CLIENT HIGHER EDUCATION
How an Art College with 8 Locations Rebooted Media Campaigns and Rebuilt Student Acquisition Strategy
OVERVIEW
This client is a US college with eight campuses across the country focused on providing students with practical, creative educations in fields including film, audio, design and more. OpenMoves was engaged during a challenging transitional period for this college. We inherited media campaigns that were offline, not functional, and needed to be rebooted entirely. We had ambitious business goals including a need to rapidly scale media spending to $1,000,000/month while hitting aggressive CPL goals and rebuilding media accounts and strategies from scratch.
$1m
Monthly media buying budget
100k
Leads generated in 2019
200%
YOY performance improvement
30m
Campaign reach in 2019
THE CHALLENGE
When we took on this the complex project, the client’s media accounts were offline and needed to be totally rebuilt. The sheer production challenge was enormous and required extensive bulk editing and upload tools to get the job done fast.
Our goal was to scale acquisition with percision geotargeting on Google, Bing and Facebook to $1,000,000/month in profitable spending, both by hitting CPL goals and also only spending media dollars within geotargeted areas.
Like most lead generation projects for schools, there was also a major challenge in assessing lead quality. The student journey from initial awareness to actually starting school is very long and complex and media campaigns need to be managed to both front-end efficiency and long-term outcomes. Not an easy task for even a senior media team experienced in the EDU market.
Primary Goals
Hit campus-specific lead quality and volume goals
Scale to $1M/monthly across eight locations
Deliver qualified leads for under $100 CPL
Optimize campaigns and media to actual student applications and starts
OPENMOVES ANALYST
-
Usually schools with this level of budget have mature campaigns in place, but here we had to start from almost nothing, while hitting tough CPL targets per location right away. It was a lot of work but through 2019 we made huge progress - going from basically nothing to now having really mature campaigns that everyone agrees are working.
The Solution
Deep Funnel Data Integration. It was essential to have the ability to analyze the client’s CRM data with campaign-specific information tied to each lead. This allowed us to measure with granular precision which campaigns and media strategies were creating leads that actually converted into real applications and student starts.
Campaign Priority Layers. To hit scale with quality within tight geo areas, we developed a system of layering, prioritizing, and tagging different types of campaigns and audiences based on their relevance and priority. For example, we developed a set of campaigns slightly beyond the ideal target radius that we could activate with lower bids based on performance.
Rapid Creative Testing. To move fast, OpenMoves worked directly with the client’s compliance team and platform to get new creative approved and live quickly. Our team was able to rapidly analyze and deploy creative on Facebook/Instagram and Google/Bing including a number of new features like Google’s Gallery Ads and Facebook’s Dynamic Creative.
Advanced Facebook Audience Strategy. OpenMoves worked closely with Facebook to understand their latest “structure for scale” and apply it to a geotargeted environment as well as working to optimize media to down-funnel events. Through the year more than 1,650 Facebook Ad Sets ran, each with tested and optimized variations of lookalike audiences, interest targeting, placements, bidding and more.
Let’s discuss how we can increase your revenue
SNOW JOE + SUN JOE
See How Snow Joe Doubled Year-over-Year Revenue with eCommerce PPC.
