Wandsworth Council

Facebook Website, Facebook Advertising and Google Advertising

With competition from private agencies recruiting foster carers, councils are struggling to meet the needs of their districts. How can social media be used to fill this crucial service?

Wandsworth Council are responsible for a population in London of approximately 290,000, and their fostering department works hard to secure the futures of babies and children who require foster care. They came to us with a unique brief: to use social media to help them more effectively recruit foster carers.

The Challenge?

We wanted to invite foster carers to a monthly event where they could learn more about the benefits and rewards of fostering. The Council wanted a destination to direct traffic from their adverts that would also serve as a place to build a community of foster carers (past, present and future) who could share their experiences and find a support network.

What did Net Natives do?

www.facebook.com/wandsworthfostering

The first thing to do was to build a fully functional Facebook page – complete with information, embedded videos, testimonials and event information. Net Natives provided this as a fully bespoke service, with a content management system so they could update all the information in their custom-built page tabs.

Next, we needed to get people looking at it! We drove traffic to the new page with a combination of targeted Facebook ads, Google Search ads and ads on the Google display network. This was really important: due to the competition from other agencies, we had to make sure that we were taking advantage of every opportunity to promote their events.

The Result?

Each foster carer recruited saves Wandsworth Council approximately £7,500, and provides a stable home for one or more young people – it was fantastic to be working for such a great cause! We were pleased to be able to get Wandsworth Council a full 3 conversions (worth £23,000) and another 5 applications in the first month.

Wandsworth Council are now using their Facebook page to great effect, answering questions, promoting their specialist events, sharing relevant content and enjoying a great, positive relationship with new and existing foster carers. Get in touch with this campaign’s account manager: alex@netnatives.com or 01273 783 847.

“Who could have known that Facebook and Google advertising could be so effective for recruiting foster carers? Net Natives really understood our requirements and have delivered campaigns which produce results: In the first month we have had 3 conversions from the advertising, potentially saving us around £23,000. The bespoke landing destination they built within Facebook has strengthened our brand within social media and created a successful platform to direct our advertising to. They are also great people to work with.”

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