The George Washington University
Graduate School of Education and Human Development
Balacing efficiency, flexibility
and precise targeting
In 2022, LMO partnered with the George Washington Graduate School of Education and Human Development (GSEHD) to support more than 30 graduate degrees and certificates around their program offerings. The GSEHD offerings spanned multiple career verticals such as Counseling, K-12, Organizational Leadership, Higher Education, and Education Policy, among others, and each vertical was further segmented into multiple concentrations. The vast array of programs translated to wide variety of degree/certificate types available — a plus for prospective students, but a challenge for the school’s marketing team. With a limited school budget, it wasn’t feasible to provide a dedicated budget to each program. Furthermore, each vertical and its corresponding degrees had unique targeting needs and media consumption habits. LMO was tasked with developing cost-efficient plans to generate qualified leads for each audience set. The challenge required an approach that could balance efficiency, flexibility, and precision targeting across diverse audiences.
Challenge
LMO’s mission was to drive qualified leads and enrollment growth for each program while strategically managing the budget to ensure that all degrees and certificates received consistent visibility.
Strategic Budget Allocation: Identify overlaps within target audiences and program offerings to group compatible programs under unified campaign umbrellas, maximizing limited ad spend.
Maximizing Qualified Leads: Increase the volume of program inquiries across the GSEHD portfolio.
Program Flexibility: Develop agile paid-media plans that allow for budget reallocations and testing new tactics to adapt spending based on application performance.
Solution
LMO implemented a comprehensive, data-driven marketing strategy that aligned each program’s target audiences and behavioral insights into efficient campaign groupings. This approach provided a streamlined solution to managing the numerous programs, and demonstrated LMO’s ability to handle complex campaigns. The strategy allowed similar programs and certificates to share landing pages while giving users the option to select the path that best fits their career goals. Real-time reporting and bi-weekly meetings enabled dynamic budget shifts and strategy refinements toward programs with the greatest enrollment needs.
Strategic Budget Allocation & Audience Segmentation: LMO conducted an in-depth analysis of each program’s target audience to identify shared demographics and media behaviors. These insights enabled us to group campaigns into audience-based “buckets,” optimizing our upper-and-mid-funnel tactics that directed users to multi-program landing pages. Dedicated landing pages were maintained for paid search campaigns to capture high intent prospects.
Digital and Social Media Optimization: For programs requiring greater visibility, LMO partnered with trusted media vendors for display, retargeting, native, and custom ad units. We also collaborated with professional associations aligned to specific graduate programs to drive awareness among qualified audiences. Social channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and Snapchat, were tested for mid-funnel engagement, while paid search remained the primary bottom-funnel driver.
Performance Monitoring & Optimization: Through ongoing campaign analysis, bi-weekly check-ins, and real-time optimizations, LMO ensured consistent progress toward goals. GSEHD had access to a custom real-time dashboard displaying key KPIs, enabling data-driven decisions. This agile framework allowed for dynamic budget reallocations which boosted underperforming programs while scaling back on those exceeding internal goals.
Results
Ran over 60 campaigns across 14 schools from July 2023 to June 2024.
Generated more than 87K qualified leads throughout the fiscal year.
Achieved a combined cost per lead of $42 across all marketing efforts.
89% of campaigns exceeded their cost-per-lead goals, as defined at the start of each program campaign.
The brand awareness campaign delivered over 51.5 million impressions, 1.2K leads, and a cost per lead of $702.