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Winner, 2021 HubSpot Impact Awards, Grow Better: Marketing

From waiting for the phone to a lead tap they control.

An Adelaide training college still relying on paper, an old CRM and apps that did not talk to each other. Then came the rebuild, and the campaigns that filled it.

Client
Project lead
Trav WhiteFounder and Head of AI Engineering
Industry
Registered training organisation
Location
Adelaide, South Australia
Scope
Marketing, sales, website and ads
Award
2021 Impact Awards
Revenue$1.8MYear on year increase
Paid ads525%+Return on paid advertising in the first six months
Students35%Growth in the student base in the first six months

01 The briefRebuild marketing and sales: generate quality leads for the next intake, shorten the time it takes to close them, and give the whole journey from lead to student a structure that can grow.

02 The problem

Good courses, and a slow road to enrolling in one.

Enable College is a registered training organisation, a provider accredited to deliver national qualifications, teaching aged care, childcare and business courses in South Australia.

Trav and Enable's CEO, Paul Denver, were classmates who had started their businesses at around the same time. Catching up, Paul described how much of the college still ran by hand: paper contracts, disconnected apps and an old CRM that made it hard for one department to work with the next.

Without a clear structure from first enquiry to enrolment, every stage slowed down. Fewer leads came in, fewer of them converted, and prospective students dropped off before they enrolled.

It had stayed that way because the people who could fix it were busy running it. The same sales team was generating the leads and closing the deals, so there was no one free to rebuild the process underneath them.

Four systems, before and after
The jobBeforeAfter
The CRMAn old CRMHubSpot Marketing and Sales Pro
Student recordsA separate learning management systemaXcelerate integrated with the HubSpot CRM
ContractsSigned on paperE-signed through PandaDoc
Paid adsRun in houseGoogle and Facebook Ads, managed by us
03 The order of work

Fix the sales process first, then fill it.

The campaign came last on purpose. Sending more leads into a slow process would only have lost more of them.

Step 01

Nine onboarding workshops

Enable was bringing in HubSpot Marketing and Sales Pro across the company, so nine purpose-built workshops got the whole team working in it.

9 workshopsMarketing ProSales Pro
Step 02

Join up the systems

aXcelerate, the college's learning management system, was integrated with the HubSpot CRM first, so a student's journey could be tracked from the first touch. PandaDoc followed, and paper contracts went with it.

aXceleratePandaDoc e-signingTracked from first touch
Step 03

Rebuild the sales pipeline

Every stage mapped in Whimsical, then built in HubSpot with stage-based workflows that take on the team's data entry and send personalised emails through the pipeline.

Mapped in WhimsicalStage workflowsAutomated emails
Step 04

Redesign the website and the brand

A simpler site architecture, stepped out in Whimsical, a customer journey built on research, and a brand refresh to go with it.

WordPress rebuildHubSpot landing pagesBrand refresh
Step 05

Run the inbound campaign

With the pipeline and the site ready, the marketing began: buyer personas, content for each stage, lead nurturing, and paid ads to speed it up.

Buyer personasLead nurturingGoogle and Facebook Ads

Steps 01 and 02 ran side by side. The workshops were still going when the systems work and the pipeline started.

The two objectives

Once the onboarding was under way, the second phase had two objectives, set down in the 2021 case study as one line: Improve the efficiency and output of the sales team, and in turn, improve the buying experience for the potential student.

Step 03 is the first half of that line and step 04 is the second.

The Enable College customer journey sales process mapped in Whimsical, dated 7 August 2019: six stages from lead to letter of offer, with student emails, SMS and reminders above the line and staff notifications and follow-up tasks below it
The sales process, mapped before it was built. Each stage runs left to right, from lead through call and application to the letter of offer. Above the line is what the student receives, each email or SMS with reminders at set intervals if nothing moves. Below it is what the staff see: a notification at each step, and a follow-up task when an application stalls for eight days.
Four students working on laptops along a long timber desk in an Enable College classroom
Enable College
04 The scope

Marketing, sales, website and ads, with one team on all four.

Each column leans on the one before it. The campaign needs the pipeline, and the pipeline needs the CRM underneath it.

01

Marketing and growth

Who the college is talking to, and what it says to them.

  • Buyer persona workshop
  • Content generation
  • Branding and website design
  • Inbound campaign management
02

Sales and CRM

What happens to a lead once it arrives.

  • Nurturing for new leads
  • A funnel to sort and contact leads
  • Sales process automation
  • Pipeline and deal stages
  • E-signing integration
03

Websites and integrations

Where students find the college, and where their records go.

  • WordPress website development
  • HubSpot landing pages
  • Integration with aXcelerate
04

SEO and paid media

How new students get to the landing pages faster.

  • Google Ads management
  • Facebook Ads management
  • Remarketing

More leads is only good news when the process can take them.

Neighbourhood

Enquiries coming in faster than your team can follow up?

Book a call
05 The campaign

How to get a job fast in Adelaide.

The first inbound campaign answered the question most prospective students were already asking. Everything in it was built for a stage of that decision.

A buyer persona workshop, Who the students are, agreed across the college
  • One picture of each type of student: their goals, challenges, worries and characteristics.
  • Agreed across the company, so the messaging was settled before anything was written.
  • The shared challenge became the campaign: how to get a job fast in Adelaide.
Content for each persona, What they read first, and what they download next
  • Blogs and articles first, on landing a dream job sooner, to bring in search and organic traffic.
  • Guides, toolkits and downloads next, to explain the options once a reader is interested.
Lead nurturing by context, The bridge from reading to enrolling
  • From awareness to consideration: company articles and course information.
  • From consideration to decision: case studies and student stories.
Google and Facebook Ads, Why the campaign did not wait months for search
  • Search traffic takes months to pay back without a nudge, so paid ads went on top.
  • Ads led to landing pages with smart content, which changes what a visitor sees depending on how well they already know the college.
The 60 day campaign page from the Enable College strategy deck: aged care, child care and disability each with their own landing pages, fed by email, Facebook, LinkedIn, AdWords and retargeting
The 60 day plan, one course area to a row. Aged care, child care and disability each got their own landing pages, and each channel was split by audience, from past students to older and younger prospects.
An Enable College landing page offering a skill-developing checklist as a download, with a short form beside it The cover of the Enable College guide How to Get a Job Fast in Care and Support, open to its introduction
The downloads that turned a reader into a contact. A checklist behind a short form, and the job guide the campaign was named for. Each one turned a reader into a contact the nurturing could pick up.
06 The results

Four goals. The result against each one.

What Enable College asked for at the start, and where each one stood once the new process was running.

Goal 01

More leads for the sales team, before the next intake

We built the "How to Get a Job Fast in Adelaide" campaign, with Google and Facebook Ads leading to smart-content landing pages.

50%

more leads, 450 in the first three months of the campaign. Six months in, the return on paid advertising spend had passed 525%.

Goal 02

Better leads, closed sooner

We mapped the pipeline in Whimsical, rebuilt it in HubSpot with stage workflows, and set up nurturing from awareness to decision.

21.02%

of contacts became customers. The stage workflows take on the team's data entry and send personalised emails through the pipeline, which gave the sales team time back in the day.

Goal 03

One structure from lead to student

We set up HubSpot Marketing and Sales Pro, connected aXcelerate from the first touch, and replaced paper contracts with PandaDoc.

35%

growth in the student base in the first six months. A student's journey can now be tracked from the first touch, and contracts are signed without paper.

Goal 04

Inbound that brings in sales-ready leads

We ran a buyer persona workshop, wrote content for each stage of the funnel, and redesigned the website.

8.66%

of sessions became contacts, against an industry average of 2 to 3%. That was across our time with the college, from the website and the marketing working together.

Revenue rose by $1,800,000 year on year. The college went from waiting for the phone to ring to a lead tap it can turn on and off, depending on how many enquiries the team can take.

With HubSpot as the CRM and the new website, Enable College runs very differently now. The automated processes gave the sales team time back, and set the college up for all the inbound marketing that came after.

A student reading notes alone in rows of empty lecture theatre seats
“Trav and his team at Neighbourhood turned our marketing around from the point where we were sitting around waiting for the phone to ring to getting on the front foot, targeting our audience and message and using HubSpot to automate so much of the funnel process. Now we are able to turn the lead tap on and off depending on our capacity to cope with the increased inquiries. Neighbourhood know HubSpot and was able to get it all rolling for us with little to no technical input from our end. I would recommend the whole package to anyone - get Neighbourhood to manage your digital marketing and get him to set up HubSpot for you.”
Paul Denver CEO, Enable College
Trav White, project manager at Neighbourhood

Who ran it

Trav WhiteFounder and Head of AI Engineering

Led the onboarding workshops, the systems and pipeline rebuild, the new website and the campaign after it.

HubSpot Certified Trainer, 9 HubSpot Impact Awards, Founded Neighbourhood in 2015

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