Cardinal Newman College is a Catholic Sixth Form college in Preston city centre, which was set up in 1978 to provide further education to pupils from Catholic high schools. The college specialises in A-Level and Level 3 BTEC courses, but has recently delved into Higher Education (HE) by offering university courses as well.
Staff wanted to promote the new HE courses alongside their traditional A-Level courses by trialling new digital marketing methods in order to achieve their key growth objective.
The new HE courses are one of their biggest opportunities for growth and they recognised that having a digital marketing plan was essential. But with little expertise in this area, they needed to learn more about it.
The college has historically advertised with us in print. For their new campaign, we suggested complementing this with online advertising and Google Ads to help promote courses to online users.
The college also faces the challenge of finding new ways to interact with and appeal to different audiences, ranging from 16 year-olds, to parents, to those wanting to further their careers. We, therefore, recommended working with us on a Sponsored Content campaign aimed at students receiving their GCSE results, in order to boost enrolments to their A-level courses.
Once the Google Ads campaign was agreed, it didn’t take long for the college to start seeing results.
The Vice Principal was extremely impressed with the success of the Google Ads campaign after discovering that visitors at a HE program event had heard about the event through Google.
The college attributed the interest and volume of sign-ups to the HE course to their Google Ads campaign, and other marketing channels. Having measurable results also helped to justify their spend, making their marketing planning easier. This included results from their online advertising campaign which generated over 500 clicks, showing great engagement from students in their key target audience.
We were really happy and impressed that the team worked so well with us - they were really transparent by letting us know what they were doing which helps me as a marketing manager to continue with the marketing spend.
Their Sponsored Content campaign was also a success. We adapted pre-written articles to the college’s own house style and published them on their local news site, helping to boost A-Level enrolment numbers.
By working with us, the college achieved their goals and drove up enrolment numbers successfully. Through a combination of traditional and online marketing methods, they engaged effectively with different audiences in a challenging landscape.
In this minefield of marketing, working with National World helps you confirm that what you are doing is right and people are recognising your message and the brand.