Maximizing Market Coverage: How Data-Driven Targeting Unlocked 28% Growth in Underserved Markets

The Challenge

A statewide higher education organization in Indiana partnered with me to generate leads for their educational institutions. While the campaign successfully delivered cost-effective leads, stakeholders identified a critical issue: low program utilization in suburban and rural communities. This highlighted the need to balance lead generation efficiency with geographic equity across Indiana’s 92 counties.

The Approach

To address this complex challenge, I developed a comprehensive strategy that combined market analysis with advanced campaign optimization:

Market Analysis Framework

• Population demographics

• Education rates

• Age distribution

• Regional economic indicators

Geographic Campaign Data Analysis

• Per capita advertising spend by county

• Organic interest rates per capita

• Market saturation indices

• Geographic analysis

By analyzing these metrics in tandem, I identified clear correlations in the parts of the market that the client had a vested interest in reaching—geographic areas with lower educational attainment, worse outcomes according to economic indicators, and aging populations that would need to be replaced in the workforce—and the parts of the market that the client's digital-first campaigns were optimizing away from based on lower conversion rates and, by extension, higher CPAs. In short, users in underserved areas made fewer searches for education and job training opportunities and they engaged with paid search ads less often, leading to them being less engaged at every stage from awareness to action.

This could be for any number of reasons, only some which can be addressed by pulling campaign levers.

Strategic Implementation

To address these imbalances, I implemented a three-tier solution:

1. Value-Based Optimization

The most straightforward remedy is to implement geographic value-based bidding optimizations in order to manipulate the platforms' bidding algorithms to favor the underserved markets. This had a few notable impacts:

• It increased the proportion of activity that was going to underserved markets but it did not close the gap entirely despite the fact that impression share for these markets had suggested maximum reach.

• A decrease in average CPA in underserved markets.

2. Dedicated Awareness Campaigns

Because analyses suggested demand for programs was simply lower in underserved areas, I increased the proportion of mid-funnel awareness campaigns, especially those that could serve a hybrid function by contributing leads and delivering cost effective impressions simultaneously.

• Within 6 months, these campaigns led to 18% increases search volume and 14% increases in lead volume from search compared to the prior year.

• At the same time, these campaigns contributed cost effective leads. that were 74% cheaper than the previous paid social awareness campaigns while only being slightly more expensive in CPMs.

Custom Creative and Copy

Despite the increased reach and scale afforded to us by the previous two remedies, users in underserved markets still engaged and converted in lower rates suggesting there may be a bias in how ads are constructed to be more appealing to users in the adequately served markets happened to be more urban by comparison. The findings in this testing were surprisingly impactful and warranted the order of additional market research to make further improvements.

• After testing ads with imagery that featured urban landscapes versus rural or suburban landscapes, I discovered that suburban landscapes performed the best - by far - for suburban and rural users. Urban landscapes had dominated previous advertising, causing urban and suburban users to presume the program was not for them.

• Ad Copy that highlighted programs that users perceived to be prevalent in their area were most effective. Business administration and Accounting programs performed well in urban areas but were mediocre in underserved rural areas. On the other hand, welding was especially effective in suburban and rural areas because users in those areas felt familiar with those pathways.

Results

My strategic adjustments delivered impressive outcomes while maintaining campaign efficiency:

• 28% YoY increase in leads from underserved communities

• Maintained overall lead volume and cost efficiency

• Improved advisor utilization rates in rural branches, which contributed to the client's organizational sustainability

  • By extension, this prevented branch closures due to perceived low demand that would have shrunken the client's service area.

• Contributed to regional equity by improving program utilization among marginalized and underserved populations.

Key Takeaways

By taking a data-first approach, performing in-depth data analysis exposed opportunities for custom campaigns to address local market factors that broad campaigns and algorithms could not reliably address and contribute to growth.