Search Associates (headquartered in America) are a global teacher placement recruitment company servicing 750 International schools throughout the world.
Search Associates were seeking to grow the registrations of new candidates within Australia and New Zealand and investigated leveraging a digital marketing strategy for extending the channels of acquisition that fed the filtering/screening pipeline for new registrants.
There were no better advocates for Search Associates than previous placed candidates whom had positive experiences to share. By using specialised permission-based software, we could efficiently illicit positive testimonials which leveraged the real-world identities of those whom were happy to share their personal stories and publish them to the forums that were most visible to new candidate prospects.
“International teaching is allowing us to have a life we couldn’t have elsewhere. In less than 12 months we have had some amazing adventures; Sydney, Hong Kong, Xi’an, Suzhou, Shanghai, Yangshou, Japan, India and have also made it to the finish line of the Great Wall of China half marathon. Why go and lie by a resort pool?” – Ruth
“My wife, Kate and I were placed in Saudi Arabia, after interviewing with the school principal at the Melbourne job fair. We had a few offers and received this helpful advice when deciding between schools – There is no bad choice, so go for the best match.” – Ari
“My wife and family are really looking forward to our new beginning in China. We joined Search Associates on the 22nd of May 2014 and had 2 jobs by the 30th, via the database. We are still spinning – we were certain that we would not be off until next year but are stoked with everything about the job.” – Garrick
When marketing this service online there was a need to not only describe the features of the service that makes the program unique, but also sell the benefit to prospective candidate. A strong positioning statement in, 15 words not 150, was developed.
A landing page was built ,designed solely for communicating the value of the program to search associates, and the inviting them to connect to the local search associate Australian office, whilst at the same time servicing as an ‘anchor’ for an automated remarketing program.
By marketing high quality content in the form of eBrochures that was coveted by our target audience, we could use content to segment and target prospective candidates no matter where they were on the ‘purchase lifecycle’. We curated a general resource catering for higher up the funnel intent (i.e. ‘The ultimate guide to Advancing your teaching career overseas’) and one for expressly providing detailed information about the Search associates program (strong intent).
The curation of short sharp and professional video edits (8,15 & 30 secs) combining a strong testimonial and introducing the local search associates, were beneficial in selling the program via online top of funnel and remarketing channels.
The setting up of multiple search, display, video and social ads, served up to multiple ad groups was the next that targeted audiences by intent across multiple online channels. We leveraged the YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook (+Instagram) and Google Ads, platforms all anchored to the high-performance landing page.
By leveraging analytics and insights in context of measuring the performance of the campaign objective based on pre-determined KPI’s – we could optimise and report on campaign performance.
The campaign launched in June 2019 and in a short space of time the conversion goals have grown beyond the set monthly KPI’s for website traffic, downloading e-books, registration of interest form submission and telephone call click-throughs from the site and digital advertisements. Search Associates head office are working with at+m marketing to take the Australian / New Zealand success and develop it into other localised campaign templates for their other offices around the world.
