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Case Study
IIT Patna

How We Built a Quality-First Acquisition Engine for IIT Patna That Improved MQLs by 53% While Cutting CPL by 41%

Indian Institute of Technology Patna is one of India’s IITs – carrying a level of academic credibility and recognition that immediately creates interest among prospective students.

For its Hybrid Bachelor’s and Master’s programs, however, the brand pull created an interesting performance marketing challenge.

Generating enquiries wasn’t enough. The programs catered to fundamentally different audiences – from students considering an online Bachelor’s degree to working professionals evaluating a Master’s alongside their careers. High enquiry volumes could therefore quickly overwhelm the admissions funnel if campaigns attracted people interested primarily in the IIT name rather than the program itself.

Key Business Challenge

Build a scalable student acquisition engine across India that could leverage the strength of the IIT brand while filtering that interest into genuinely relevant prospective students - improving MQL volume without sacrificing acquisition efficiency.

Campaign

Education - India

Industry

Higher Education

Key Growth Levers

Meta Ads | Google Ads | LinkedIn Ads

Before Re-architecting, We Diagnosed
Where Strong Brand Pull Wasn’t Automatically Translating Into Lead Quality

Brand Interest ≠ Program Intent

The IIT name naturally attracted attention. But an enquiry driven by institutional recognition wasn’t necessarily a prospect with the right program fit or enrolment intent.

Lead Volume Was an Incomplete Optimisation Signal

Optimising platforms around form submissions rewarded campaigns for finding people likely to enquire – not necessarily people likely to qualify.

Post-Click Experience Influenced Lead Quality

Landing pages needed to do more than convert traffic. They had to communicate program relevance clearly enough for prospects to self-qualify before entering the admissions pipeline.

From Brand-Led Enquiries to
A Full-Funnel Acquisition Engine Built Around Student Fit

Separate Journeys for Bachelor’s and Master’s Audiences

Built distinct audience, messaging and value-proposition frameworks around each program – speaking differently to students choosing their next degree.

Landing Pages Built to Qualify, Not Just Convert

Improved landing experiences and conversion journeys so prospects understood the program proposition before submitting an enquiry – reducing the gap between lead generation and admissions relevance.

#ROI

IIT Credibility + Program Value

The IIT Patna name created attention and trust, while communication progressively shifted toward program relevance, career value and reasons to enrol.

Meta, Google & LinkedIn Given Different Roles

Used the platforms across different moments of discovery and intent, rather than expecting every channel to solve the same acquisition problem.

CRM Signals Trained Media Towards MQLs

Fed downstream qualification signals back into advertising platforms, allowing campaign optimisation to progressively move from “Who will submit a form?” to “Who looks like a qualified prospective student?”

We treated IIT Patna’s brand equity as an acquisition advantage, not the acquisition strategy itself. Media, messaging, landing pages and CRM signals were structured around identifying the right prospects within the much larger pool of people attracted to the IIT name.

Within 6 Months of Launch
Here Were Our Results

Leads Generated
0 +
Marketing Qualified Leads
↑ 0 %
Cost per Lead
↓ 0 %
Bonus Win!

The strongest outcome was what happened after the lead was generated.

While CPL fell by 41%, MQLs increased by 53% – showing that improving efficiency didn’t require loosening qualification standards. By feeding actual lead quality back into media optimisation, we made the acquisition engine cheaper while simultaneously making its output more valuable to the admissions team.

Our Learnings
We Go Beyond Lead Generation

We Turn Institutional Trust Into Qualified Student Demand

01

A powerful education brand can generate enormous interest, but brand affinity and program intent are different signals. Performance marketing has to separate the two.

02

Bachelor’s and Master’s acquisition cannot share the same persuasion logic. The closer messaging reflects the actual career decision, the stronger the qualification upstream.

03

Lead quality shouldn’t remain an admissions-team problem. Feeding MQL outcomes back into media makes qualification part of the acquisition algorithm itself.

04

Strong brand equity works hardest when it earns the first moment of attention - while program relevance does the work of moving the right prospect forward.

For us, education performance marketing isn’t about monetising brand recognition – it’s about turning that recognition into qualified demand from students for whom the program genuinely fits.
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