Chris Hooley’s -ThinkBait-

A billion dollars is a LOT of money.  A thousand million dollars to be exact.  Since I took over web marketing at NextStudent last year, that’s how much student loan volume funded through my advertising channels.  Actually, I’m currently at about 1.1 billion dollars funded with a few hundred million in the pipeline.  Not to toot my own horn here, but I am NextStudent’s FIRST billion dollar marketer!

When I first took over web marketing at NextStudent, there was a big mess to clean up from the old marketing department.  Know that saying “You gotta spend money to make money”?  They didn’t really get the second part of that statement.  Their efforts put us in a dangerous cash flow crunch. 

First thing I did was fire some expensive consultants, then I focused on natural search engine rankings (paid search marketing and traditional advertising is quite expensive, and we needed business that did not require a lot of cash to feed the fire).  I got the website to #1 on all major search engines for the phrase “Student Loan Consolidation”, which brought a windfall of volume which basically saved the business last year.  Big time.  In fact, we did so well, the company now has a beautiful new building and 3 airplanes.

Knowing that the peak season of our business drives that kind of volume, I put together a plan to maximize the opportunity for 2006.  Because of careful planning and execution, the company drove 1.5 billion in ONE MONTH- far exceeding last year’s ENTIRE YEAR END TOTAL.

It is amazing that we count money in the BILLIONS now, and we expect money in the BILLIONS.  Not only a year ago we where fighting an uphill battle to stay in business.  This year we are one of the strongest student loan companies in the nation.

What a difference a year makes!