Southern California Trade School Drives 190+ Online Applications With CTV

A higher education school — focused on specialized training — had worked with CTV competitors for ad campaigns in the past. The outcomes didn’t achieve their marketing goals in the competitive Southern California region, as they weren’t getting as many lower-funnel conversions on key web pages. For that reason, the school was looking for a different service to improve their brand awareness, online engagement, and student enrollment across its eight different campuses. Strategus was given a preliminary test-run for 30 days to drive results, with no commitment beyond the initial deal.

A successful first month led to another month-long extension, eventually leading to a full nine-month ad campaign. After the first 90 days, Strategus analyzed all of the data and refined the school’s initial targeting strategy. Based on data and traditional methods, they had kept their audience targeting pretty general by focusing on females aged 18-34. The insights gathered from our data revealed unique details of their target audience, such as income dynamics, ethnicities, media consumption habits, and preferred language.  This helped inform their overall marketing and creative strategies.

Upon completion, Strategus surpassed their marketing goals, reaching potential students in the Southern California area, tracking their online engagements, and ultimately delivering quantifiable metrics like the number of prospective student applications.

• Drive Online Application Submissions
• Drive Web Traffic

In the beginning, the school wanted to target females aged 18-34 years old, with high school diplomas or some college experience. From there, Strategus designed targeting tactics to resonate with this broad audience. More precisely, Strategus utilized geo-locating techniques to serve CTV ads to consumers living within a 10 mile radius of a campus. After this audience watched the ad, Strategus applied additional messaging to their mobile, laptop, tablet, and desktop devices.

Monthly reviews between the client and the Strategus team uncovered audience insights from the look-alike modeling portion of the campaign, and led to a more refined marketing and creative approach. Here’s what Strategus learned about the campaign’s most engaged audience members: 

• Bilingual — with English as primary language  
• Consumers who recently experienced a 20% decrease in income
• Viewers of Univision & Telemundo Networks  
• Consumers who drive Honda & Acura vehicles

By leveraging these insights, Strategus was able to enhance their targeting and exceed their expectations — converting 192 Online Application Submissions.  Overall, Strategus generated a surge in online engagement and met lower-funnel KPIs with potential students requesting more information and browsing the school’s programs.