Wharton Reaches Niche Target Audience & Sees Lift in Applications with Acronym’s Search Synergy Strategy

Challenges

Understand the goal of each audience and match Paid Search campaigns and SEO optimizations to these audiences, while differentiating the Wharton brand in a very competitive online environment.

Objective

• The audience target is extremely niche and typically addresses top-level executives only. The path to purchase is not only fragmented requiring different people involved, but course price points are extremely high and educational information is required to understand the nuances of all the programs.

• The online landscape changes rapidly and many brands, including Wharton, encounter difficulty adapting to those changes. Often, this agility challenge is due to brand requirements to balance legacy programs with new programs. As a result, it can be difficult to effectively target SEO recommendations and Paid Search budgets to the better-performing programs in a balance with legacy programs. Additionally, for SEO, the challenge becomes that necessary changes cannot be readily executed due to internal resource allocations.

Wharton Executive Education is a fully-accredited, world-renowned provider of executive education, encompassing more than 50 programs designed to prepare executives to lead change across diverse organizations and geographical locations. Wharton Executive Education appeals to executives in diverse industries, offering executive education programs in finance and wealth management, leadership, marketing and sales, senior management, and strategy management. The Executive Education program is selective and methods of reaching the appropriate candidates include a mix of online and offline efforts.

Background

• 129% increase in Applications

• Delivered 7:0 ROAS

• 67% decrease in CPC

• Increased Application revenue by 10% (Domestic) and 26% (International)

• Targeted video advertising strategies resulted in course sign-ups

• Increased organic visibility and ranking in FY 2015

acronym New York London Singapore

Empire State Building | 350 Fifth Ave, Suite 6520, New York, NY 10118 | Phone: +1 212.691.7051 | Email: info@acronym.com | www.acronym.com

129 Increase in Applications

67 Decrease in CPC

New York London Singaporeacronym

Empire State Building | 350 Fifth Ave, Suite 6520, New York, NY 10118 | Phone: +1 212.691.7051 | Email: info@acronym.com | www.acronym.com

Our seven year AOR partnership with Wharton Executive Education is proof of our ability to constantly drive year over year results and success.

• Overall Results YTD:

• 129% increase in Applications, On track to deliver 7:0 ROAS (3 points higher than projected)

• Decrease in CPC will be 67%

• Improved the average App price from $ 13,137 to $ 14,392 and Internationally $ 16,620

• Expanded coverage to 41 countries (last year 13)

• Most relevant growth in LATAM & AFR

• Paid Search: Acronym identified programs that have contributed revenue from overseas markets and has targeted budget strategically to these programs. As a result, Wharton has received greater returns with relatively lower spend overall.

• Video Advertising: 55% of the videos were watched more than 2 minutes (most videos ran over 3 minutes). Wharton did not have to pay for videos watched under 30 seconds. Age demographics targeted were precisely in Wharton’s core target audience. 11% of those who viewed the videos visited the website and were attributed to 4% of course sign-ups.

• SEO: Strategic implementation of Acronym’s content and technical recommendations led to increased organic visibility and ranking in FY 2015, and the upward trend continues. These results have been achieved, even with a challenging CRM system and internal resource challenges at Wharton.

• Search Synergy: Given the high cost of keywords and resource constraints at Wharton, Acronym routinely audits the performance of the Paid Search and SEO programs and proposes strategic changes to more efficiently manage and maximize effectiveness. For example, in paid search, keywords are often removed if high rankings are visible. For SEO, where content is lacking, paid search provides a good testing ground to determine if efforts involved in content development should be addressed.

• Market Segmentation: In Paid Search, Acronym has identified under-served markets with potential, and targeted spend effectively to those markets.

• Video Advertising: Given the complexity of the Wharton programs, video provides a great asset for addressing upper funnel customers. Consumers from video ads are driven to the website and tracked specifically to determine their influence on the purchase decision. Video was also utilized across international audiences and platforms tailored to specific markets in APJ, AFR and MEE.

• Content Strategy: Acronym has made strategic content expansion recommendations, balanced with attention to site technical aspects, and has advised Wharton on how best to prioritize those recommendations.

• Technical Recommendation: Acronym quickly responds to engine changes and provides counsel and technical recommendations to keep content and pages visible and at the top of the SERP.

Strategies

Results