How We Recruited 23,500+ Applicants for Oman's Makeen Program in a Saturated Market

The Challenge

Makeen is Oman’s national upskilling program under Oman Vision 2040, run by the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology with the Ministry of Labor and Udacity. Our challenge was to get thousands of qualified Omani jobseekers to apply, commit to a multi-phase freelancing pathway, and pass ministry verification.

The real difficulty was the size of the audience. The program targeted Omanis aged 20 to 35, a group of roughly one million people. But only the unemployed and career-changers qualified, so anyone already employed was automatically disqualified. That left an addressable market of around 10,000 people. Add strict brand guidelines and limited approved messaging, and we had our work cut out for us! From the onset it was clear that audience fatigue was going to be the biggest risk for this campaign: a pool that small gets shown the same ads very quickly.

The Situation

We kicked off cohort 1 and the results were promising, with more than half of all applications coming from ads. The main challenges were that the approved creatives were somewhat bland, the main message excluded a large part of the audience, and 83% of our budget was sitting on one platform. We knew what we needed to fix to repeat the recruitment process for another two years. 

The Breakthrough

Creative testing to fight fatigue

With a market of 10 000 people and strict brand rules on top of that, we knew creative fatigue was going to be the biggest threat to performance. We tested language variations, program-specific versus generic campaigns, and new messaging angles for each cohort to keep the creative mix fresh. Influencer content also performed well across cohorts and was scaled with great success.

Program-specific messaging to lower costs

We ran generic “all programs” campaigns next to campaigns built for each individual program. The generic campaigns carried the biggest share of volume, but the program-specific campaigns consistently converted at lower CPAs. In the final cohort, program campaigns came in between $7.17 and $8.68 per eligible conversion, while the generic campaign sat at $16.32. Speaking to one person about one program beat speaking to everyone about everything.

Multi-channel activation to scale through saturation

Cohort 1 ran on three channels with 83% of spend on Meta. Over four cohorts, we activated six channels by adding X (formerly Twitter), Snapchat, Google Demand Gen, YouTube, and LinkedIn alongside Meta. Each channel earned its budget based on performance. By Cohort 4, non-Meta channels delivered 37% of all conversions. When the audience on one platform tired, the new channels found fresh pockets of the same small market, and the program was no longer dependent on a single platform and its algorithmic rules.

The Takeaways

• For small audience pools, creative variety beats extra budget. In a small, saturating audience, fresh creative does more for results than more spend. Extra budget just shows the same people the same ad more often.
• Specific messaging outperforms generic messaging. Generic campaigns are useful for volume, but program-specific campaigns converted at clearly lower costs in the later cohorts. When you know exactly who you are talking to, say something specific to them.
• Multi-channel activation is a viable way to scale in a saturated market. Today’s winning channel is not guaranteed to work tomorrow. X was the second-largest channel for Cohort 2 recruitment and failed completely in Cohort 3. A $2K retest in Cohort 4 confirmed it. The channels that work for your campaign will change and it’s important to know when to cut the strings.