A profitable acquisition channel in under three months

EAB is a technology, consulting, and research company serving higher education institutions across North America. It supports colleges and universities throughout the student lifecycle, from recruitment to student success, through its technology platforms and advisory and analytics services. EAB's goal was to launch a SEM acquisition campaign to generate qualified leads from higher education institutions, with the ambition of reaching a profitable cost per acquisition as quickly as possible.

EAB had to launch in an extremely competitive search environment (higher education technology and consulting services), where several established providers compete for the attention of the same decision-makers. In this context, bids are expensive and the risk of spending without results is high. A campaign that was too broad would have driven acquisition costs up in no time, with no guarantee of reaching the right decision-makers. The challenge was therefore to reach a profitable cost per acquisition quickly, below the maximum acceptable level, without any campaign history to build on.

To meet this challenge, the strategy was built around the real vocabulary of the target decision-makers. Rather than chasing a large number of searches, the approach relied on the keywords that target personas (such as enrollment and student success leaders) actually use when looking for solutions for their institution. A highly focused keyword campaign was then launched, with each ad group built around a specific search intent to reach the decision-makers most likely to take action. This tight targeting concentrated the budget on high-value searches and avoided paying for low-relevance traffic, a major concern in a market where every click is expensive. Performance was monitored closely and the campaign was adjusted continuously, always keeping the maximum cost per acquisition in mind.