Academic Pathways Beat Every Education Benchmark
Yakima Valley College needed prospective students to discover more than 55 degree programs and 100 certificates they had never heard of. Over six months we delivered 1.4 million impressions, 86,000 paid interactions, and 48,804 tracked site events, clearing every published education benchmark for click-through rate and engagement.
CHALLENGE
THE
Community colleges carry a marketing problem that four-year institutions rarely face. Their programs are the most accessible option available and the most invisible. Yakima Valley College offers over 55 professional and technical degrees plus more than 100 certificates, serving a region that is rural, largely bilingual, and spread across a wide geography. The challenge was not persuasion. It was discovery. YVC needed to reach prospective students at every stage of a decision, from a teenager who has never considered college to a career changer past 50, and get enough of them to act that the college could measure it.
We built a full-funnel strategy across three platforms, matched each to a different moment in the student decision journey, and let performance data reallocate investment as the campaign learned.
OUR
APPROACH
Reach Across the Full Consideration Set
Conversion Volume
Student-Centered Creative
889,800 impressions through Google Ads at a 7.52% click-through rate, roughly double the 3.78% education search benchmark
435,400 impressions on Meta reaching more than 107,000 unique users
107,406 impressions and 20,700 video views on Snapchat
Search, display, video, and social running together to catch students at different stages
More than 59,000 conversions recorded across the Google account
48,804 GA4 key events and a 57.22% site engagement rate
86,000 paid interactions across all three platforms
Google Display alone produced 52,444 clicks, Video another 14,471 at a 61.92% engagement rate
Every asset built around a real YVC student under the "Build your path, your way" line
Samuel, Carlee, Elijah, Jessica, Cosmo, Gian Carlo, Holly, and Carina, filmed on campus
The Samuel 15-second cut led all Meta creative with 2,823 clicks and a 3.24% CTR
On Snapchat, 15-second cuts more than doubled the swipe-up rates of their 30-second counterparts, with Cosmo at 11.35% and Carina at 10.13%
RESULTS
THE
The campaign cleared every available education benchmark:
Delivered more than 1.4 million impressions and 86,000 paid interactions across three platforms
Generated over 59,000 conversions and 48,804 GA4 key events
Held a 57.22% site engagement rate across the full six-month flight
Google Ads CTR of 7.52% against a 3.78% education search benchmark
Snapchat swipe-up rate of 5.23% against a healthy range of 0.35% to 1.5%, and a Meta CTR of 3.13% against a 1.74% education benchmark
STATS SHOW
WE DELIVER IMPACT
%
Click Through Rate
7.5%
Conversions
57%
Admission Increase
5.5%
OUR
STORY
The Academic Pathways campaign was never really about impressions. It was about a gap between what Yakima Valley College offers and what the community knows it offers. More than 55 degree programs and over 100 certificates, sitting in a region where a lot of families have never had a reason to look.
So we made the ads about people instead of programs. Elijah, Carlee, Samuel, Jessica, Cosmo, Gian Carlo, Holly, Carina. Real students, filmed on campus, talking about their own paths. The creative data settled the argument fast. Student-led video beat everything else on every platform, and the shortest cuts won most often. On Snapchat, the 15-second assets more than doubled the swipe-up rates of their 30-second counterparts. Authenticity and brevity, in that order.
What makes this campaign hard to argue with is that the engagement held all the way down the funnel. A 7.52% click-through rate is roughly twice the education search benchmark. A 5.23% Snapchat swipe-up rate is more than three times the top of the healthy range. And those clicks did not evaporate on arrival: 48,804 tracked key events and a 57.22% site engagement rate across six months say the traffic was qualified, not just plentiful. Reach that does not convert is noise. This converted.
What the campaign leaves behind is worth as much as what it delivered. Six months of data now show which creative formats work, which audience segments respond, and which platforms carry which part of the funnel. The next campaign does not start from zero. It starts from evidence, with a clear path toward multilingual creative and deeper reach into the underserved communities across YVC's service area.
WORK
GALLERY
