Bay Atlantic University
A private university based in Washington DC. I ran the funnel from awareness to application for international applicants with Google Ads, Meta Ads and SEO under one strategy (2025–2026).
Year by year, piece by piece.
Higher Education · Washington DC, US
Building the student acquisition funnel
Programme- and country-based Google Search/PMax + Meta lead campaigns; application-form and CRM conversions tracked with GTM/GA4
SEO programme pages
Keyword architecture and programme content based on international applicant queries
Budget plan by academic calendar
Seasonal budget allocation by enrolment periods, weekly optimisation cadence
What made this hard
In higher education, months separate the person who fills in a form from the student who actually enrols. The ad account shows applications the next day; the real outcome surfaces a term later. If that lag goes unnoticed, budget drifts toward the campaign that produces many applications and no students — I've written about that trap separately.
What I prioritised
I didn't treat applications as the goal on their own. We first built a measurement setup that could feed the qualified-applicant signal back into the account, then split campaign structure by programme so each one carried its own cost threshold. The budget plan follows the academic calendar: weight where demand forms, low tempo in the quiet months. The SEO side was built so programme pages are ready before the search demand arrives.
