We work with a variety of consumer-facing and B2B companies who acquire customers and leads online. Below is a look at how we worked with one of our clients to optimize their paid social campaigns.
Background
QuickStart is an online workforce readiness platform that offers training to IT and tech professionals. Using a combination of AI and virtual instructor-led certification training, QuickStart prepares teams and individuals to be major contributors at work. QuickStart also offers certification training to individuals who want to advance their careers.
Texas A&M University is one of the universities that partners with QuickStart to deliver career training to individuals. This media plan was created for the Texas A&M University at Kingsville brand in partnership with QuickStart.
Challenge
With limited bandwidth and in-house expertise, QuickStart contacted 3rd + Lamar to develop a comprehensive paid social media strategy that would scale their program. From their research, they were confident about the size of the total addressable market, and they knew that their current ad campaigns were underperforming. Their goal was to lower their customer acquisition cost (CAC) by either reducing their cost per lead (CPL) or by increasing their lead-to-enrollment conversion rate.
Solution
Our plan was to focus the majority of QuickStart’s social media budget on Facebook and Instagram ads, and spend the remaining dollars on Reddit and Quora ads. Our hypothesis was that by optimizing the ad creative, QuickStart could run more cost-efficient campaigns and increase lead volume.
“3rd + Lamar knows how to scale and reduce CAC without depreciating lead quality.”
-Ed Sattar, CEO, QuickStart
To start, we tested animated GIFs in place of static images. We surmised that animated GIFs would capture more attention and result in higher reach, impressions, and clicks. Also, we predicted that the additional reach and traffic to the website would translate into more leads at a lower CPL.
In addition to testing new ad creative, we expanded the audiences to reach more people. This included new lookalike audiences at various population sizes above 1% of the U.S. population. The seed audience for the lookalike audience was based on existing leads.
Results
In the two weeks after the launch of the new ad campaigns compared to the two weeks prior:
- Impressions: Up 213%
- Reach: Up 178%
- Link Clicks: Up 240%
- Leads: Up 197%
- Cost per Lead: Down 25%
Do you need help with online customer acquisition or lead gen? Contact us at [email protected] and see more case studies here.
