Solutions That Drive Results

Effective Market Research Drives an Emotionally-Engaging Campaign that Exceeded Expectations

PLEA Community Services Society of BC delivers community-based social, health, educational, vocational and justice services to children, youth, families and adults who face significant challenges and barriers. They use personally tailored strategies in non-institutional settings to assist individuals to live their lives as successfully, independently and safely as possible in their own communities.

The organization approached us with an urgent need to attract caregivers who could offer youth-in-need foster homes. Their current, and dated method of attracting potential leads through newspaper ads was failing. This meant the agency’s capacity to provide homes to youth in need, was not increasing in line with the high demand for its services. In addition, they were struggling to fill respite job openings with qualified workers. The end goal was 70 new leads per month, with a significant reduction in cost per lead. This project was one of the biggest items on the agency’s risk register. It was key to the agency’s success.

 

PROBLEMS & CHALLENGES:

  • An urgent need to find family caregivers and fulfill the organization’s mission

  • Failure of current advertising and lead-generation strategies

  • An outdated and ineffective sales funnel

  • A greater level of sensitivity in communication style

  • A lack of effective marketing and communication tools 

  • A lack of effective metrics tracking

  • Low brand awareness

PROJECT SCOPE:

  • Market research

  • Brand awareness, marketing & recruitment Strategy Development

  • Target audience profile and engagement strategy

  • Integrated campaign development

  • 12 month campaign execution

  • Advertisement series design and creation

  • Social media campaign

  • Lead generation strategies

“Big Bold Brand has taken what has been an incredibly difficult task for the agency – explaining the vital role our families play in the life of the youth we serve – and boiled it down to its most simplistic, compelling elements – that our families have enough room, time and love for one more. This campaign will run and run giving us great value for money.”

Jen Graham, Marketing and Communications Manager for PLEA

Approach & Solution:

Our work with PLEA launched with a series of interviews with existing Caregivers to form a clear understanding of what’s important to them, and how they originally found out about this unique employment opportunity. We needed to find out more about them as people: their backgrounds, motivations and how they originally connected to PLEA. This market research allowed up to be a very targeted audience profile, which was critical for executing a successful campaign to attract ideal caregivers and respite workers.

In addition, the research revealed that PLEA’s brand awareness was low, and that potential caregivers needed more and repeated exposure to the organization and its job postings. Knowing this, we set out to build a multi-pronged brand awareness and recruitment campaign. 

We enlisted the help of PLEA’s management team and key stakeholders to determine where the best possible lead sources were for new caregivers. We then facilitated a half day working session to brainstorm and build out possible strategies and tactics to reach them, aimed at creating grassroots connections and relationships in areas where possible be found.

Impact:

The final and most important piece of this project was the creation of a heartfelt and engaging series of advertisements that were designed to be simple, impactful and generate an emotional response.

The campaign was launched first on social media, and PLEA continued to roll out the campaign over the next twelve month. As an evergreen campaign, it continued to rollout across multi-media and grassroots channels, building in-roads and relationships into community groups, and organizations who can help PLEA recruit for this position.

ROI:

  • The social media component of the campaign boosted brand and organization awareness

  • Cost per lead was greatly reduced

  • Inbound leads doubled in the first few months of the campaign

  • Leads per month consistently exceeded the goal by 25%

  • Increased brand awareness and effective marketing materials increased the recruitment team’s ability to hire and onboard new caregivers and respite workers

  • A redesigned recruitment funnel reduced the time it took to engage and hire new caregivers and respite workers

  • ROI was increased and costs reduced as the campaign was proven to be evergreen through repeat testing

CAMPAIGN VISUALS

“We asked for a marketing campaign relating to a sensitive area of our business. Big Bold Brand was thoughtful, insightful and professional. They delivered what they promised in a bold way, respecting our parameters and adding creative energy that proved to inspire our team.”

Ann Alexander, Associate Executive Director, PLEA Community Services Society of BC