Case Study
Alpha Career College
A built from scratch marketing campaign for a newly founded institution
Alpha Career College is a Toronto-based private career college. They strive to provide students with the highest standard of education possible at an affordable price, propelling their careers forward while supplying the Canadian healthcare and social work sectors with thoroughly-trained professionals. Along with their educational programs, they also offer career development training and guidance.
Overview.
Having been newly founded in 2021, Alpha Career College understood the challenges they would face due to a lack of brand awareness and reputation. They were eager to begin marketing their new institution but did not have the time to deal with the cumbersome nature of traditional marketing. Appreciating the agility of digital marketing, Alpha Career College reached out to Noetic Marketer, partnering with us to launch and manage their online presence.
The challenge.
Alpha Career College was a newly launched institution with little to no brand awareness, reputation, or online presence. Furthermore, they were an ineligible institution for provincial student loans due to their recent founding. As such, the challenge was to develop a comprehensive digital marketing strategy from scratch that would successfully target and convert prospects that were ineligible for provincial student loans.
Scope of the project.
Timeline: June 2021 to February 2022
Services: Facebook Ads, landing pages, e-brochures, and email marketing
Goal: Generate a significant volume of qualified leads interested in Alpha’s programs
The approach.
First, we undertook extensive research to develop an understanding of Alpha Career College’s audience and the messaging they would respond to best. From there, we created tailored Facebook Ads, landing pages, e-brochures, and email marketing campaigns for each of Alpha’s programs - Personal Support Worker, Shelter Support Worker, and Mental Health & Addiction Worker.
The strategy.
Due to their recent founding, Alpha Career College was ineligible for provincial student loans. As such, it would be very difficult for them to compete against colleges offering similar programs that were eligible for provincial funding as students would be able to enroll with their competitors for a far lower cost.
Thus, our strategy was to develop niche messaging and targeting focused around those students that were not eligible for provincial student loans, namely international students. By doing so, the issue of not having access to provincial funding became mute, and the likelihood of our campaigns converting would be far greater.
From there, we developed unique assets and funnels for each of Alpha’s three programs, focusing heavily on retargeting campaigns featuring alumni testimonials - a strategic approach to solidifying Alpha Career College’s reputation. Finally, we leveraged Alpha Career College’s partnership with their staffing agency, Alpha Resources Ltd., as it presented students with the unique opportunity to receive work placements while enrolled and following graduation.
This strategy was implemented across multiple channels, including Facebook Ads, landing pages, e-brochures, and email marketing.
Ad
Campaigns
Retargeting Ads
Landing
pages
Facebook Ads
Our Facebook Ads campaigns primarily focused on international students looking to establish themselves in the Canadian market. Specific campaigns with distinct messaging and targeting were created for each of Alpha Career College’s three programs.
Retargeting ads were used heavily within each campaign as they helped establish Alpha Career College’s reputation and provided a realistic view of what prospective students could expect to achieve with the program.
Finally, we used a mix of interest-based audiences and lookalike audiences driven by AI (artificial intelligence) to further assist with the detailed targeting required for each campaign.
Landing Pages
Program-specific landing pages were drafted to complement each of the three Facebook Ads campaigns. While distinct messaging was used for each page respectively, a general theme was to focus on helping others and establishing oneself in the Canadian market - two key messaging characters that we determined to be highly influential. Finally, all three landing pages were optimized for form submissions, Alpha’s preferred way of receiving information from prospective students.
E-Brochures
E-brochures for each respective program were created to provide prospective students with easily accessible information about the program they were interested in. Each e-brochure was also used as a lead magnet, enticing prospective students to provide their information to gain access to the program’s e-brochure. This contact information was then used to target individuals via email marketing.
Email Marketing
The final piece of our strategy was to implement email marketing. This allowed us to remain in contact and top-of-mind with prospective students, encouraging them to take the next step in their journey to enrolling at Alpha Career College. This proves to be especially important for higher education institutions as the purchasing process is atypically long, meaning an institution must make efforts to remain relevant while prospective students consider their options over a long period of time.
The results
We have achieved the following results for Alpha Career College:
644
Generated a total of 644 qualified leads across three campaigns
535%
Achieved an average conversion rate 535% above the industry average (unbounce.ca)
54%
Achieve an average cost-per-acquisition 54% below the industry average (linchpinseo.com)
Testimonial.
Noetic Marketer has been a joy to work with! They are professional, responsive and hard-working. We have a lot of experience working with marketing companies but we can confidently say that this has been our best experience to date. All their work is of extremely high quality and done accordingly to agreed deadlines.
Alpha Career College