Key Takeaways
- Even as advertising costs surged across the market, our strategy kept the cost to enroll a new student steady in one quarter—and lower in the next—maximizing every dollar.
- Strengthened visibility across Google, AI platforms, and social through an integrated paid, organic, and AI strategy
- Content refresh drove a 167% increase in search visibility and boosted search rankings
- MBA, MSBA, and MSFA programs all achieved measurable wins in efficiency and conversion
- Demonstrated that digital resilience comes from optimization, not overspend
The Challenge: Above the Fold, But Below the Radar
In early 2025, one private business school in California found its digital marketing outcomes plateauing. Paid search costs were rising, student behavior was shifting, and traditional strategies were no longer delivering the same impact.
Key signals included:
- Strong Quality Scores and high impression share, but declining click-through rates
- Flattening paid media performance, even with increased spend
- Growing inefficiency in lead acquisition and limited scalability
Instead of investing more in an increasingly unpredictable environment, the marketing team recalibrated—realigning efforts with how today’s prospective students actually search and make decisions.
The Strategic Insight: When AI Changes the Game, Change the Playbook
The team stepped back to ask: Where are students really making decisions today?
The answer wasn’t just Google—it included AI-powered platforms like ChatGPT, AI Overviews, and Perplexity. The key wasn’t to outspend, but to outstrategize.
By integrating paid and organic efforts, enhancing existing content for AI discoverability, and aligning media tactics with real user behavior, the school transformed how—and where—it showed up in the digital journey.
The Shift: From Silos to Strategy
This wasn’t just about tweaking ads. It was about redefining digital visibility.
What changed:
- Broad Match and Exact Match campaigns were deployed in tandem for high-intent, education-specific searches—driving stronger inquiries with greater efficiency
- Underperforming keywords flagged content opportunities—one refreshed MBA blog saw a +167% increase in impressions and climbed 11 search result positions
- Ad copy was refined to better reflect key program differentiators and answer the exact questions students were asking
- Content was optimized not only for traditional search but also for AI platforms—structured to align with natural student queries and maximize visibility across evolving discovery surfaces
Crucially, this integrated approach allowed for real-time alignment between media strategy, user behavior, and enrollment results. Even as cost per lead rose significantly across consecutive quarters, cost per start stayed flat, then improved—demonstrating the durability of the strategy.
Visibility and Efficiency in a Rising-Cost Environment
While most graduate programs saw steep increases in cost per lead in 2025, this integrated strategy helped the school maintain a steady cost per student. By aligning media tactics with real-time user behavior—and focusing on quality over quantity—the team preserved efficiency even as paid media costs rose industry-wide.
- In Q1, cost per lead surged 51%, yet cost per start held steady at -1%.
- In Q2, cost per lead rose another 47%, while cost per start actually fell 6%—an efficiency gain that underscored the strength of the strategy.
Portfolio-Wide Performance. Program-Specific Wins.
This wasn’t a one-program solution—it elevated an entire graduate business portfolio.
MBA
- Content strategy improved both paid and organic top-of-page presence
- Media efficiency increased despite intensified competition
MSBA
- Achieved a 7.6% conversion rate, over 2x the industry benchmark
- 20% top-of-funnel conversion rate indicated strong targeting alignment
MSFA
- 90% of digital leads originated from LinkedIn and Facebook—uncovering quality lead generation from social channels
- Insights led to a shift away from underperforming campaigns toward more effective investments
The Results: From Scattered Clicks to Strategic Visibility
- +167% Organic Impressions
- 5.4% Conversion Rate (vs. 3% benchmark), contributing to a stable cost per enrollment despite rising media costs.
- Visibility across the entire search landscape: paid ads, organic listings, and AI citations surfacing for the same queries
Takeaways for the AI Era
The student journey has changed. This graduate school didn’t just adapt—they evolved.
What worked:
- A unified approach that blurred the line between media and content
- Reinvigorating existing assets to match current search behavior
- Structuring content for AI visibility, not just SEO
- Tight collaboration and end-to-end performance tracking for continuous improvement
In a disrupted digital environment, smarter strategy—not bigger budgets—delivered measurable, meaningful results.