Increase Digital Ad Conversions at a Lower Cost-Per-Click

Gateway Technical College

For organizations with a modest marketing budget, hyper-targeting is key. Gateway Technical College, which serves a broad demographic of more than 25,000 students, needed to boost enrollment to their Nursing and Medical Assistant programs. We devised a multi-platform digital advertising strategy that generated significant program interest for a low cost.

The Challenge

Gateway had a modest budget and assumed pay-per-click advertising would stretch it the furthest. They were on the right track—we just helped them see the bigger picture. We built a digital advertising strategy that engaged Gateway's target audience at the right time and place.

Multi-Platform Strategy

First, we developed a display advertising strategy through Google Ads. It included digital ad creative and landing page where Gateway could capture valuable visitor information. To enhance this campaign, we created related ads on Facebook and Instagram.

By combining Google Display Network, Facebook, and Instagram advertising, we could round out each platform’s strengths: Google Display Ads made the most website traffic, and the largest impression share, while Facebook and Instagram generated quality results from the target audience. This success was accomplished by relying on new ad formats to engage viewers including:

Responsive Display Ads
Carousel Facebook and Instagram Ads
Custom Designed Image Ads on Facebook and Instagram
Instagram Stories Advertising

Budget Optimization

We helped keep the cost-per-result low by optimizing Google Ad Conversion Tracking and Facebook Pixel events. We closely monitored campaign performance and used machine learning options for bidding strategy which allowed us to adjust quickly. This technique also allowed Ascedia to pull together a comprehensive report of the attack to understand the impact of the campaign.

Hyper-targeting & Remarketing

We used hyper-targeting techniques on all platforms. We drilled targeting down to location, demographics, user intent, behaviors, interests, and other advanced dimensions of the platform. We carefully observing and adjusting these segments throughout the campaign’s run.

We also leveraged remarketing throughout this campaign, to target non-converting users. For example, many people targeted by the medical assistant program did not seemed to be very interested in the nursing program, and vice versa. We saved these audience groups and used them for the enrollment campaign the following semester.

Results

Gateway gained a surge of website traffic and information requests to each program, all for a very low cost-per-click:

Nursing Program

Tactic/Metric	Google Display Network	Facebook	Instagram
Ad Clicks	12,411	1,100	89
Applications	11	31	23
Impressions	2,523,729	94,923	34,879
Cost-Per-Click	$85.00	$22.27	$16.09

Medical Assistant Program

Tactic/Metric	Google Display Network	Facebook	Instagram
Ad Clicks	4,311	290	52
Applications	18	29	9
Impressions	945,120	81,320	31,259
Cost-Per-Click	$31.72	$23.82	$41.12

Beating Industry Standards

Based on the 2018 industry standard CPC for Higher Education, GTC saw a surge of interest and engagement, all for almost half the price.

Lower CPC than Google Benchmark

The Google Display Network CPC benchmark is $143. GTC hit record engagement for only $85 CPC.

Lower CPC than Social Media Benchmark

The FB/IG CPC benchmark for Higher Education is $43. GTC hit record engagement for only $22 CPC.