Fewer handovers, more enquiries

At a UK education provider, marketing was running ads without a clear picture of who they were for. Defining the real customer, then joining up brand, campaigns and in-house production around them, brought in more of the right enquiries for less money.

Organisation

Active Care Education, Dartford

My role

Business Growth Manager

When

Aug 2024 – present

Team

I lead a team of three

Context

Active Care Education recruits learners onto accredited courses, working with awarding bodies such as OTHM. Most of its business comes from people looking for government-funded university courses. For a business like that, marketing has one job that matters more than any other: a steady flow of qualified admissions enquiries, meaning people who are eligible, interested and likely to enrol, not just people who clicked.

When I joined in August 2024, the team was running fairly basic ads across Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, with paid creative and landing pages produced by an external agency.

Challenge

The ads were running, but nobody had defined who they were for. Without a clear customer, every other problem got worse:

• Targeting. Campaigns reached people, but not specifically the people who could and would enrol on a funded course.
• Speed and cost. Every new asset meant a brief, a wait and revisions with an outside agency. In student recruitment, missing an intake window makes a campaign close to worthless.
• Consistency. With no shared brand rules, creative kept coming back off-brand, which added more revision rounds.

My role

Insight

The most important decision I made was also the least glamorous: define the customer properly before changing anything else. Who is the person looking for a funded university course? What’s their situation, what worries them, and where do they already spend time online?

You can’t close the attention gap if you don’t know whose attention you need.

Once that avatar existed, the rest followed. It shaped targeting, messaging and channels, and it told us where people like that actually talk to each other.

Strategy

1. Start with a defined customer avatar. Every campaign was built around the prospective learner looking for a funded course, not a generic audience.
2. Go where they already are. Facebook became the main channel: paid campaigns, plus a presence in specific, relevant Facebook groups where prospective learners were already asking questions.
3. Treat service as marketing. Word of mouth matters in education, so we worked on the experience people had after enquiring, not only on the ads.
4. Bring routine production in-house. Ad creative and landing pages moved from the agency to the team, so assets could be made, tested and changed in days rather than weeks.
5. Write the brand rules once. Brand guidelines across LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and the website ended the “is this on-brand?” debate.

Execution

Facebook drove most of the rise in qualified enquiries. That came from more than ads: posting in targeted groups produced conversions that paid campaigns alone wouldn’t have reached, because the conversation was already happening there.

With production in-house and a team of three, messaging could change as soon as the numbers suggested it, and landing pages could match the ad that sent people to them. The brand guidelines did quiet but valuable work: fewer opinions to reconcile, fewer revisions, and a recognisable identity everywhere a prospective learner might see us before enquiring.

Results

• +15%Qualified admissions enquiriesDriven mainly by Facebook: paid campaigns plus targeted groups, built on the new customer avatar
• +10%Campaign conversion rate over six monthsThrough performance analysis, content optimisation and message refinement
• −35%Campaign turnaround timeAfter moving ad creative and landing-page production in-house
• −25%External agency spendSame change: selected creative and landing-page work brought in-house
• −30%Off-brand creative revisionsAfter introducing brand guidelines across social and web

Self-reported from internal measurement during my time in the role. These outcomes came from the team I lead, working with admissions colleagues.

Reflection

What this shows

Growth started with a strategic question, not a tactic: who is this for? The efficiency gains in time, agency spend and revisions weren’t separate from the results. They made the results possible. Faster production meant more testing, and more testing meant better conversion.

What I’d do differently

I’d put the measurement in place before changing anything. We knew the changes worked because enquiries and conversion improved, but I’d now set clear baselines on day one and track enquiry quality with admissions from the start: which leads actually enrolled, and from which channel. That turns “it worked” into “here is exactly what worked, and what to do more of”.

At a glance

At a glance

Sector: Education and training
Location: Dartford, England (hybrid)
Team: three, reporting to me
Main channel: Facebook (ads and groups)
Gap closed: attention → qualified enquiry

About the numbers

All figures are self-reported. They reflect a team effort that I led or contributed to. Conversion uplift is measured over six months.

Skills shown

Customer definition · team leadership · brand management · in-house production · performance analysis