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Marketing for Fostering in Devon was so successful, we were asked to reduce the budget!

Fostering in Devon are part of Devon County Council whose role is to provide safe homes for the 700 plus children and young people who cannot live with their birth families.

In the Summer of 2017 Fostering In Devon approached White Space Advertising with a goal of recruiting 65 new foster carers across Devon (excluding Plymouth and Torbay) by the end of March 2018. These new foster carers would provide placements to children and young people from 0 to 18 years, including sibling groups, children with disabilities and teenagers with complex and challenging behaviour.

There were 3 key objectives for this project:

  • Increase quality website visitors by 50% (current average 1000 per month)
  • 600 new hard enquiries via the website (includes fostering enquiry line, email, Information Pack downloads) between August 2017 – Jan 2018
  • Leading to 65 new foster carers recruited by March 2018

White Space carried out a multi-stream advertising and marketing campaign, with designs from our Creative Director, Paul Mabin and digital development lead by our Design Director, Rob Pearce. The Social Media campaign was set up by our Marketing Manager, Melissa Gunstone. The key elements of the campaign included:

  • A direct mail campaign – with a flyer designed by White Space
  • Radio advertising – with adverts storyboarded and project managed by White Space
  • Social media organic and paid posts – with creative designed by Paul from White Space
  • Google and Re-marketing adverts

The results of the campaign (these results are from the end of the 6 month campaign but the results are still rising!) were astonishing and more than anyone could have expected or even dreamed of:

  • A 58% increase in Facebook likes
  • A 358% rise in website visits
  • Enquiries have exceeded expectations and there have been so many, that we were asked to temporarily reduce the marketing budget to concentrate on those enquiries already received
  • An increase in the quality of the enquiries, therefore leading to less time wasting and a higher conversion rate from enquiry to visits to foster applications

 

Better-Quality-Enquiries

Increase-in-Facebook-Likes

Increase-in-Facebook-Likes

 

Fostering in Devon are so delighted with the results that we have already been working on other campaigns for them, including one directed at unaccompanied asylum seekers.

Rachel Mildon, Communications and Marketing Officer at Devon County Council said “Whitespace Advertising have worked hard to develop a very successful foster carer recruitment campaign for Fostering Devon, part of Devon County Council. Their creatives have been successful in recruiting new foster carers using both digital and offline media. Melissa and team are very professional, the attention to detail and prompt delivery of different campaign elements makes working with them very easy.”