbright to rise through the rankings, and build up their Digital Value—content creation and smart SEO strategies are now a sustainable part of Calbright’s operations.
Results and Impact
By May of 2024, Calbright had tripled their organic visitors (reaching 67,023 visitors) and created 136 unique pieces of content over 12 months. By adding a new section on the website with bios and creating content around keyword research, the metrics began to improve, and the number of organic visitors rose with it.
By building the right habits with the Digital Growth marketing program, the cadence of 10 pieces of content each month gets done, becomes a habit, and is no longer out of reach. By finding the right type of content that’s easier for a team to create, the habit also becomes sustainable, whether it’s video, blog, or new website pages.
Future Goals and Growth
Calbright is now near reaching their student enrollment goal. Their recent accreditation allowed them to change their site to .edu, which our development team helped to switch over. The previous website wasn’t usable for updates and conversion rates were needed to be brought up, but with their current site and new domain, they’re more successful than ever, and plan to add several new programs in the coming year.
Working Together
Solid Digital’s team is continuing to work with Calbright, helping them meet new goals, and maintain and improve metrics and online user experience. Having accomplished the original main objective, together the teams reset the objectives for the coming year and continue to strive..
The success we see with Calbright is what we want for every one of our clients.
Every organization we work with starts somewhere, and it can help to have another team working alongside you, to show you how your website is (or isn’t) working for you. Together, we can uncover opportunities that can make a high impact with low effort. We’ll stick with you long after a website redesign to help you reach your marketing goals, and create bigger and even better results.
If you’re curious about calculating your Digital Value, reach out. We’d love to help.
