Build awareness and generate qualified leads for a private school

The bilingual (French/English) private school we worked for is based in Lausanne. Operating in a more and more competitive environment, they had to double their marketing efforts to ensure their reputation was held at national and international levels and find new sources of qualified prospects (future students).

Coteries provided a 360° digital marketing service for this private school, by focusing first on reinforcing their digital environment and secondly on launching a publicity campaign to generate traffic and prospects.

Used skills:

• Website audit
• Natural referencing (SEO)
• Website optimisations
• Monitoring traffic (tracking)
• Definition of a digital marketing strategy
• Digital advertising campaigns (Google Ads, Facebook Ads)

We have also optimised the structure of website pages by improving the general structure of Hn tags (titles, or headings) and added over 80 H1 title tags that were missing.

We also managed and implemented meta titles and meta descriptions for each of the website’s pages in French and English, for over 80 pages.

Finally, we focused on optimising image SEO to update their titles and alternative headlines (alt), facilitating navigation for those visually impaired (criteria of accessibility). These SEO image optimisations are also greatly helpful for the overall SEO!

During the website audit we also analysed its conversion path, or funnel. Some improvements could be made to get more contacts with the School.

We then optimised the client journey to facilitate and improve visitor navigation by providing more internal links and adding calls to action (CTA) between several pages. All this aimed to better qualify traffic and to improve the number of page views and the session duration of visitors. Indeed, a website that performs well on these indicators in the eyes of search engines has higher chances to be presented to visitors who search for its services!

After various website optimisations and in light of the acquisition campaigns, we were able to analyze the content and create specific landing pages specifically dedicated for particular school programs or for the boarding school.

These pages, directly created on the website or with landing page tools, made it possible to structure the information by arranging it in a way that would convert visitors, usually with a form to generate first entry leads.

To finalise the optimisation of the schools website, we configured the tracking of website visits by using Google Analytics: creating views, excluding traffic, audience segmentation and goal tracking.

With Google Tag Manager, we defined the activities to measure on the website and implemented events tracking to be found in Google Analytics: clicks, scrolls and conversions. These events could also be retrieved with various ad managers used for the campaigns to better measure campaigns performances.

Thanks to Hotjar, we could analyse the behaviours of site visitors with anonymous video sessions and heatmaps to optimize conversion paths.

Campaign tracking information (UTM parameters) was also integrated into the forms to rapidly know where prospects were coming from, and to evaluate campaign performances as well.

Following this, we focused on selecting the most appropriate acquisition channels based on the needs defined with the client. Google Ads and Facebooks Ads were selected as the most appropriate networks to generate awareness, qualified traffic and leads for the school.

In order to reach as many people as possible in a qualitative way on the Google search network, we started by defining the themes of the campaigns, the geographical targets and the most suitable bidding strategies. We then analysed the most relevant and affordable keywords, created ad groups according to the themes and wrote the corresponding ads for maximum impact.

We then set up the Google Ads account and connected the other Google tools to it, so that we could always track the generated traffic and conversions in the best way possible, especially for optimisation. Our specialists implemented the campaigns and continuously managed their performance: optimising quality score, ads, keywords and targeting.

We also implemented retargeting campaigns on the display network to encourage site visitors to get in contact with the private school.

Facebook Ads was used to launch awareness campaigns for the private school in general or for specific services among selected audiences in Switzerland and other European countries.

We created multiple ads with images and videos, while consistently carrying out A/B testing to optimise performance.

More than 50 leads were generated with Facebook Ads. Regarding awareness, more than 150’000 parents saw the advertisements for the private school at least 4 times, with an average cost per 1’000 impressions (CPM) of CHF 4.-

Since it was possible for visitors to contact the school in various places (multiple forms, landing pages and various tools), it was necessary to ensure an easy way to retrieve information on leads.

As Hubspot, a customer relationship management tool (CRM) was already set up, we connected it to the website and the various campaigns for automated conversion tracking and reporting.

Contact lists were also created according to their location. These lists were automatically exported to Google Sheet documents so that relevant information could be accessed in real time by the school team.

Thanks to Hubspot, we also implemented a pop-up form to download the school’s brochure to site visitors based on their behaviour, in order to generate a first-entry database of prospects for the school. These could then be retargeted via retargeting or emailing campaigns.

Finally, we created automated tracking reports for the campaigns, updated in real time, using Google Data Studio.

Our actions were also detailed into reporting documents, so that our client could follow up on the actions taken, in full transparency.

More than 50 leads were generated with Facebook Ads. Regarding awareness, more than 150’000 parents saw the advertisements for the private school at least 4 times, with an average cost per 1’000 impressions (CPM) of CHF 4.-