Goodwin University | GU Sees Continued Growth in Lead Volume Through Partnership with Synapse

THE SCENARIO

Goodwin University relies on their website presence as their primary means of prospective student lead generation and recruited Synapse SEM to build, launch and manage an SEO strategy in 2015. After working with an existing paid search agency for several years, Goodwin also transitioned their Google Ads and Bing Ads management to Synapse SEM in the fourth quarter of 2018. Synapse and Goodwin have since been partnered on the SEM/SEO channels, consistently reaching higher inquiry levels each year, despite largely flat marketing budgets. Following consecutive years in 2022 and 2023 of +50% YoY growth in SEM lead volume, paid search budgets were increased a substantial 25% year over year in 2024.Synapse was tasked with managing those budgets to continue the momentum in inquiry growth and avoid CPC inflation and other diminishing marginal returns on investment.

THE ACTION PLAN

With increased budgets now available, Synapse uncapped Goodwin’s most productive keyword sets to maximize impression share on top-converting themes. We also carefully tested network expansion with new Performance Max campaigns to increase exposure into additional Google properties like YouTube, Display and Gmail. We collaborated with Goodwin’s marketing team to develop new program-level guides for potential students—a softer CTA that could be used on landing pages for students not yet ready to speak with admissions staff members. We also executed a full-scale Quality Score improvement strategy including RSA, ad extension and landing page copy overhauls. Our goal was to improve Quality Scores to mitigate CPC increases that had hindered the effectiveness of past SEM budget increases. Finally, we also began importing deeper-funnel conversion data like qualified applications and enrollments into Google Ads from GU’s student management system.This allowed us to test deeper-funnel bidding models with a focus on lead quality rather than quantity.

THE RESULTS

Our budget expansion strategy was highly successful in FY24 with a 38% year over year increase in SEM leads—an increase that exceeded the roughly 25%increase in fiscal year budgets. The push to include secondary CTAs on landing pages with content guides proved highly successful—adding 417 incremental conversions throughout the year. Our Quality Score improvement strategy yielded an 11% YoY improvement, which helped us decrease CPCs by 18% year over year, despite Google reporting 15% YoY inflation in CPCs for the higher education industry. Deeper-funnel bidding strategies also significantly improved lead quality, and in our high priority Nursing campaign, qualified applicants increased 133% year over year.Uni