Foster 4 Council, launched in 2018, is an industry-leading foster care recruitment service. The company collaboratively recruits foster carers on behalf of three local authorities in Cheshire: Cheshire West and Chester Council, Halton Borough Council, and Warrington Borough Council, with their headquarters in Warrington.

They aim to recruit foster carers in the North West region, whilst supporting and nurturing their current foster carers and ultimately reducing reliance on Independent Fostering Agencies (IFAs).

Our client prides themselves on their excellent working relationships with their foster carers and is dedicated to guiding and aiding them throughout their individual fostering journeys and beyond. Foster 4 Council are committed to ensuring that the children in their care remain local as they believe this is best for their wellbeing, so building brand awareness in their region was paramount to them.

 

  • 40%

    Inbound enquiries generated by LOCALiQ

  • 261

    Leads generated in 3 months

  • 350

    Unique enquiries produced

Goals.

Our client, Foster 4 Council, needed to find effective and measurable new strategies to increase inbound enquiries from potential new foster carers across the North West region.

Despite having a strong partnership with many IFAs, Foster 4 Council wanted to find their own way of generating new enquiries. They were eager to be able to support local people considering becoming foster parents and talk to them about what it takes to become a foster parent.

They also wanted and needed to become easily discoverable by local people actively researching and considering fostering.

Challenges.

Foster 4 Council’s key challenges and hardships included getting noticed by local people on social media and increasing engagement to drive enquiries and interest. They also wanted to obtain a method of identifying local people who had the potential to become great foster carers, yet were not currently considering it.

Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, our client wanted their marketing efforts to be both trackable and measurable, so they could attribute leads and conversions to their marketing campaigns and uncover what works and what doesn’t, to continue making data-driven decisions to increase their foster carer enquiries.

It was essential to Foster 4 Council that together we could objectively see which marketing solutions are having a positive impact on the volume of enquiries and approvals.

Solutions.

We curated an integrated, blended marketing solution of search engine marketing, targeted Facebook and Instagram advertising, and a retargeting campaign, each tailored to serve their regional and local areas.

This masterfully gave Foster 4 Council a multi-platform presence at each stage of the consumer journey funnel – awareness, consideration, research, and acquisition, answering their problem of not being found by local people in their area.

Their targeted, Lead Ads social advertising campaign drove awareness of their organisation whilst generating high-quality leads that they could both track and nurture through the use of Client Centre, a functional CRM system, marketing, and lead management tool.

Client Centre enabled Foster 4 Council to see their results and analytics in real-time alongside our regular and thorough reportage.

Alongside this, we ran web clicks, a social campaign optimised to drive website visits to uplift their website traffic, where users could find out further fostering information and be led closer to converting. Both campaigns were automated and optimised to decrease CPLs over time.

Furthermore, we ran a series of different creatives and then furtherly optimised the ones which performed the strongest.

All social campaigns utilised first-party mosaic data to target online users who were located within specific postcodes, reaching predefined custom audience groups that had the right social-economical footprint of being the most likely persons to consider fostering.

To add even more impact to our social advertising campaigns, we ran a retargeting campaign across Instagram and Facebook for Foster 4 Council to reach users who interacted with their lead and web click ads yet did not convert. This was an effective strategy to stay present with interested parties and local audiences.

To complement and boost the social marketing solutions we devised for our client, we ran search engine marketing campaigns for each council and its local area. The campaigns ran across Google and Bing and were optimised to decrease CPL.

Our client was able to witness the reduction of CPL and other metrics with their access to real-time analytics in Client Centre and regular performance reviews with our Digital Account Managers and Digital Marketing Consultants.

Results.

To see the fantastic results, inbound enquiry uplift, and the impact we generated for our client, download our Foster 4 Council success story.

Download Case Study

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