Teach At St Barb’s

How do you get teachers to move to the outback?

The Challenge

Australia’s regions have long struggled to attract and retain professionals across a range of industries, including education. So our client, St Barbara’s Parish School (St Barb’s); in Roxby Downs, a town of 4000 people in the middle of the South Australian outback, shared a challenge common to regional schools. It was desperately seeking more passionate teachers for its students!

It needed teachers who:

would love life in the outback
were motivated to fast-track their career (even if it meant being six-hours drive from the metro area) and
who could imagine themselves living in Roxby.

The challenge was to attract new teachers with a modest budget, while also investing in activities that would help market the school to new families as well. Getting St Barb’s on the radar of more of the right candidates is what would make all the difference!

The Outcome

Our campaign, Teach at St Barb’s, resulted in 8 new teachers signing on, at a retention rate of 87.5%! That was an incredible result for a school of about 200 students, in a mining town with a highly transient population.

Over the two-month campaign period:

there were more than 1,100 sessions on the campaign landing page we developed
61% of those visits came from social media
25% were driven from TV advertising and residential college visit collateral.

As a result, the school reported an increase in direct telephone calls and emails in line with campaign activity. What’s more, the enquiries were more productive because applicants had more context about what to expect – having read the clear, concise information on our landing page.

“We knew we made the right decision engaging Pitstop Marketing… They took the time to understand us and what makes our school, and our community special. Because they got that, it made working together easy, it delivered results and the advertising generated even more pride in our school community too!”

– Bernadette Lacey, School Principal, St Barbara’s Parish School

How we did it

First, we had to understand what was working for the passionate St Barb’s teachers who had grabbed the chance to fast-track their career, already at the school.

What we learned, was that the teachers who were in it for the long haul, usually had a few things in common (particularly experience living in a small community and having spent time living away from home).

These insights prepared us to target a cost-effective marketing approach, that attracted more of the right candidates (not necessarily the most candidates).

The campaign activity targeted undergraduate and current teachers and reached them through a mix of:

traditional mediums, including residential college visits, TV and cinema advertising in regional areas; and
digital mediums, including Facebook and Instagram.

The call to action for all campaign activity was to visit a landing page (www.teachatstbarbs.com.au) that helped to demystify life in the outback.