Higher Education Advertising Case Study

Introduction

Over its 100-year history, the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business has forged deep ties with dynamic companies and business leaders around the world, creating unlimited opportunities for its students across a broad range of industries. USC Marshall's students are well prepared for key global sectors and receive lifelong access to the business world's premiere connector for career success - The Trojan Network.

The centralized marketing department at USC Marshall understood the importance of engaging prospective students when and where they live their digital lives across all their connected devices in an effort to raise awareness, consideration, leads and new applications for several of its graduate and specialized master's programs. After an extensive RFP process, USC Marshall chose to partner with PrograMetrix to lead its digital advertising strategy, campaign management and multi-channel measurement initiatives.

The Challenge

The higher education market for graduate programs and specialized master's programs is highly competitive due to market saturation, declining domestic enrollment, increased cost sensitivity, international student competition and changing employer demands. USC Marshall tasked PrograMetrix with developing an innovative paid media strategy that would connect with prospective students in environments where the competition wasn't while increasing program awareness, consideration and down-funnel conversions.

The team of advertising experts at PrograMetrix collaborated with USC Marshall to develop custom audience segments that were specific to 7 graduate and specialized master's programs and worked to ensure that audience overlap between programs was minimized.

The Solution

PrograMetrix developed a data-driven omnichannel paid media strategy that raised program awareness and lead generation for USC Marshall's Executive MBA (EMBA), One-Year MBA (IBEAR), MS Business Analytics (MSBA), MS Finance (MSF), MS Marketing (MSMKT), MS Entrepreneurship + Innovation (MSEI) and MS Global Supply Chain Management (MSGSCM) programs.

The team at PrograMetrix worked closely with USC Marshall's internal creative department to develop annual creative plans to produce static, animated, video, audio and rich media ad formats personalized to each audience segment. PrograMetrix also designed an effective A/B testing framework that helped analyze creative performance while reducing ad fatigue.

With a combined effort and strong partnership, PrograMetrix helped USC Marshall plan an execute its first omnichannel advertising campaign across programmatic display, mobile, native, online video, OTT, CTV, streaming audio, podcasts, DOOH, rich media, paid social and paid search media channels. The audience-focused targeting approach enabled USC Marshall to micro-target perspective students with specific career interests and educational backgrounds to maximize real business results for each program.

Campaign Results

Program lead gen and new application submissions increased YoY for each program during the first 12-months of the omnichannel campaign. With advanced data analytics, AI-powered insights and proprietary optimization techniques, PrograMetrix continues to improve awareness, consideration and conversion results on a moving forward basis. The marketing team at USC Marshall is thrilled with the following KPI results:

• 9% average brand lift (across 7 programs)
• $86 average cost per lead (CPL/CPA) across programmatic, paid social and paid search channels
• 5.2X return on ad spend (ROAS)

Testimonial Statement

"The PrograMetrix team is particularly agile and responsive to our needs. We have 24/7 access to real-time performance dashboards to assess the effectiveness of ads, geotargeting, audiences, platforms, venues -- and pivot as necessary. Their team is adept at utilizing our budget to reallocate and deploy dollars where they have the most impact. I expect PrograMetrix to be long term partners with USC Marshall -- helping us deploy larger budgeted campaigns for even more of our programs in the years to come."

- Chris Allen, Executive Director | University of Southern California - Marshall School of Business

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