How an initial account cleanup and ongoing agency partnership cut paid search spend by 39% while pushing CTR to 11% and CVR to 9%
UVA McIntire School of Commerce
Overview
Upon joining UVA McIntire in September 2021, I inherited a Google Ads account burdened by a loose, overly broad strategy where ad spend was being wasted on single-word keywords that drove unqualified traffic. Recognizing paid search as a high-intent channel, I immediately executed an emergency account audit and keyword cleanup. This turnaround established a clean foundation for onboarding our new agency partner, with whom I collaborated through 2022 and 2024 to drive sustained performance gains.
Objectives
- Eliminate Wasteful Ad Spend: Identify and purge broad, single-word terms driving irrelevant traffic and inflating acquisition costs.
- Capitalize on High Intent: Realign campaign architecture, ad copy, and search terms around prospective students actively seeking graduate business education.
- Enable Long-Term Agency Success: Rebuild account structure, negative keyword lists, and match-type hygiene to give our incoming agency partner a clean, high-performing foundation to build on.
- Maximize Campaign Efficiency: Drive down overall spend while simultaneously elevating click-through rates (CTR) and conversion rates (CVR).
Approach
- Immediate Account Cleanup (Late 2021): Conducted a granular review in Google Ads to prune wasteful single-word broad match terms, refreshed ad copy, and established strict negative keyword lists to stop budget bleed within the first few months.
- Agency Onboarding and Alignment: Standardized account taxonomy, conversion tracking, and match-type hygiene, providing our new agency partner with a clean baseline and clear strategic guardrails from day one.
- Ongoing Strategy and Governance: Partnered closely with the agency on continuous optimization, ad copy testing, restructuring, an experimentation around high-intent graduate program categories.
Results and Impact
- 39% Reduction in Paid Search Spend: Cutting low-intent keyword waste during initial cleanup and maintaining strict agency alignment reduced overall ad spend by nearly 40% by 2023.
- CTR Jumped from <3% to 11%: Tightening search term relevance and ad positioning yielded more than a 3x increase in click-through performance.
- Conversion Rate Reached 9%: Filtering out unqualified clicks ensured high-intent traffic reached application and inquiry touchpoints, maximizing conversion efficiency.