Paid Media
Driving Enrollment Growth Through Strategic Paid Media for a Higher Education Institution
A higher education institution partnered with Marcel Digital to improve the effectiveness of its paid media strategy. With a wide range of undergraduate and graduate programs, the college wanted to increase student applications, improve visibility for priority programs, and better connect marketing efforts to enrollment outcomes. Marcel Digital implemented a more targeted, conversion-focused paid media approach to drive measurable results.
The Challenge
The institution knew its paid media strategy needed to evolve to better support application growth and enrollment goals. While campaigns were generating traffic, foundational gaps limited performance visibility and made it difficult to maximize results. The focus needed to shift from a traffic-driven approach to one centered on applications, clearer measurement, and long-term enrollment impact.
Key challenges included:
Campaigns were broad, unstructured, and not strategically aligned with priority academic programs.
There was no reliable way to track applications or connect them back to paid media performance.
Success was historically measured by website traffic instead of meaningful conversion actions like applications.
The internal team had limited paid search experience, making optimization and strategic growth more difficult.
Marketing efforts were not fully aligned with program-level priorities or broader enrollment objectives.
The Analysis
Marcel Digital conducted a full review of the paid media strategy to identify the biggest barriers to stronger application performance and clearer measurement.
Campaign Structure and Program Alignment
Our analysis showed that the existing campaigns lacked segmentation and were not aligned with priority programs. This made it difficult to tailor messaging, allocate budget effectively, and support the academic offerings that mattered most.
Keyword Targeting and Conversion Visibility
We found that keyword targeting was too broad, which led to inefficient spend and lower-quality traffic. At the same time, limited conversion tracking meant there was no clear way to understand how paid media was contributing to applications or enrollment outcomes.
Audience Insights and Strategic Opportunities
We also reviewed audience targeting and identified opportunities to better reach key prospective student groups, including high school students, transfer students, and adult learners. These insights helped shape a more focused strategy around campaign structure, targeting, and performance measurement.
The Solution
To help the college improve paid media performance, Marcel Digital rebuilt the strategy around more targeted campaigns, stronger audience alignment, and better measurement of meaningful outcomes.
Campaign Restructuring and Keyword Strategy
Marcel Digital restructured the Google Ads account to better align with the college’s priority programs, including nursing, cyberaccounting, and new master’s offerings. Instead of relying on broad campaign structures, we created more focused program-specific campaigns built around high-intent, non-brand keywords. This allowed us to deliver more relevant messaging, improve traffic quality, and reduce wasted spend through the use of negative keywords.
Audience Targeting and Media Optimization
To better reach prospective students, we refined audience targeting around key segments such as high school juniors and seniors, transfer students, and adult learners. We also introduced additional tactics like geofencing and retargeting to engage users more strategically throughout their decision-making journey. These improvements helped increase awareness for priority programs while also creating stronger opportunities for conversion.
Conversion Tracking and Reporting
A critical part of the solution was improving how success was measured. Marcel Digital implemented tracking for key application actions, including applications started and applications submitted, giving the college clearer insight into campaign performance. With this data in place, we were able to shift optimization efforts toward conversion-focused bidding strategies and build a reporting framework that gave internal stakeholders better visibility into paid media’s contribution to applications and enrollment outcomes.
The Results
Through this strategic transformation, the institution achieved its highest enrollment in its 132-year history, reaching 4,046 students and surpassing the previous record.
While enrollment cannot be attributed to paid media alone, the campaigns played a significant role in increasing application volume during the enrollment cycle.
Beyond enrollment growth, Marcel Digital successfully:
Transitioned the strategy from traffic-driven to conversion-focused
Established reliable application tracking and reporting
Increased visibility for priority programs such as nursing and master’s degrees
Built a scalable paid media framework aligned with real business outcomes
This engagement not only drove immediate results but also laid the foundation for ongoing optimization and long-term success, enabling the college to better connect marketing performance with enrollment impact.
