Case study · Education & community

Little Lane: raising profile and growing enrolments.

Little Lane runs premium early learning centres across Australia and was opening more. We ran the campaigns that kept Open Days full and enquiry forms busy while the network grew.

Sector: Education & community
Service: Digital marketing

Digital marketingCampaign delivery

Little Lane early-learning centre interior with children at play.

The challenge

What needed to change.

Little Lane runs a growing group of early learning centres across Australia, each built around a love of lifelong learning in young children. With continued expansion of its locations, the business needed to build its profile as the place for lifelong learning and show families why Little Lane is the best option for their children. In a market crowded with early learning centres and kindergartens, that meant making a distinctive approach visible to parents who were comparing options.

Brand awareness and online leads had to grow in step with the opening of new centres and the Open Days at existing locations. That was something of a juggling act: each centre had its own needs and its own calendar, and every advertising dollar had to work harder across all of them.

Enrolment decisions are made locally. A parent in one suburb has little interest in a centre across the city, so the campaigns had to speak to each community separately while still building one brand.

Creating a warm and engaging feel in every ad, with the aim of better conversions, was a twofold challenge. The creative had to feel like Little Lane rather than like an advertisement, and it had to keep pace with a landscape that never stood still.

New websites were being procured while the campaigns ran, and the Glen Iris and Rosanna centres were due to open in the new year. Each change affected where ads could send people and what they could promise. The work required a specially coordinated timeline and flexible execution, so that launches, Open Days and enrolment deadlines all landed on time without any centre being left behind.

Approach

How the work took shape.

We devised a multifaceted approach that worked hand in hand with the revamped website to build the Little Lane brand and engagement. An in depth understanding of the target audience let us develop campaigns that showcased the unique qualities of Little Lane, and search and social advertising were planned together so a parent met the same warmth whether they searched for a centre or scrolled past one.

The key focus was on increasing direct enquiries to each of the existing centres while highlighting the new centres opening across Australia. Promoting the urgency of enrolling at Glen Iris and Rosanna, both opening in 2024, could not be done at the expense of the current locations.

So the campaign was built centre by centre. Each location had its own message, each Open Day its own push, and every ad asked the parent to register interest in the centre relevant to them rather than in the brand in general.

The shift

Every centre got its own campaign, and the budget followed whichever one had the nearest deadline.

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The work

The work, up close.

The campaigns ran continuously, with budget moving to wherever it was needed most. Our team repurposed spend from specific locations to focus resources on the centres with enrolment deadlines and Open Day promotions, and the increase in traffic coincided with a significant reduction in overall spend. The planning and execution of the ongoing campaigns produced a strong return on investment.

900%.

Increase in the overall number of form submissions.

360+%.

Growth in phone leads.

The creative did what it was asked to do. Warm, centre specific ads brought parents to the relevant pages of the new website and on to the enquiry form or the phone, and as the campaigns were optimised the share of visitors who took that step kept rising. Conversions doubled within the first two months, and the conversion rate went on climbing over the life of the campaign.

Just as important, the growth came without more spend. Shifting budget between centres as deadlines approached meant more enquiries for less, and kept the new centres in front of local families in the months before they opened.