Education campaign on target to pay for itself from first week of launch

When we started targeting schools, colleges and universities with our client, Wallgate’s, innovative washroom products and solutions, school budgets were a hot topic. Under the microscope and with those in control of spend concerned about how they are going to make their financial plans work, timing-wise these were not the ideal market conditions for a campaign! However, with already successful campaigns running for Wallgate in its other market sectors such as healthcare and police custody, we knew the product was robust and up to the job – and so were we!

The brief was simple: to help raise the client’s profile and ensure the education sector considered Wallgate when specifying toilet block refurbishments and to support the wider sales team efforts generating engagements and then genuine leads to follow up.

The idea was to produce a unique offering through a multi-channel approach to run in the first half of the year as the sector contemplated forthcoming summer holiday maintenance work. Digitally heavy – to help the campaign budget go further – the message focussed on innovation over convention, drawing the key benefits out; space saving, faster footfall, preventing anti-social behaviour, cleaner and more hygienic, less maintenance, but also importantly, through notable efficiencies offering schools a possible full payback within two years of installation.

Website first. We built dedicated landing pages to test two offers; one asked for free consultancy through a site visit to pick the brains of the experts and see how innovation can considerably improve their next toilet block, and the other offered a free online calculator to work out how much the school could save.

Then followed email marketing, online banner and display advertising appearing on education media websites and search marketing on Google, story-telling infographics, timely social media activity including sponsored advertising and posts on Twitter and LinkedIn. We developed a number of school case studies researched and written as press releases for the trade media, to appear in publisher’s magazines, website news pages and incorporated into emailed newsletters.

Within the first few weeks the campaign had brought in ten strong sales leads to convert. If converted, one of the leads would pay for the campaign in full, with the potential of continuous payback over and over again for years to come from the customer’s likely repeat contractual business with multiple schools.