Utilizing dual audiences to drive enrollment
Ad Campaigns, Digital Media, Website, Social Channel Activation
Moore Tech is an institution – both literally and metaphorically.
Literally, Moore Tech is a technical trade higher education institution that grants degrees, diplomas, and certificates, and provides innovative training in a variety of vocations.
Moore Tech is also a Memphis institution. Since 1939, the school has been training the tradespeople keeping Memphis moving. It has everything you want in a technical school: strong programs, faculty and staff who are invested in students’ outcomes, strong relationships with alumni and regional employers, and practical pathways into skilled careers.
Recently, Moore Tech noticed a change in their student body. Historically, Moore Tech benefited from a strong dual-enrollment class and non-traditional students who enrolled in evening courses. However, in recent years enrollment had shifted toward a more traditional student population, while evening-class enrollment for current professionals upskilling to advance had declined.
The school had a clear opportunity– if they could ride the wave of increasing traditional student interest and reinvigorate engagement with their evening programs, they could expand class offerings and meet workplace demand for trained graduates. With the right engagement strategy, they could drive enrollment from both student pathways.
Moore Tech was faced with a marketing challenge. How could they appeal to both types of students without creating confusion?
I have always found that when you try to craft a message that appeals to everyone, you end up appealing to no one. So, for Moore Tech the strategy was simple, two campaigns, each designed specifically to speak to the needs and desires of one target audience.
Their messaging to the traditional dual-enrollment students needed to be that a trade career is a credible and practical next step, and Moore Tech is a place where students just like them succeed.
To appeal to the working adult audience looking to enroll in evening classes and upskill, Moore Tech needed to convey that training can fit into their existing lives and help them advance without requiring them to go back to basics.
The reality is, Moore Tech is a perfect place for both of those audiences. We didn’t have to make anything up (and we never would), we just needed to capitalize on the existing proof points that Moore Tech was the right place to be for both groups. It was a 1-2-1 strategy. With one integrated and authentic brand, we could create two distinct messaging and conversation pathways to reach the exact same destination– enrollment.
In practical terms, that 1-2-1 strategy meant we had to pair performance marketing with human proof.
Paid search and display would capture active demand. We would refresh the website to give interested prospects a clear path to get answers about enrollment. The social channels would become a primary connection point for the entire student body past, present, and future.
These channels were perfect for elevating the everyday hero stories that showcased the impact the school was making in the lives of students, instructors, alumni, and employers.
A coordinated multi-channel approach targeting prospective students, their families and employer partners allowed us to saturate the market with those stories and proof points– keeping Moore Tech top-of-mind when it was time for enrollment.
To execute this strategy we carried out five workstreams:
Moore Tech was gaining visibility, but it needed a digital destination capable of turning increased awareness into enrollment. Before we could start doing any paid promotion, we needed to make sure the site we were sending them to was effective, with clear branding and pathways to becoming a student.
Moore Tech’s strongest selling points are its people, but those stories needed to become visible and reusable marketing assets.
MKC saw that this campaign didn’t need to invent a new identity for the school. It just needed to showcase the people who make the institution so valuable.
Moore Tech needed to reach prospects at different stages of interest, from initial awareness of the school, to actively researching programs and applications, to returning to the classroom to upskill for advancement opportunities.
We chose channels where our audiences were already searching. Search engines were key but YouTube, rich with DIY and instructional videos, and TikTok, primed for the high school crowd, were untapped opportunities to share the rich student experience stories we were collecting.
Moore Tech needed durable channels through which it could continue reaching students, working professionals, and community partners beyond a single paid ad campaign.
We wanted to make sure the school not only received a boost in its enrollment, but also had the collateral and pathways to maintain connections with its growing alumni network and community partners.
When it comes to metrics, what you measure matters. Clicks, impressions, and reach are big numbers but they are only a part of the story. Conversions are what you can take to the bank.
The campaign needed to demonstrate more than reach or general engagement. It needed to show whether prospective students were taking meaningful next steps.
MKC’s partnership with Moore Tech started in April 2026. By the end of July– just 3 months later–Moore Tech started seeing increased visibility online, more students and community members engaging with the school’s social media platforms, and higher rates of conversion from looking at ads about Moore Tech to actually looking at the application to attend.
As of publication of this case study, it’s too early to know how much this increased visibility, engagement, and conversions will affect enrollment numbers. But the data indicates extremely favorable results and internal team is making plans for Fall enrollment.
The Numbers
For starters, through July 26, SEM generated 933 tracked conversion actions:
Here are some of the numbers in more detail:
Moore Tech Campaign Results at a Glance
90 Day results
| Metric | Reported result | Relevant interpretation |
| SEM impressions | 13,805 | The campaign generated a meaningful volume of high-intent visibility. |
| July Click-through rate | 21.82% | 3x’s the typical engagement rate for trade schools and vocational programs. |
| Campaign conversion rate | 35.65% | More than one in three reported clicks produced a tracked action. |
| July conversion rate | 33.38% | More than triple the average conversion rate for Education (between 4.63% – 13.14%) |
We also saw a clear brand-demand signal: five of the top ten most-searched keywords driving traffic were Moore Tech-branded terms. This means that our audience was searching for Moore Tech by name, indicating a strong brand awareness and preference.
Social Results
Beyond the immediate numbers, our partnership with Moore Tech also resulted in some meaningful behavior changes.
For instance, in May, before the full rollout of our campaign, one student mentioned they “did not know Moore Tech had an Instagram account.”
By late July, after the rollout, the Moore Tech Instagram was experiencing consistent interaction, and we saw incredible improvement in organic social media engagement. Students began sharing posts, commenting, tagging themselves, and mentioning Moore Tech in their stories giving the school greater visibility and authentic peer endorsement among prospective students.
Moore Tech is making the most of its increased visibility, elevating dedicated staff and employer partners, engaging students, turning interest into enrollment, and showing the community more of what made it a foundational Memphis institution.
While we’re thrilled that the campaign drove clicks, calls, emails, and application interest, the bigger win was that Moore Tech activated it’s brand effectively across multiple channels. Strategy and thoughtful storytelling helped Moore Tech begin showing up like the institution it already was: proud of its people, useful to its employers, connected to its city, and ready to help the next student get to work.
The moral of this story: You don’t have to reinvent your brand to be successful. You just need to effectively capture and convey who you already are.
Is your business facing a marketing challenge like this? If your audience is evolving and you want to turn new interest into new customers, schedule a free consultation with Megan Klein Consulting today. We’ll help you develop an integrated marketing strategy and the materials to capitalize on new opportunities– without the brand identity crisis.
Let’s create a strategy that drives growth and delivers real results.
