Graduate School of Education and Human Development
The George Washington University
Media Planning and Buying
Challenge
In 2022, LMO partnered with the George Washington Graduate School of Education and Human Development (GSEHD) to promote over 30 degrees and certificates across multiple career verticals such as Counseling, K-12, Leadership, and more. The diverse offerings and varied audience needs made cost-effective marketing challenging. LMO was tasked with developing efficient, flexible, and precise marketing plans to generate qualified leads for each unique audience set, despite a limited budget.
Objective
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 analyzed audience demographics and media behaviors to group programs into buckets, optimizing upper-and-mid-funnel tactics to multi-program landing pages. Dedicated pages were reserved for high-intent paid search campaigns.
Digital and Social Media Optimization: LMO partnered with trusted media vendors and relevant professional associations aligned to increase awareness of graduate programs. Social channels and paid search were tested to determine performance, optimizing budgets based on the strongest results.
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 and dynamic budget reallocations as needed.
Over the three-year partnership with GSEHD, LMO successfully supported up to 34 distinct programs and certificates, driving both awareness and qualified leads
Results
34
Distinct Programs Supported
9,647
Generated Leads
591%
Increased Leads
$92
Cost Per Lead
