The Challenge
Ashland University’s Dauch College of Business & Economics offered one of the most flexible MBAs in Ohio: 6 formats, from a traditional full-time program to a 1-year online MBA, taught online and at 5 Ohio locations, with 11 specializations from Business Analytics to Sport Management.
Flexibility was the program’s biggest selling point, but it was only filling 1 cohort a year. To grow, the college needed a steady flow of qualified prospects, and a way for each of them to find the format, location, and specialization that fit their life, then raise their hand.
What I Did
I ran the engagement end to end in 3 roles at once: project manager, marketing manager, and lead developer, working directly with the Dean of the business school.
- Managed the project and the relationship with the Dean, turning enrollment goals into a scope, a timeline, and a plan the team could deliver against.
- Led development of a dedicated MBA website, mba.ashland.edu, on a custom WordPress theme. I built it responsive from the start and organized it the way students actually choose a program: by format, location, and specialization, with a clear path to apply.
- Built conversion into every page. A “Ready to Learn More?” form sits beside the main message and asks for program of interest, so every lead reached admissions already sorted by the program they wanted.
- Put the proof up front: national and Ohio rankings, ACBSP accreditation, AACSB membership, a 5,000+ alumni network, and the GMAT and GRE waiver, all answering a prospect’s first questions before they had to ask.
- Managed the marketing, running Google Ads campaigns that drove prospective students to the site and tracking lead volume and quality in Google Analytics, so spend went toward the leads admissions could actually enroll.
The Result
The campaign produced more than 2,500 leads in its first year, and more than half were qualified. The program filled multiple cohorts per program, against 1 the year before.
Because one person owned the plan, the website, and the campaign, nothing was lost in hand-offs: what the ads promised, the site delivered, and every form fill arrived with the information admissions needed to follow up.