Education Industry
How we used advanced audience targeting to reduce the cost per lead for a university
Education Industry
The Royal Agricultural University (RAU) is known for its industry connections and emphasis on practical, career-focused education, RAU has a strong reputation in the land-based sector. The university also boasts a vibrant campus life and numerous research initiatives aimed at addressing contemporary agricultural challenges.
The Challenge
RAU approached us when they were noticing a fall in intake of new undergraduates.
They knew something had to change but only being equipped with a modest marketing budget they also knew that they needed to be smart with their budget.
When they approached us with this dilemma, our pay-per-click team knew they would need a targeting strategy that would reach their key demographic without wasting the budget.
Our Approach
We launched PPC adverts across multiple digital platforms with a brand new targeting strategy that could reach their audiences without wasting any of their budget.
The strategy we decided on was to use Google Ads across Search and Display, including YouTube video advertising, plus Facebook Ads.
We used “Custom Intent Audiences” (a first for any UK University) to target people who were visiting direct competitor websites. We bid on the URLs of big-spending direct rivals and on the main Clearing and course keywords, but instead of appearing as Search Ads, we used Display and Video Ads instead. We were able to pick up these same users that all rivals were fighting over for a fraction of the cost.
With click-through-rates more than 20 times higher than you’d expect for display advertising and conversions costing under £13, it performed very well and lead to their highest levels of Clearing enquiries.
The Results
With the same budget as the previous year we saw the following increases:
Users
213%
Year on year
Sessions
225%
Year on year
Conversions
