COMPANY
YEAR
BUDGET
ROLE
Project description
As Digital Marketing Specialist for Oregon State University's College of Engineering, I developed and launched a comprehensive paid media campaign designed to increase awareness and application activity for four strategically important undergraduate engineering programs: Chemical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Nuclear Science & Engineering.
The campaign included:
Full-funnel audience targeting
Creative strategy
Paid media execution
Landing page outline and development
Conversion tracking
Performance measurement
Rather than relying solely on traditional awareness or conversion tactics, I built a multi-channel recruitment strategy that combined program-specific awareness campaigns with retargeting and conversion-focused advertising. A dedicated application-focused landing page was created to provide a streamlined path from ad engagement to application submission, helping prospective students move efficiently through the recruitment funnel.
The initiative required end-to-end ownership, including campaign strategy, audience development, media planning, landing page architecture, creative direction, ad asset development, implementation, reporting, and ongoing optimization.
Timeline
July 2025 - February 2026
The campaign launched with awareness-focused advertising across Google Display and Meta, targeting prospective students actively researching engineering and higher education opportunities across western-undergraduate-exchange (WUE) states.
Awareness efforts were followed by highly targeted retargeting and conversion campaigns across Google Demand Gen and Meta, encouraging engaged audiences to request information and begin the application process.
The strategy leveraged multiple ad formats including display ads, testimonial videos, testimonial image ads, internship-focused messaging, scholarship-focused messaging, and application urgency campaigns. Throughout the campaign, creative performance, audience behavior, and conversion data were continuously monitored to identify the most effective combinations of messaging and targeting.
KPIs
Success was measured against several key objectives:
Increase awareness and visibility of targeted engineering programs
Drive qualified traffic to program and application pages
Increase recruitment-focused actions such as Apply Now clicks and Request Information submissions
Improve conversion efficiency through audience retargeting
Increase application volume for targeted programs
Establish a scalable framework for future program-specific recruitment campaigns
Process
Research & Planning
The campaign was designed using a full-funnel marketing framework that aligned awareness, consideration, and conversion efforts into a single coordinated strategy. Four undergraduate engineering programs were selected based on recruitment priorities, and custom audience segments were developed using website behavior, education intent signals, and demographic targeting.
Messaging was intentionally segmented by funnel stage. Awareness campaigns focused on hands-on learning opportunities, career readiness, student outcomes, and program exploration. Conversion campaigns shifted toward application urgency, scholarship opportunities, student testimonials, and confidence-building messaging designed to motivate prospective students to take action.
A dedicated campaign landing page was also planned and developed to provide a focused application experience rather than driving prospective students directly into broader university navigation. This allowed for stronger message alignment between advertisements and conversion pathways.
Implementation
I led the development and launch of paid media campaigns across Google Display, Google Demand Gen, Meta Awareness, and Meta Conversion placements. The media strategy utilized both prospecting and retargeting tactics to move users through the recruitment funnel.
Creative assets included:
Program-specific display advertisements
Testimonial videos
Testimonial image ads
Scholarship-focused messaging
Internship-focused messaging
User-generated style video creative
Application urgency campaigns
Creative concepts were tested across multiple placements and audience segments to identify the formats most likely to drive recruitment actions.
The custom landing page became a central component of the user journey, consolidating program messaging, application deadlines, scholarship information, and calls-to-action into a single destination.
Measuring & Optimization
Throughout the campaign, performance was monitored at the audience, placement, and creative level. Recruitment conversion actions were tracked across channels, allowing budget to be shifted toward higher-performing audiences, channels and ad formats.
Performance analysis revealed that testimonial-based creative consistently generated the strongest results. Testimonial video ads delivered the highest volume of recruitment actions, while testimonial image ads also performed efficiently across both Google and Meta. Conversely, user-generated style video creative underperformed expectations and informed future creative recommendations.
Retargeting audiences proved particularly valuable, generating low-cost recruitment actions while helping move previously engaged website visitors further toward application submission.
Results
124K
new users to the engineering website through paid campaigns
4,400+
website recruitment actions generated
28%
increase in applications across the four targeted engineering programs compared to the previous year
High-performing landing page experience
The dedicated application landing page became a significant contributor to campaign success, attracting approximately 124,000 users and generating 6,675 key events. More importantly, 5.5% of visitors clicked through to begin the application process, validating the effectiveness of a focused conversion experience tailored to prospective engineering students.
Efficient conversion performance
Retargeting and conversion campaigns generated 4,364 recruitment actions at an average cost-per-action of approximately $5, substantially outperforming several other recruitment marketing initiatives and demonstrating the effectiveness of audience-based retargeting strategies.
Increased applications across target programs
The campaign's strongest outcome was its impact on application growth. Collectively, the four targeted programs experienced a 17% increase in applications year-over-year. Individual programs also saw significant gains, including 55% growth for Industrial Engineering, 28% growth for Nuclear Science & Engineering, 28% growth for Electrical & Computer Engineering, and 23% growth for Chemical Engineering.
DESERT FOX DIGITAL