ASCENT FUNDING

Multichannel content campaign drives leads, increases awareness, and creates future marketing assets.

Our Pursue Your Dreams contest gave students an opportunity to win $10,000 for sharing their dreams via a short video submission.

THE COMPANY

Ascent Funding is an award-winning leader in outcomes-based lending and student success that is revolutionizing how students and families plan, pay and succeed in higher education.

They are a student-focused company on a mission to provide access to education for millions of underserved students.

Ascent’s college loans are available to undergraduate and graduate students with cosigned and non-cosigned options, and they also offer consumer loans for bootcamp students. Ascent was named “Best Private Student Loan Overall” by NerdWallet in 2023 and was recognized as one of the “Best Places to Work in Fintech 2022” by American Banker.

THE CHALLENGE

The primary goal of the campaign was to capture net new contacts in the form of contest submissions, with a target of 250 submissions.

Supporting goals included generating website traffic and social engagements from students, developing brand/ domain authority, and increasing non-brand visibility for top-of-funnel consideration queries.

An unforeseen challenge was the timing of the campaign. The contest went live the same week President Biden announced student loan forgiveness, and much of the news in the education space was focused there. This impacted our response rate from journalists and local media. To overcome this challenge, NPD quickly pivoted tactical outreach to focus less on news outlets and more on universities and scholarships.

Another challenge was the pacing of the contest submissions. Although promotion was consistent throughout the campaign, more than 50% of submissions came in the final week of the contest. While procrastination is not uncommon (especially for college students) this made it hard to get an accurate read of bottom-funnel impact until the campaign was over.

THE SOLUTION

Without the hefty budgets of some of their publicly-owned industry competitors, NPD and Ascent needed an out-of-the-box solution to connect with the student community, build brand awareness, and acquire new contacts for their marketing database.

This inspired the “Pursue Your Dreams Contest”, in which students were given an opportunity to win $10,000 for sharing their dreams via a short video submission.

NPD and Ascent collaborated to bring this concept to life in a one-month, multi-channel content marketing campaign with digital PR and community activation at the core. Channels leveraged included the website, social media, influencers, university and financial aid partnerships, community forum engagement, media outreach, and a press release.

NPD had to look beyond Ascent’s owned channels to expand campaign reach, making activating digital communities critical to success. NPD sourced TikTok influencers specializing in college tips and content to drive traffic to the contest page. The team engaged with Quora community posts inquiring about scholarships and how to pay for college. NPD also conducted outreach to university financial aid representatives to promote the contest in their financial aid and scholarship resources, which also helped establish new relationships between Ascent and Financial Aid reps.

THE RESULTS

The contest exceeded Ascent’s submission goal by 33.6% with 334 total entries and generated 3 loan application submissions as a bonus.

334 submissions, 34% greater than Ascent’s 30 day goal of 250.
218 syndication pick-ups from one optimized press release sent on 10/10/2022.
32 placements on .EDU sites including California Lutheran University, Eastern University and California Baptist University.
47k impressions on TikTok, over 2K engagements (Likes & comments) in only 30 days.
Of all entries, 74% of contacts were new to Ascent’s database.

ADDED VALUE

In addition to the immediate results, the campaign will have a long-term impact on Ascent’s business. New contacts and social followers generated by the contest will provide new marketing opportunities for Ascent. The user-generated content created for the contest will be used in future brand marketing efforts. And future content and promotion efforts are being planned in collaboration with the contest winner, Harsimran.

In fact, the contest submissions were so inspiring that Ascent could not decide on just one winner…. so they awarded two additional students with $500 runner-up prizes.

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WORK

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We bridge the gap between brands and their audiences, delivering hyper-personalized, data-driven experiences across every digital touchpoint. Fueled by insights, powered by strategy, and obsessed with impact—we don’t just reach customers, we resonate. We turn engagement into growth and interactions into lasting connections.

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