BACKGROUND
Ontario has a world-renowned publicly funded public education system. It was facing one of the biggest challenge in a generation. The Ontario government was proposing deep funding cuts to all aspects of public schools. The challenge was to mobilize the public to a degree that would convince the government to reconsider its posture, having sensed the political cost of imposing austerity on public education.
+534%
-85%
94%
100%
CAMPAIGN GOALS
To educate the public about the proposed budget cuts and how they would negatively affect the public education system.
Ensure that a critical mass of the public is aware, activated and engaged enough to let the government know that cutting funding to public education is short-sighted and unnaccepatble.
To create a base of supporters and champions across the province that could be mobilized
SOLUTIONS
Unify the public with a single message and focused goal. Ensure that people all over the province are aware and able to sign up and be part of this movement.
Empower parents, teachers, other education professionals and allies to speak up against cuts to education.
The best way to get the message out quickly, succinctly and to a targeted audience was through digital marketing that were also deeply tied to offline initiatives.
ALIGNING ONLINE AND OFFLINE ACROSS THE BOARD
E2E (END-TO-END) DIGITAL STRATEGY. Build awareness, inspiration, activation, engagement and Champions for their cause through digital thought leadership & storytelling.
CAMPAIGN TACTICS
• Dominate Search Rankings (people searching for more information about the cause is the most engaged and activated).
• Built highly targeted and complicated location targeting with very tactical campaigns that had custom messaging & creative of MPs per riding (online and offline).
• Open up massive awareness through social channels (paid & organic).
• Ensure that online and offline messaging and creative had the same theme, voice and message.
• Geo-target/fence offline events through digital marketing to ensure that the message was not only heard at the actual offline event but online as well in real-time.
SOLUTIONS
• Created a new site (Building Better Schools) to differentiate and focus the initiative on parents and others out side the system (sending the audience to the ETFO site would muddy the discussion and focus).
• Worked with the budgets to ensure it was focused on the right channels, targeting the right audience with the right message
• Developed engaging creative to ensure that the attention of the audience was captured directly.
• Developed a massive re-targeting list by combining the high traffic garnered from Paid Search, Display and Social Advertising.
• Ensured that audience segments were created and custom messaging and custom landing pages were deployed for maximum effectiveness.
INTELLIGENT MARKETING RESULTS
An increase of 534% in Sign-Ups while decreasing the CPA by -85%. This enabled the team to increase the effectiveness of the budget and also to significantly amplify the reach of the campaigns.