GOLDEN GATE UNIVERSITY

From Strategy to Results: Reaching the Modern Working Professional

About

Golden Gate University (GGU) is a private, nonprofit institution based in San Francisco, focused on providing flexible, career-aligned education to working adults. With a strong emphasis on online and hybrid learning, GGU offers a range of graduate and undergraduate programs in business, law, psychology, technology, and leadership.

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GGU partnered with Swish in 2022 to modernize its paid media strategy and bring greater visibility to how advertising efforts translated into real enrollment outcomes. What began as a lead generation engagement quickly evolved into a full-funnel performance strategy spanning platform mix, creative development, CRM integration, and attribution.

Length of Relationship

Since 2022

Programs Supported

BS Business, MBA, MS Accounting, MS ITM, MS I/O Psychology, BA Law, Org Leadership, and more

Objective

Generate high-quality leads and increase enrollment through full-funnel media strategy

Modalities Supported

Fully Online
Hybrid

CRMs & Platforms

Salesforce
Ellucian Recruit (Legacy CRM)
Attribution App

Primary KPIs

Cost per Lead (CPL)
Total Leads
Lead Quality (based on CRM-defined conversions)
Application Starts/Complete (Count, Cost per, Conv. Rate)
Enrollments (Count, Cost per, Conv. Rate, ROAS)

The Challenge

Golden Gate University came to Swish with a core goal: generate more qualified leads. But beyond that, the university lacked a clear sense of how (or whether) paid media was influencing key outcomes like application starts, completions, and enrollments. Existing performance data was fragmented, and there was no scalable attribution model in place.

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Adding to the complexity, internal IT constraints and institutional red tape made it difficult to automate lead workflows, connect systems, or analyze performance across the full funnel. As a result, the team was flying blind on what was working, what wasn’t, and where to optimize in relation to applications & enrollments.

GGU needed more than just media buying—they needed a partner who could help modernize their marketing ecosystem while delivering near-term results.

The Approach

Swish overhauled GGU’s paid media strategy from the ground up—rebalancing budget across platforms and between program-specific vs. broader vertical/brand campaigns, launching new creative and positioning tests, streamlined reporting and helping to build the attribution foundation needed to track results at every funnel stage.

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We took an experimental approach to unlock growth, with a heavy emphasis on message testing, campaign architecture, AI-driven campaign optimization, and measurement.

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Key initatives included:

Launched high-intent Meta Lead Ads and Advantage+ campaigns to expand reach and improve cost efficiency

Deployed Google Performance Max to unlock cross-channel optimization and maximize media impact

Expanded beyond in-market and retargeting audiences by implementing a full-funnel strategy with awareness campaigns in channels like TikTok, Demand Gen, and LinkedIn, using tailored creatives to engage users at each stage and improve audience quality and conversion.

Refreshed messaging and positioning, highlighting rankings, accreditations, GRE waivers, and career outcomes to better align with audience motivators

Introduced new creative formats including motion graphics, carousels, and static variants to boost engagement and test performance across placements

Integrated Salesforce with ad platforms via middleware and direct APIs—syncing lead, application (start/complete), and enrollment stage data (admit, deposit, enroll) to enable more sophisticated targeting and performance optimization beyond the RFI stage

Piloting info session registrations (as of 2025) as a new primary conversion event to drive deeper engagement and increase downstream conversion rates

Advising on multi-touch attribution implementation, supporting GGU's onboarding of Attribution App (as of June 2025) to close the loop between paid media and enrollment outcomes