Case Study · Integrated Marketing · Education
Aakash · iACST
Scaling an always-on iACST scholarship test at a lower cost per everything.
iACST is Aakash's instant, year-round scholarship test, register, sit a free online test, and unlock up to 90% off NEET, JEE and foundation courses in a single sitting. Aakash set a dual mandate: deliver the lead target for the August flight, and bend acquisition costs down at every stage of the funnel. We delivered it at a 12% lead-to-conversion rate, cutting cost per lead and cost per conversion along the way.
Efficiency was the brief — not just volume.
The lead target was fixed. The real mandate was to acquire them cheaper than the funnel's existing economics — at both the lead and the conversion stage.
iACST — the instant Aakash Admission-cum-Scholarship Test — is an always-on scholarship engine: a student can register, sit a free online test, and unlock up to 90% scholarships on NEET, JEE and foundation courses in one sitting. Where a dated exam campaign is a sprint, iACST is a treadmill that never stops — and every rupee of acquisition cost compounds month after month. Success was defined past the lead, at conversion — students who moved from registration through the test toward admission. Cheap-but-hollow leads would have failed the brief, and an always-on offer with no built-in deadline gives students every reason to delay forever.
- A fixed lead target — but the true mandate was to beat the funnel's existing cost per lead and cost per conversion.
- A funnel measured past the lead: success was scored at conversion, toward admission — not at sign-up.
- An always-on offer with no built-in urgency — an instant test that is always available gives students a reason to delay forever.
- One of India's most competitive and most expensive ad categories: NEET and JEE test-prep auctions.
Always-on demand — captured at the moment of intent.
Anyone can lower cost per lead by buying worse traffic. We scored every source on cost per conversion instead — so quality and efficiency moved together, not against each other.
Growth desk
MarkAge360 · iACST media planning
Why it worked.
Optimised to the second cost, not the first
Anyone can lower cost per lead by buying worse traffic. Scoring every source on cost per conversion kept quality and efficiency moving together — the 28% drop proves it.
Programmatic as a precision tool
Placement-level pruning, dayparting and frequency control turned open-exchange scale into category-beating economics.
Retargeting where funnels actually leak
The registration-to-test gap was treated as a campaign of its own — the cheapest conversions in the plan came from warm recovery, not cold reach.
The offer did the heavy lifting
A 90% scholarship and an instant, free test is a category-best hook; creative and copy were built to make it impossible to scroll past.
Urgency by design
Deadline framing and momentum cues gave an always-on product the now-or-never energy of an event.
Engineered for efficiency.
Programmatic buying as the efficiency lever
Extensive programmatic buying carried the volume — real-time bidding across thousands of placements consistently produced a lower cost per lead than the category's default channels. Frequency caps, dayparting around student browsing hours, and placement-level pruning kept waste out of the plan.
Google Ads for high-intent capture
Search intercepted students and parents actively hunting for scholarships, NEET/JEE coaching discounts, and Aakash itself — the audience most likely to travel the full funnel, protecting the conversion rate while programmatic drove scale.
Meta retargeting to protect the conversion
Every registrant who stalled before taking the test entered a Meta retargeting pool, rebuilt daily. Because conversion — not the lead — was the true KPI, re-engaging warm students cost a fraction of acquiring cold ones. It is a key reason cost per conversion fell nearly twice as fast as cost per lead.
Offer-led creative with manufactured urgency
Messaging put the scholarship to work — 'up to 90% off on NEET, JEE & foundation courses' — paired with the zero-friction hook of a free, instant test. SMS and ad variants were rotated and reweighted by response, with a free coupon-code path removing the last barrier to entry.
Full-funnel measurement
Every source was scored on two costs — per lead and per conversion — with UTM-level tracking down to the individual placement. Budget followed the second number: a channel that produced cheap leads but expensive conversions lost its budget by the next review.
Same demand. Lower cost per everything.
The lead mandate for the August flight was delivered in full — 100% of the committed volume — at a 12% lead-to-conversion rate, so more than one in ten leads travelled the funnel toward admission in a category where volume usually comes at the expense of quality.
The efficiency held where it mattered. Cost per lead came down 15% while carrying full volume, and cost per conversion — the number that matters most — fell 28%, nearly twice as fast. Proof the savings came from smarter funnel engineering, not cheaper-but-weaker traffic.
The result was a repeat mandate from Aakash — one of India's most data-driven education marketers, measuring every rupee across one of the country's most competitive ad categories.
What we ran.
ProgrammaticGoogle AdsMeta RetargetingSMSFull-Funnel Analytics
- Programmatic media strategy & DSP buying
- Google Ads high-intent search capture
- Meta retargeting with daily-rebuilt audiences
- SMS marketing — multi-variant rotation & testing
- Offer-led creative & registration funnel
- Frequency capping, dayparting & placement pruning
- UTM-level tracking to the individual placement
- Dual-cost scoring: per lead and per conversion
- Budget reallocation on every review cycle
Have a funnel to make leaner?
If your growth is measured past the click — at conversion, not sign-up — we would love to show you what optimising to the second cost could do for your acquisition economics.
