Case Study: The Giles School

The Giles School hired Amalgam Design just as they were expanding and moving to a bigger location. They wanted a new website but they also needed more students. They gave us an enrolment goal to shoot for and we went to work.

Branding

Giles School Logo

We rebranded The Giles School by rethinking how it was positioning itself in the market. The school was selling itself as the "Best Small School" which didn't accurately represent its strongest selling point: that the school's early introduction of French as a second language raises the operating intelligence of children. We honed in on this unique selling point with the new slogan, "Simply Smarter".

We refreshened the crest of the school to polish their identity and compete with other private schools.

We chose a photograph to drive the marketing of a young girl with her arms raised in a cheer. We chose this to emphasize the fact that though the academics are operating at a very high level, it is fun to attend the school.

Next, we developed a marketing strategy around how to best attract the parents of the children most likely to enroll: Pre-K to Grade 1.

Website

Giles School Website

The Giles School is a perfect example of what we've come to call our "fish-in-a-barrel" clients. These clients have an excellent product or service and the only thing that has held them back has been lack of effective marketing. Once the market is aware of these clients, getting conversions is like shooting fish in a barrel. Parents interested in private schools simply did not know what The Giles School had to offer.

A key component to the website had to be its search engine optimization. Their previous site wasn't ranking at all for "French Immersion Toronto" and today it's one page 1. It's on page 2 for "Private School Toronto", a challenging search term in that, being French immersion, Google considers it a specialty school as opposed to a run of the mill private school.

Search Engine Marketing

We began a search engine marketing campaign as soon the site was launched. We developed a series of ads to ensure that all parents searching for what Giles had to offer could find them.

Online Display Advertising

One of the most effective marketing strategies was to identify key sites to display banner ads for the school. These sites brought in outstanding click throughs, all because it was well targeted. We found the people most likely to be interested in the school.

Print Marketing

We created an information kit for the school that was thorough and sales driven. The design was photography based to put the focus on the students. We approached the kit from the perspective of trying to answer any question a potential parent might have about the school.

Trade Show

We designed the entire booth for the private school fairs to represent the new look and messaging of the brand. We did a 3 panel wrap around design that was visually very striking.

Results

Within 9 months we had doubled their enrolment. A key component to the success of The Giles School was defining their conversion path. It is a multifaceted approach that involved a number of steps which, if executed correctly, produced very high conversions.