Google Ads campaign — University of San DiegoKnauss School of Business
A 10-week paid search campaign for the University of San Diego’s own business school, run on a live budget across three rounds of optimisation.
Click-through rate across 54,000+ impressions
The brief
The Knauss School of Business needed to compete for attention against better-known business schools in Southern California. Naliyah led the five-person team commissioned through the University of San Diego to plan and run a live Google Ads campaign over ten weeks — real budget, real account, three rounds of optimisation.
Who it had to reach
Three audiences at once: prospective undergraduates choosing where to study business, current undergraduates hunting for specialised degrees or study abroad, and international and MBA candidates already working and looking to move.
The strategy
Round one was deliberately broad, built as a discovery phase to find out what the market actually searched for rather than what the school assumed it did. Every round after that cut what failed and put the budget behind what worked.
The execution
Round one went wide: majors and minors, Southern California location terms, and the names of competing San Diego business schools. Round two cut the competitor terms and expanded into specific programmes and study abroad. Round three concentrated on MBA and branded USD terms, with ad copy benchmarked against other universities.
| Round | Impressions | Clicks | Cost per click |
|---|---|---|---|
| One | 4,687 | 843 | $0.35 |
| Two | 17,992 | 1,364 | $0.40 |
| Three | 31,599 on the top ad alone | — | $0.29 |
The result
Over 54,000 impressions and 3,814 clicks, at a 7.03% click-through rate and an average cost per click of $0.34. Cost per click fell 17% between the first round and the last, so the campaign got cheaper as it got bigger.
What it proved
The assumptions lost. Small class sizes, the university’s Catholic identity and even named faculty — things the school leads with — drew almost nothing. What people searched for was the qualification: accounting, finance, business analytics, MBA, study abroad. The campaign got cheaper and bigger every round because it followed the search data instead of the pitch.
The work
