success stories

University of Maryland

You don’t need another “partner” and we don’t want to be just another vendor. We prefer you to think of us as wise counsel.

Background

Renowned for its business school and a leader in entrepreneurship graduate studies, the University of Maryland hired two well-known programmatic marketing agencies to promote its Master’s of Technology Entrepreneurship degree program through a programmatic advertising campaign based on target demographics. Their campaign spent $25,000 over the course of 3 months and generated 21 leads at a Cost Per Lead of $1,190. UMD was told that this was good. Not so sure it was; they engaged PBJ Marketing for a second opinion.

Our Strategy

After an extensive account audit, we were surprised by what we uncovered. Programmatic, while potentially very effective, was over-sold, mismanaged, and became problematic. The biggest culprit in blowing the client’s budget? Improper lead tracking installed and a mobile apps ad campaign resulted in a 98% bounce rate and an average session duration of 5 seconds. Shame! We reported our findings and were given 30 days to prove we could do better.

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Right out of the gate, we paused all previous efforts and began building new campaigns from scratch. In just 15 days, we found our assumptions proven correct as PBJ’s digital marketing team spent just $4,999 on Facebook alone, driving 91 leads at a Cost Per Lead of just $54.00.
With one impressed client and a new 12-month contract in hand, we laid out a new plan of attack. While programmatic can be cost-effective and efficient, it’s no off-the-shelf solution. Each client, first, requires a hands-on, grassroots campaign to uncover the ideal target audience and proper marketing channels.
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Our custom strategy, supported by proper research and analytics, focused on running Web Conversion and Lead Generations Campaigns. We isolated each by various well-thought-out targeting methods. In addition, we optimized post conversions by syncing all Facebook leads and website conversions into Active Campaign, a newly implemented email automation and CRM platform much more powerful than the client previously used. This allowed us to back into actual ROI metrics and focus on the best Facebook targeting methods and creativity that drive the most enrolled, paying students at a more efficient CPA.

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Results Worth Bragging About

$1 to $5 CPL

Targeting potential students outside the US

$10 to $50 CPL

Targeting students within the US

50%

Of all enrolled students are now acquired by our paid media efforts, a number that continues to increase with each semester.

Hear what our Clients have to say

Compared to other providers, PBJ has more expert knowledge on how to use various social media marketing tools. We had similar ad budgets for Facebook, Twitter, and a variety of other areas. We found that the volume and the quality of the leads exceeded that of any of the other 3 providers. Maybe a lot of people can figure out how to manage a Facebook campaign, but they may not necessarily have the level of expertise. PBJ has a superior level of familiarity and expertise. I think they have a data-driven mentality of what we’re doing and where we’re doing it. They’ve also exceeded my expectations as far as their technical acumen on the web design as far as how to use tracking codes and integrate a lot of the technical pieces to make the data manageable. The other agencies were creative in the context that they could use Photoshop, but I didn’t really get the sense that they understood as much of the data and analytics.

They balance being data-driven but also being highly attentive and responsive. Although we have some scheduled time together periodically, if we do have a question or a concern, if something looks broken, or if we feel like we broke something accidentally, we reach out to them and get a quick response. We use LuckyOrange for the general site traffic management. We use ActiveCampaign for our content marketing and broadcast emails. We use Funnel.io as our reporting system to track our performance on the different media channels.

We typically enroll a class of 30 and do 2 intakes per year. In the year that PBJ’s been with us, we probably have 30 graduate students that we might not have had otherwise. We offer a $20,000 program, so that translates to $600,000 in added revenue. When I look at the sophistication of our marketing campaigns, I know my cost-per-lead, what we’re spending, what the results are, what the path of a student is to us, how we’re doing our lead management of these students, and why we’re doing all these things. I think that we are the most effective team on campus for doing that. A lot of university marketing is still very traditional. Many departments on campus are still doing billboards and radio. When we’re in meetings with other groups on campus and discussing our marketing activities, we get a lot of blank stares. I think it’s to PBJ’s credit that they stay current on some of the latest strategies and techniques for branding and marketing something traditional like a degree in an innovative space and a cost-effective way.

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