DATA-DRIVEN, HIGHLY TARGETED PPC CAMPAIGN RESULTS IN IMMEDIATE INCREASE OF QUALIFIED GRADUATE PROGRAM CANDIDATES

A university seeking to increase qualified applicants for a graduate program leading to a Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) degree experienced lead to enrollment timeline cut in half.

Decrease in time from lead to enrollment

Goal conversion rate, nearly 4x greater than the educational industry average

Greater click-through rate than the educational industry average (8.7% vs 3.8%)

Advance Education was challenged to increase qualified applications for a Doctor of Physical Therapy graduate degree and to shorten the lead to enrollment cycle, which was anticipated by the school to be 12-15 months based on the school’s admissions cycle. Typically, the pool of student prospects is relatively small for an extremely specialized degree leading to a much longer student enrollment cycle. Candidates are typically in an established career in the field, making an appeal to invest in a graduate program more challenging than that of undergraduate enrollments.

• Conducted pre-campaign research to determine periods of greatest search activity for physical therapy degrees and launched campaign in advance to have the campaign fully optimized during the most critical periods.
• Developed a two-prong PPC keyword strategy. The campaign launched with a relatively broad keyword set to initially attract a wide net of potential candidates and quickly optimizing toward keywords that showed the greatest return. Simultaneously a focus was placed on a very strategic set of exact match keywords designed to reach people who were closer to making a decision.
• To maximize the reach generated by the campaign and capitalize on the traffic that is being generated to the landing page, we implemented re-messaging as part of the PPC strategy to continue engaging the people who have visited the landing page but have not converted.