A university seeking to increase qualified applicants for a graduate program leading to a Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) degree experienced lead to enrollment timeline cut in half.
Data-driven, highly targeted PPC campaign results in immediate increase of qualified graduate program candidates.

Campaign Results
60%
Decrease in time from lead to enrollment
20.3%
Goal conversion rate, nearly 4x greater than the educational industry average
129%
Greater click-through rate than the educational industry average (8.7% vs 3.8%)
Challenge
Increase qualified applicants and shorten the lead to enrollment cycle.
Advance 360 Education was challenged to increase qualified applications for a Doctor of Physical Therapy graduate degree and to shorten the lead to enrollment cycle, which was anticipated by the school to be 12-15 months based on the school’s admissions cycle. Typically, the pool of student prospects is relatively small for an extremely specialized degree leading to a much longer student enrollment cycle. Candidates are typically in an established career in the field, making an appeal to invest in a graduate program more challenging than that of undergraduate enrollments.
Strategy
Developed a digital advertising strategy, focused 100% in PPC to quickly generate interest among in-market candidates for a program which had not been aggressively marketed previously.
- Conducted pre-campaign research to determine periods of greatest search activity for physical therapy degrees and launched campaign in advance to have the campaign fully optimized during the most critical periods.
- Developed a two-prong PPC keyword strategy. The campaign launched with a relatively broad keyword set to initially attract a wide net of potential candidates and quickly optimizing toward keywords that showed the greatest return. Simultaneously a focus was placed on a very strategic set of exact match keywords designed to reach people who were closer to making a decision.
- To maximize the reach generated by the campaign and capitalize on the traffic that is being generated to the landing page, we implemented re-messaging as part of the PPC strategy to continue engaging the people who have visited the landing page but have not converted.