Case Study
40% More Nursing Leads: USD Hahn’s Paid Media Strategy
Scope
Overview
The University of San Diego’s Hahn School of Nursing and Health Science trains the next generation of advanced practice nurses through a range of postgraduate degrees. To reach more qualified prospective students, USD Hahn partnered with Vital to build and run a paid media program from the ground up.
The plan was straightforward. Get the right ads in front of the right people, send them to a page designed to convert, and grow the flow of qualified leads into the school’s nursing programs.
Goals
USD Hahn came to Vital with a clear objective to bring more qualified prospective students into the funnel for its postgraduate nursing programs.
That meant:
- Turning ad clicks into completed requests for information, not just traffic
- Growing the volume of qualified leads requesting information about the school’s nursing degrees
- Reaching prospective students wherever they search, from people exploring nursing programs broadly to those weighing specific degrees
Challenges
Recruiting qualified candidates for advanced nursing degrees comes with real obstacles. Three stood out.
A specific, hard-to-reach audience.
Prospective postgraduate nursing students are a narrow group defined by education level, field of study, and career intent. Generic targeting wastes ad spend on people who will never apply. The audience had to be defined precisely before a single ad ran.
Many paths to the same decision.
Some prospects search for nursing programs in broad terms. Others look for a specific degree, and still others compare schools on reputation or outcomes. A campaign built around one type of search would miss the rest.
Clicks that stall before converting.
Driving traffic is the easy part. A prospect who lands on a cluttered page, hunts for the request form, or gets pulled off to another section rarely comes back to convert. The destination (landing page) had to work as hard as the ads.
Vital’s Approach
Vital built the program around two ideas working together:
- Targeting precise enough to reach qualified prospects
- A landing page built to turn those visits into requests for information
Here’s how each piece came together.
A layered paid search keyword structure
Hours were spent on keyword research before the first ad ran, shaping not just which terms to bid on but how to organize them. The structure blends general nursing school terms, program-specific terms, and terms built around the school’s competitive advantages. Whichever way a prospect searches, there’s an ad ready to meet them.
Audience signals stacked for precision
For paid social, audience research defined the signals that identify a qualified prospect, then layered them. Education level, field of study, and areas of interest combine into a targeting profile that puts USD Hahn in front of people genuinely interested in earning a postgraduate nursing degree.
A landing page built to convert
Vital’s designers and developers built a dedicated landing page that follows paid media best practices and aligns with the school’s brand. They removed exit opportunities that pull visitors off track, moved the request for information (RFI) form up beside the value proposition, and added a clear call to action in the hero section. Stats, social proof, and a testimonial video round out the page, demonstrating the school’s expertise and giving prospects a reason to trust it.
Results
After seven full months of paid media, the program speaks for itself.
+40%
Increase in lead volume, year over year
Comparing those seven months to the same stretch one year prior, USD Hahn’s lead volume came in more than 40 percent higher. The paid media program is responsible for nearly all of that growth.
The targeting put the school’s degrees in front of qualified prospects, and the landing page gave them a clear path to take the next step.
Vital has become a true extension of our team. They’re responsive, collaborative, and thoughtful problem solvers who adapt quickly when priorities shift. Rather than pushing back, they work alongside us to find the best solutions.
— Tricia Guerrero
Director of Marketing and Communications, USD Hahn School of Nursing and Health Science
What’s Next
For USD Hahn, the win came from making the ads and the landing page deliver on the same promise. Precise paid search and paid social brought qualified prospects in, and a landing page rebuilt around conversion turned their interest into requests for information. The leads that matter to the school’s nursing programs are up, and the climb has been steady.
A lot of that comes down to the partnership itself. USD Hahn’s team tests willingly, shares what they see on their end, and acts on what the data shows. That kind of collaboration is what keeps a program improving month over month. Seven months in, the program is performing, and there’s more room to grow.
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