Case Studies

Case Study #1 — Website Management

Opportunity

When reviewing the Lead Performance Report and monthly Website Management Report, ES identified an opportunity based on trends with Google to spend less on marketing overall yet yield more enrollments. The website converted leads at nearly 15%, compared to Paid Search converting around 9%, and Paid Social at 2%.

Solution

ES created a more aggressive monthly website management plan to improve rankings and increase keyword footprint by leveraging Google’s EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) metric.

Optimization highlights:

• Expanded the program page content to 2000-2500 words and additional integrated keywords
• More than tripled the monthly blog posts plan, each with a minimum length of 1,000 words and utilizing SME’s for each program
• Introduced additional contact forms to maximize traffic-to-submission opportunities
• Developed A/B testing plans based on heat-mapping analysis

Results

• Organic search traffic increased 14% YoY
• Leads from the website increased 17% YoY
• The Partner’s overall marketing budget decreased by 13% YOY, while enrollments grew 9%. (Note some programs were at capacity.)

Case Study #2 — Paid Digital Campaign

Opportunity

A prospective partner approached us with concerns regarding increased spend but decreased results in their paid search campaign over the previous six months. CPCs had increased, click conversions had decreased, and overall cost per inquiries has increased by almost 40% from January of ’20 to January of ’21.

Solution

ES completed a full audit of the paid search campaign and outlined specific areas and opportunities for improvement.

Optimization highlights:

• A thorough update of the negative keywords to ensure we were spending our marketing dollars in the most relevant manner
• Gradually reduced reliance on broad-match keywords while increasing coverage of exact- and phrase-match keywords
• Day-parting optimizations
• Updated ad copy and landing page content to highlight our partner’s offerings and better align with their target audiences
• Addressed ad strength and reviewed destination URL strategies for 1:1:1 content
• Reviewed impression share metrics to create strategies for improvement

Results

Since taking over the campaign in March of ’21, we have seen immediate improvement with the implementation of ES’s approach and the highlights listed above. Overall, we have been able to reduce their spend spend and align with overall market while increasing conversion and reducing the cost per inquiry.

Paid Search	2021 Spend	2022 Spend	Spend Difference	2021 Conversions	2022 Conversions	Conversion Difference	2021 CPI	2022 CPI	CPI Difference
Jan	$19,477	$16,671	-14.41%	91	151	65.93%	$213.03	$110.40	-48.42%
Feb	$24,493	$17,170	-29.90%	134	159	18.66%	$182.78	$107.99	-40.92%
Mar	$23,721	$13,373	-53.44%	146	138	-5.48%	$196.72	$96.91	-50.74%
Apr	$12,923	$17,482	35.23%	130	174	33.85%	$99.41	$100.47	1.07%

Case Study #3 — Paid Social

Opportunity

An online school accepting students nationally has been running a paid social campaign for many years. They engaged with ES for a paid social audit to see if we could improve their current efforts handled by another agency. Their cost per lead was averaging $12.51. They also were dealing with the frustration and inefficiencies of a 20% invalid lead rate.

Solution

ES formed a paid social strategy that improved the creative assets and overhauled the targeting and audiences. Partnering with Meta, ES also was able to identify opportunities to decrease the number of invalid contact forms being submitted.

Optimization highlights:

• New creative images and videos considered to be thumb-stoppers while scrolling on a mobile device were implemented
• Creative strategy that varied by region was developed to better reflect target audience location regardless of being an online school
• Frequent enrollment data was used to improve target audiences
• Highly involved and frequent updates were performed to campaigns for an optimized performance

Results

• Inquiry cost decreased from $12.51 to $9.50 per lead (24%) after 60 days from taking over the paid social campaigns
• The number of invalid inquiries was reduced in half, now averaging 8%-10% per month vs 18-21% previously