216% increase in enrollments, at a lower cost 

TCS Education System’s Cost Per Lead (CPL) with Paid Search was inefficient leading to a higher cost per lead, which resulted to missed goals and opportunities. They needed to re-engineer the Paid Search efforts to drive scalable enrollments at an efficient CPL. 

The approach 

Mason Interactive performed a complete audit and analysis of their AdWords account and historical results before together a new strategy to lower the CPL. An account restructure was an important first step. Segmenting match types by campaigns and tightly grouped themes, Mason was then able to allocate budget to the most scalable campaigns, becoming extremely efficient. In addition to this restructure, Mason leveraged automated bidding algorithms to focus on CPL target goals. 

The results 

Remarketing efforts played an important final role in their Paid Search success, recapturing visitors who had previously shown interest at a lower Cost Per Click (CPC). Once promising results starting rolling in, landing page testing was a crucial factor in converting prospects at a lower CPL. With Mason’s AdWords account restructure, in conjunction with advanced bidding, remarketing, and landing page optimization, TCS achieved their goal of driving more leads at a lower cost.

• 50% increase in conversion rates 
  

• 216% increase in enrollments 

• 67% lower CPL

The Culinary Institute of America saw 11X lift in incremental leads

• 11X lift incremental leads from combination of Facebook and search

• 9X lift in incremental leads from Facebook alone

• 3X lift in incremental leads from search alone

The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) wanted to verify the incremental impact of Facebook ads on driving leads compared to ads on a search publisher’s platform, and to optimize its cross-channel ad budget based on the results.

The approach 

CIA had always invested more in search ads than in paid social ads. But it wanted to investigate whether increasing its Facebook ad spend would be advantageous. So, to better analyze and optimize its investment strategy, CIA and Mason Interactive, ran a cross-publisher conversion lift study. The study measured the conversion lift from Facebook ads and search, both alone and together, and validated their incremental performance against a reporting tool and attribution model.

The team built video ads and photo ads with messaging aimed at enticing potential students to learn more about CIA’s degree programs and to enroll. CIA delivered the ads in Facebook News Feed, Facebook Stories, Instagram feed and Instagram Stories to core audiences, Custom Audiences and lookalike audiences. CIA also activated campaign budget optimization, allowing Facebook to automatically distribute the budget to the top-performing ad sets in real time.

The cross-publisher conversion lift study was set up to measure how many people in a test group who saw ads on Facebook went on to submit a request for enrollment information, and how many people in a control group who did not see the Facebook ads submitted such a request. The team conducted the same measurement for ads in search by using a similar test group who saw ads there, and a control group who did not. The team repeated the measurement with test and control groups who had seen ads on both channels, and groups who did not see ads on either channel.

CIA and Mason Interactive compared the results from the study to CIA’s internal reporting tool, and confirmed that CIA’s first-touch attribution model represents the incremental outcomes driven by both Facebook and search with great accuracy. CIA now feels confident about measuring its Facebook and search incremental performance with one unified reporting tool and attribution model.