A four-week social media and stakeholder campaign has helped Adelaide’s Youth Inc. Enterprise Academy meet its 2020 enrolment targets, despite challenges presented in the COVID climate.

Youth Inc is an alternative approach to learning, achieving your SACE and developing job ready skills, for young people aged 17-24 who may not fit the traditional school model.

Unfortunately, COVID forced the cancellation of education expos and referral pathway opportunities and enrolments stalled at 55% of the target numbers, prompting Youth Inc to approach Hughes PR.

We were pleased that the campaign assisted Youth Inc to not only reach, but surpass its target – helping more young people finish their SACE and earn their VET accreditation in a setting that suits them.

The Situation

Youth Inc is an alternative approach to learning, achieving your SACE and developing job ready skills, for young people aged 17-24 who may not fit the traditional school model. A combination of job keeper, changes to referral pathways for potential students, and the broader COVID climate impacted enrolments for the 2020 team intake.

Youth Inc approached Hughes PR in May/June 2020, to discuss ways to use social and digital media channels to quickly and affordably raise awareness of Youth Inc and drive potential consideration (sign ups) for the July intake. No firm targets were set for enrolments directly acquired by social media, due to the very short nature of the eight-week campaign, but the school was hoping to achieve its target intake of 50 students.

The Campaign

Hughes prepared and executed an ambitious, four-week social and digital media campaign, supported by direct stakeholder engagement with community referral partners, to raise awareness of and encourage students to sign up for the 2020 July intake, in a very short space of time.

The campaign began by creating awareness of Youth Inc. Enterprise Academy while simultaneously building demographic and audience data to help inform future strategic remarketing opportunities to a higher intent audience.

Google advertising complemented this quite strategic Facebook campaign, by ensuring that Youth Inc was visible both in Google search results for ‘in-market’ audiences, and in display search results for people within our target audience segments.