The College of West Anglia

Facebook Advertising

As school-leavers turn to the internet to gauge the options available to them post GCSEs, how can the further education sector use social media to fully advertise their courses and attract these potential students?

The College of West Anglia is one of the largest and most successful providers of education and training in the Eastern Region, with campuses in King’s Lynn, Isle, Wisbech and Cambridge. The objective of their campaign was to increase the number of attendees to their November open days, with a limited budget.

The Challenge?

The College wanted to target their Facebook campaign at school-leavers, aged between 15 and 16, who were considering their options after their exams. If these students were properly aware of the courses on offer to them, the College knew they’d see a vast increase in the numbers at their open days.

What did Net Natives do?

We first designed multiple adverts with varying copy and images. With this range of text and visual, we could see which combinations worked best and were able to ensure the same advert did not appear to the same users. We were then able to monitor demographic information, such as the age and gender of the users who clicked on the ads.

By specifically targeting Facebook users of school-leaving age in the Eastern region, we could guarantee that the College’s ads were only seen by those who were most likely to consider attending an open day. The College knew that the people behind the clicks were the ones they most wanted to attract.

The Result?

Cheaper than running an advert in the local newspaper, the campaign delivered over 800 responses and was seen by the demographic more than 2.5 million times. Its initial length of two weeks was extended for a further month due to its success, gaining the maximum number of attendees for the upcoming open days and providing the College with their social media partners of choice.

“Facebook is where our students spend all of their time, making it the obvious choice for promoting our open days. The problem for us was how to create and manage Facebook advertising campaigns that work. The Net Natives Facebook service has proved to be the most cost effective, targeted advertising medium we could have imagined.”

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