The brief

Nottingham Girls' High School came to us with three challenges; to break the stigmas around a private and single sex education, the adjacent boys’ high school becoming co-ed and thus a major competitor, and falling numbers in student admissions.

Their initial brief for us was to drive attendance numbers for their Nursery, Infant and Junior School Open Day.

The approach

We surveyed current parents and those that didn’t apply to understand how much the stigmas played a part in the final decision-making. This research fed into landing page designs and content that educated, informed and inspired prospective parents and their daughters. We launched paid social campaigns to target this audience at the right time and in the right place with personalised content.

The challenge

Whilst advertising the school’s open days, the global pandemic hit, which meant all in-person events were cancelled and school applications dropped to an all time low. We quickly created online virtual school tours that took visitors on the same journey as the physical open days. As restrictions lifted, we built a multi-channel digital strategy to increase registrations for the in-person open days which could once again take place.

The results

The senior school is at full capacity and the open days are hitting the highest ever attendance numbers. For the October 2021 open day, over 100 families came to look around the school, a potential school fees value of £1.4m if each family had a single child. With the pandemic still driving digital to the top of the agenda, we continue to work with NGHS to optimise their user experience and create engaging online journeys.