In short
- 18.2M combined impressions in a quarter, 4,013 Meta leads at under nine dollars each, 7,767 Google conversions at under three dollars each.
- The creative direction came from reading 19 ads' worth of performance data: employment outcomes beat program descriptions.
- Continuity compounds. An account that remembers last year starts every intake ahead of the account starting over.
Enrollment marketing with a memory
Most enrollment marketing runs in bursts. A campaign launches, an intake closes, the learnings evaporate, and next year starts from zero, often with a new agency holding the keys. St. Lawrence College runs it differently, and the numbers show what the difference buys.
A college with a whole portfolio to fill
St. Lawrence College is a Canadian public college in Ontario with a program portfolio that runs from Firefighter training and Electrical Techniques to Autism and Behavioural Science, plus its online offering.
Filling seats across a portfolio that wide is nothing like promoting one flagship course. Each program has its own audience, its own seasonality, its own competitors for attention.
What this meansTreat the portfolio as one blob and the strong programs subsidize invisibility for the rest.
One system, three layers of media
The media mix covers the whole journey, and each layer has a job.
- 11 active campaigns across Search, Display and YouTube. From April through late July: 13.3 million impressions, 115,006 clicks at 18 cents each, and 7,767 tracked conversions at under three dollars per conversion.
- Meta
- The social layer does the heavy lifting on lead volume. Same window: 4.89 million impressions, 429,057 people reached, 58,170 link clicks at a 1.19% link CTR, and 4,013 website leads at under nine dollars per lead.
- Digital out of home
- Placements planned program by program with the college's own team, putting SLC on physical screens in the market it recruits from.
Screens don't retarget, but they make the next social ad feel familiar, and familiarity is half the battle in education marketing.
What this meansFor a public college, four thousand prospective students raising their hands in a quarter is the front door, and the other layers exist to make that door easier to walk through.
The discovery that came from the ads
The most useful insight in this account wasn't invented in a meeting. It came from reading the performance of 19 active ads in the Meta conversion campaign: creatives anchored in employment outcomes were beating creatives that described the programs.
What this meansThe ad account is a research tool. Read it before the next brainstorm.
Where the compounding actually happens
The partnership runs on cadence. Monthly reports read the funnel and name the next moves. Budget redistributions arrive with their reasoning attached and get approved before they happen, campaign by campaign, PO by PO, with the college's team in the loop on everything from program campaigns to the out of home plan. The annual comparative puts each year against the last, so decisions follow trend lines.
Procedural? Sure. But look at what it produces: a client that approves changes fast because every change comes with evidence, and an account where learnings from each intake survive into the next one. The alternative, rotating agencies and annual restarts, pays a tax nobody invoices: rebuilt tracking, relearned audiences, repeated mistakes.
What this meansYears of optimization on the same account, one approved budget table revised on data, and zero learnings lost between intake cycles.
The takeaway
Enrollment marketing rewards memory. The account that remembers which creatives worked, which programs need which season, and what last year said, starts every intake ahead of the account starting over. St. Lawrence College's edge isn't a trick. It's 18 million impressions a quarter, four thousand leads, and a system that never forgets.
- Give each media layer one job: capture, stay visible, build consideration
- Read ad performance for creative direction before writing new assets
- Send every budget change with its reasoning attached, and get it approved
- Compare each year to the last so decisions follow trend lines
