Challenging the status quo

While the college had been advertising online previously, they had seen limited success. To begin with, we looked at the targeting they’d been using for key campaigns and challenged it, developing unique audiences to better suit each ad topic. We then developed encouraging copy and bolder graphics that would stand out on the feeds of prospective learners, and found effective ways to utilise the budget and drive interaction.

However, the platforms and ad strategies that Gloucestershire College was utilising didn’t truly reflect their student audience. We made Snapchat a core part of their digital strategy, which made a dramatic difference to their visibility amongst their key student demographic, and encouraged a substantial amount of clickthroughs from a typically difficult audience.

We advised on several brand videos for the college, writing scripts that would resonate with both students and parents alike, which then set the tone for a host of videos about the college's new facilities moving forward. We also implemented best practice, making sure that whenever a new video was made, we'd get a vertical version for social advertising from the start.

Data-driven improvements

As part of our work, we looked at Gloucestershire College’s technical infrastructure and made significant improvements to allow the team to track conversions and make the most of their website data. We cleared out their overstuffed Google Tag Manager and added the tags they really needed, and configured a number of events in Google Analytics to allow them to track who had converted as a result of our online adverts.

We also set up numerous retargeting campaigns, which the college had never truly taken advantage of before, to drive sign-ups for their online events, through both Google and Facebook, and steered the college through potential pitfalls, such as the introduction of the iOS 14.5 restrictions.

Setting the standard

Since starting to work with Gloucestershire College, our campaigns have swiftly become significant drivers when it comes to encouraging applications throughout their entire audience base, including teenage students, adult learners and the local business community.

With careful audience research, we’ve encouraged a record level of applications to their free adult courses, driving a significant amount of revenue to the college. Through our Google Ads campaigns, we’ve achieved more than double the average conversion rate for a typical Google campaign.