Digital Advertising: 27J Schools
The challenge
Amid a nationwide teacher shortage, 27J Schools in Colorado sought to attract top classroom talent to its growing district. In such a competitive market, they needed to set themselves apart from other school districts to attract the best candidates. With a four-day work week in a community nestled at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, just outside of Denver, the district had a unique opportunity to appeal to a demographic that would thrive in that setting – they just needed to reach and captivate them.
Our approach
CESO Communications conducted a discovery session with the 27J team to fully understand the district and its needs, then created a “likely candidate” profile that would guide our work. This likely candidate would be a young educator from outside Colorado, looking to launch their career. They might be interested in the outdoors, hiking and city life.
Rooted in research, we devised a strategic marketing plan with a set of key messages for this audience that propelled our digital advertising strategy. 27J Schools wanted to be culturally relevant to its target audience and move the needle in a saturated online environment. They were already showing up online with a lighthearted and casual tone, so we knew this was our opportunity to lean in.
This work needed to be divided into two buckets: a paid advertising campaign and organic content. We targeted educators and educators-to-be in surrounding states, leveraging the ’ robust targeting capabilities of social media and Google Search. We also worked with 27J’s team to highlight urgently needed positions, boosting a new LinkedIn ad each week that linked to a posted job. We used a more professional tone in the paid ads while emanating fun and humor in organic social media posts – a real “business in the front, party in the back” approach. In addition to the strategy, copy and visuals for the paid ads, CESO Communications created short-form videos for the social platforms most likely to engage the job candidates 27J needed. By focusing on the selling points of the four-day work week, the beauty of Colorado, work-life balance and competitive benefits, these targeted ads led to new job candidates for 27J’s schools.
To supplement our campaign, we also helped the district revamp the Careers section of their website to be clear, inviting and up-to-date with relevant job links and descriptions. Along the way, it was important to measure the effectiveness of our approach to ensure the messages resonated and led to applications.
Our impact
The paid ads reached more than 185,000 users on LinkedIn and showed across Google Search screens more than 54,000 times. During the campaign, the landing page received more than 64,000 page views from more than 8,800 unique users.
Our paid ads had a professional but approachable tone
Our organic social media posts garnered positive comments and widespread organic reach, with one video even going viral, reaching 80K users and generating 3.3K likes and 73 page follows.