Enhancing Lead Quality with Google Performance Max for Trade Schools

Background

Our client is a tech/trade school with several campuses across the Midwest, specializing in providing hands-on training for various technical fields. Over the past six years, our agency has collaborated with them to focus primarily on lead generation through paid search and paid social channels. As the client sought to increase the volume of leads while ensuring those leads converted into enrollments at a high rate, we explored Google’s new Performance Max campaigns as a potential solution.

Challenge

Performance Max campaigns are highly effective at driving online conversions, particularly in e-commerce, where the entire transaction takes place online. However, in the context of lead generation for education, the challenge arose when these campaigns began producing a high volume of low-quality leads. While the initial results seemed promising in terms of lead volume, the conversion to enrollments and actual students did not meet expectations. The client, however, remained committed to a full-funnel marketing approach and looked to us to optimize Performance Max for better lead quality and ultimately more enrollments.

Objectives

The primary objective was to leverage Google’s Performance Max campaigns to drive higher-quality leads that would convert into enrollments at a rate comparable to or better than existing campaigns. This involved ensuring that Performance Max could be integrated effectively into the client’s overall marketing strategy, driving not just more leads but also valuable enrollments.

Strategy

Our insight revealed that Performance Max’s success in e-commerce stemmed from its visibility into the entire customer journey, made possible by comprehensive data flows. To replicate this success in an educational lead generation environment, we needed to build similar data flows, giving the machine learning algorithms the data they needed to optimize for quality, not just volume. Our strategy included:

Updating Lead Capture Forms and CRM Integration: We updated the client’s lead capture forms and CRM to pass Google’s click IDs from individual leads into the CRM.

Identifying Key Customer Journey Milestones: We worked with the client to pinpoint key stages in the student enrollment process, including:

1. When a lead becomes admissions-qualified (An admissions representative makes contact and qualifies a lead)

2. When a prospective student attends a campus tour and interviews with an admissions counselor.

3. Enrollment: When a prospective student officially enrolls in a program.

Setting Up Offline Conversion Tracking: We established nightly exports from the CRM, sending data on leads that reached these key milestones back to Google’s algorithms as distinct conversion events.

Execution

The execution involved meticulous coordination with the client to ensure that every touchpoint in the customer journey was tracked and fed back into the Performance Max campaigns. By doing so, we enabled Google’s machine learning to optimize not just for lead volume, but for quality, leading to a more effective use of their ad spend.
Results

The integration of offline conversion tracking with Performance Max led to a significant improvement in lead quality while maintaining cost-effectiveness. The results can be categorized into four key lead types:

Program-Specific Leads: The largest portion of the spend, used as a baseline.

Branded Leads: High-value leads with the best cost per enroll, though limited by brand search volume.

Tech/Trade Leads: Generic tech/trade education leads, effective but with diminishing returns at high investment levels.

Performance Max Leads: Outperformed Program-Specific leads in several ways.

While the quality of Performance Max leads was approximately 17% lower in terms of lead-to-enroll rates compared to program-specific leads, the cost per lead was 65% lower. This resulted in a cost per enroll that was 59% lower than the program-specific campaigns, demonstrating the value of the full-funnel approach.

By the Numbers

Conclusion

The case study underscored the importance of aligning digital advertising strategies with a full understanding of the customer journey. By providing Google’s Performance Max campaigns with the necessary data, we were able to drive cost-effective, high-quality leads that translated into real student enrollments. This approach not only enhanced the client’s current marketing efforts but also provided a scalable model for future lead-generation campaigns.