CASE STUDY | CUSTOMER ACQUISITION Boosting student enrollment at a leading MUA school (during COVID)
THE ASK | CMU
The College of Makeup Art & Design (CMU) is one of North America's top colleges for professional and special effects makeup. They had been working with another agency that was spending a whole lot of CMU's marketing budget on ads that weren't performing.
CMU needed to switch gears and realign their marketing strategy to get more butts in seats (er, students enrolled) at a reasonable cost per student. Enter Human Code to save the day.
The primary challenge was that CMU didn't have a defined customer journey or funnel to capture its target audience.
THE APPROACH | CMU
Our approach began with defining their target audience and persona. Who are they, what's relevant to them (and at what points in time), and where are they hanging out? Defining this enabled us to create a streamlined customer journey that started with an attention-grabbing and gated quiz.
One of the hurdles we had to overcome that is worth mentioning is the impact of COVID. CMU is an in-person, hands-on learning environment, and COVID got in the way of marketing its appeal. Combine that with the increase in online makeup artistry schools and resources marketed as convenient alternatives, and you see the challenges.
That didn't stop us from creating campaigns to fight these narratives. With our persona and customer journey established, we promoted their value proposition and key selling features through numerous paid and social campaigns and an overhauled website with fresh, targeted messaging. We ultimately positioned CMU as a formidable learning experience that you can't get anywhere else.
THE RESULTS | CMU
We helped CMU realize a considerable boost in student enrollment, by +50%, to be exact!
We also reduced their customer acquisition cost by -69%. It sure pays to have a targeted customer acquisition program in place.
Our growth teams are at your service.
