Search and social campaign delivers 649% ROI for the RCN
We launched the Royal College of Nursing's first digital recruitment campaign, achieving a 629% revenue return through effective paid search and Facebook advertising, driving significant membership sign-ups.
Royal College of Nursing
The outcomes
- 1,412 Membership sign-ups 35,084 visitors led to 1,412 new RCN memberships
- 629% Campaign ROI Each £1 spent returned 629% in revenue
The brief
A digital recruitment campaign
The Royal College of Nursing is the UK's largest nonprofit professional nursing body, representing more than 435,000 nurses, student nurses, midwives, health care assistants and assistant practitioners in the UK and internationally.
To communicate its membership benefits to the UK healthcare workforce, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) sought our help to create its first ever digital recruitment campaign.
The objective
Communicate, reach and optimise
The campaign's objectives were:
- Communicate that health care assistants, assistant practitioners, nurses and students can join the RCN and explain what the membership benefits are in a compelling fashion.
- Reach target audiences and drive memberships in a cost effective way.
- Optimise the campaign in real-time by measuring the success of activity.
I appreciate the time taken by Torchbox to interpret the brief and the wider market conditions that the RCN operates in. This helped form a truly collaborative partnership that allowed us the room to be responsive and conduct an effective campaign based on the test, learn and optimise framework.
Yasser Hussain Marketing Manager, Royal College of Nursing
The strategy
Using paid search and Facebook to drive sign-ups
We first ran a series of test campaigns to identify which channels generated the greatest number of memberships at a cost effective ROI. Based on the results, we developed a campaign strategy which leant on paid search and Facebook advertising to drive audiences to sign up for RCN membership.
Our strategy for Royal College of Nursing's search and social campaign
Implementation
The pages we wanted to drive audiences to did not exist, so we created responsive, mobile-friendly landing pages. Next, we focused on creating a compelling list of benefits for each of the audience landing pages. We communicated the RCN’s five membership points to health care assistants and assistant practitioners, listed reasons why nurses should join the RCN and promoted educational support benefits to nursing students.
Royal College of Nursing landing page
Paid Search
We built and ran granular AdWords campaigns to target health care assistants, assistant practioners, nurses and students. To ensure we were targeting the right audiences with the correct messaging, we created bespoke ad copy which resonated with each audience. To increase traffic to the target landing pages, we expanded our ad campaigns to include specialty terms and more relevant job titles.
This campaign went a long way towards helping exceed our membership targets for the year. A low cost per acquisition (CPA) coupled with high revenue really speaks for itself. The ability for us to show true measurement metrics will be a huge positive as we look to extend this kind of activity in the future.
Yasser Hussain Marketing Manager, Royal College of Nursing
Facebook advertising
We ran a campaign to test seven different creatives. The best performing adverts achieved a 10 out of 10 Facebook relevancy score and drove audiences to target landing pages for a very low cost per click. To broaden our reach, we expanded the job titles campaign to include variations used in different UK locations. Interestingly 79% of clicks came from mobile users.
Royal College of Nursing Facebook ads
Attribution
To monitor the effectiveness of our campaign, we created a unique attribution model to understand which channel accounted for each conversion. This approach provided valuable insights which we used to optimise the campaign.
An example of the attribution model we built for Royal College of Nursing
The results
- The communications we used to target each of our audiences proved to be convincing and compelling. Of the 35,084 visitors we drove to our target landing pages, 6,543 continued through to the membership registration page, and 1,412 went on to sign up for RCN membership.
- Using a mixture of clever targeting techniques, we have been able to drive audiences to sign up for memberships in a cost effective way. For every £1 spent, our campaign returned 629% revenue.
- We continuously optimised our AdWords and Facebook advertising campaigns to improve the performance and results. This helped to increase the number of memberships generated throughout the life of the campaign by 571%.
A highly successful campaign for us, not only from a results point of view but also from an agency/client perspective.
Yasser Hussain Marketing Manager, Royal College of Nursing
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