Rebuilding a 50+ person global performance function across 30+ institutions
Transformed the global performance marketing function of an international higher education group. New operating model, governance and QA, modern attribution and reporting with first-party data, executive dashboards in Looker Studio and Power BI, AI-driven optimisation and an AI Search programme.
Case studies / Higher education
The situation
A global higher education group with more than thirty institutions across several countries, each recruiting students through paid search, paid social and partner channels. Joseph joined as Global VP Performance Marketing in 2025.
The problem
Each institution ran its own marketing with its own agencies and its own reporting. Spend was hard to compare across the group. Lead quality varied widely, and the link between media spend and enrolments was not measured consistently. Prospective students had started using AI assistants to research courses, and the group had no view of how it appeared in those answers.
What Joseph did
- Rebuilt the team. A 50+ person international performance marketing function, reorganised around markets and channels with clear ownership.
- Introduced governance and QA. A planning and approval cycle, quality checks on every account, and a common set of standards for agencies.
- Modernised attribution and reporting. First-party data from the admissions systems connected to media data, so bidding and reporting worked to qualified leads and enrolments, not raw leads.
- Built executive dashboards. Looker Studio and Power BI dashboards for the leadership team, with one page per market and one for the group.
- Embedded AI-driven optimisation in bidding, creative and reporting.
- Ran a conversion programme. Landing pages and forms tested across the institutions.
- Led the AI Search programme. Measured how the institutions appeared in ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI answers, and started the content and structure work to improve it.
The result
- Qualified lead efficiency improved by 55%.
- Conversion rate improved by 50%.
- Cost per qualified lead fell by 25%.
What this means for you
Long buying cycles, several markets and several agencies are a hard combination. The answer is an operating model and measurement that work across all of them. Joseph has built one at scale.
Talk to Joseph about your account
A thirty-minute call. You describe the account, Joseph tells you what he would look at first. No deck, no pitch.