Michigan Ross

We helped a top-ten business school make the grade.

situation

The University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business got ahead of its competition by creating the first online MBA program from a top-10 business school. While they were off to a strong start, their program faced some significant challenges:

  • Low awareness disqualified it from rankings by higher ed publications
  • Top candidates saw online MBA programs as second tier and less prestigious
  • Prospects need to see value in a premium price tag
  • The program needed to show 50% more inquiries to achieve the school’s aggressive enrollment goals

solution

A shorter video was played during the games. We stuck with a simpler one-take shot that flew over a more ambiguous field — which took the campaign beyond just baseball.

DEVELOP A CONTENT-FIRST STRATEGY

We built content with our thought leadership partners, who are highly influential with our target audience. We then deployed that content along with other brand messaging through performance-driving platforms.

TARGET THE RIGHT NICHE AUDIENCES

We built content with our thought leadership partners, who are highly influential with our target audience. We then deployed that content along with other brand messaging through performance-driving platforms.

Partnerships with thought leadership publishers, such as SmartBrief and Morning Brew, allowed us to not only reach large, qualified audiences, but also repurpose the content to reach audiences on high-converting tactics such as paid social.

DELIVER LEADS BY THINKING FULL FUNNEL

From there, we were able to utilize the prospecting groups created by the content and brand awareness efforts to capture leads. Additionally, we tagged leads at a very finite level to ensure we were delivering and monitoring against program-specific goals. We monitored the landing page results and offered several iterations of adjustments to optimize our conversion rate over time.

Results

And it worked! The launch of this campaign was a perfect example of a branded strategy supporting program goals and ultimately getting results.

2,080 Website Leads

and 2,247 in-platform leads delivered

$84 CPA Achieved

(17% YOY efficiency)

160%

of the conversion goal at only 85% of the budget

264 Applications

from qualified professionals (167% of goal)

264 Applications

from qualified professionals (167% of goal)