Case study · Higher Education
Rebuilt around career outcomes, not credentials.
Graduate applications were down sector-wide. The program had paid media live, run by a previous agency, but the team could not get a clear read on whether the ads were actually contributing to applications. Attribution in higher ed is difficult on the best of days, and the team was not getting the confidence they needed to keep investing.
What they wanted was sharper messaging, smarter targeting, and the ability to see paid media's impact in the funnel, not just trust that it was working.
We worked closely with the program and admissions teams to overhaul both messaging and targeting. The first lift was creative. We interviewed alumni, mapped the doubts prospective students kept raising, and built campaigns around what graduates actually did after the program: the role changes, the industry moves, the leadership tracks.
For targeting, we filtered by years of professional experience, current role types, and adjacent degree backgrounds, so spend went toward people who would actually fit the program. We ran three channels, each playing a different role: Meta drove the most cost-effective leads, Google brought qualified search traffic, and LinkedIn returned the highest-quality applicants.
The program runs ten months, so the creative made that the frame: “Ten months to a new role. Ten months to a leadership track. Ten months to a different industry.”