The Ivy Shift
A globally minded blend of strategy, segmentation, & student-first ROI.
A U.S.-based higher education institution offering global Master’s and Ph.D. programs for psychologists partnered with us to boost the impact of their digital marketing. By aligning ad strategy with business goals and digging into historical performance data, we helped them achieve a 9:1 ROI through targeted Google Search, YouTube, and Display Ads. With a refined focus on qualified leads—professionals in the psychological field seeking advanced degrees—we turned clicks into enrolled students across key global locations.
Preparation
Client Overview
This client is a higher Ed institution that offers PHD and MBA level schooling for Psychologists. This client has been advertising on Google Ads for the past 4 years with varying success. They’ve utilized different agencies and contractors to help with the management of their spend, but can never scale since they don’t have certainty the process is replicable. In short, they don’t what is working and they don’t know what is NOT working with their marketing.
Client: A global higher education institution offering Master's and Ph.D. programs in Psychology and Business
Industry: Higher Education
Ask: Align marketing strategy with admissions outcomes, optimize Google Ads & YouTube performance, and increase qualified student enrollment across multiple global campuses.
OBJECTIVES & GOALS
The primary objective of this campaign was to find what works and what doesn’t when it comes to the clients Google Ads spend. Their admissions team has had trouble qualifying candidates in recent weeks, even though their Google Ads are driving record-breaking amounts of leads.
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Assess Google Ads account, work with admissions to find why leads are not quality
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Refresh Google Ads & YouTube Ads
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Enroll more students in Psych and MBA cohorts
The Challenge
Despite record-breaking lead volume, the client’s admissions team struggled to qualify candidates. The targeting was too broad, global settings were outdated, and campaign types lacked nuance for their complex ideal student profile. Like a B2B sales funnel, the disconnect between lead gen and lead quality left their marketing feeling misaligned and unscalable.
The Recipe
Solution & Ingredients
After our team has reviewed the historical metrics and the client’s current business goals, we created a marketing strategy that had two key parts:
1 oz Data Review
Audited 12 months of Google Ads performance and collaborated with admissions to assess lead quality
2 oz Audience Calibration
Focused targeting based on age, gender, and geography to hone in on high-intent prospects
Splash of UTM Tracking
Implemented campaign-level UTMs to isolate and eliminate underperforming sources
1 oz Campaign Clean-Up
Aligned campaign settings with current business goals, removed redundant network targets, and narrowed geo-locations
2 oz Strategic Scaling
Split budget 70/30 between Psych and MBA programs, prioritizing performance while leaving room for growth
Best served with focused Search campaigns and a side of audience insights.
The Method
Clean-Up:
Geo-targeting misalignment:
Campaigns were set to target globally, even though the client was only focused on specific regions—wasting thousands monthly. We realigned targeting to match current enrollment priorities.
Overly broad campaign structure:
Settings didn’t reflect their niche audience. We diversified bidding strategies, introduced layered targeting, and tailored campaign types to their ideal student profile.
Inefficient default settings:
Misconfigured network and location settings diluted ad effectiveness. We corrected these to focus spend where it mattered most.
Scale-Up:
Identified high-performing segments:
Zeroed in on specific age, gender, and U.S. geos that consistently drove the highest conversions—then built targeted campaigns around them.
Introduced UTM tracking for clarity:
Implemented UTMs to pinpoint which campaigns delivered low-quality leads. After cutting the underperformers, admissions saw a measurable boost in lead quality.
Prioritized what worked, cut what didn’t:
Focused budget on top-performing Search campaigns and high-ROI program paths, eliminating waste and helping drive a 900% return.
Tasting Notes
Results
Bonus kick: Pinpointed campaign variables that correlated directly with qualified student enrollment, not just conversions.
Presentation & Garnish
The difference between a lead and a learner? Follow-through. By collaborating with admissions and layering strategy with data, we helped this client go beyond clicks to real, measurable impact.
Crafted for institutions with global reach, high stakes, and no time to waste.
“Working with Ben and his team has been a pleasure. They were able to clean up our Paid Search strategy and generate consistent leads; Our current student enrollment is more than enough to cover the current cost-per-conversion.”
Chief Operating Officer
