With a tailored strategic plan focused on driving sign-ups for the Help to Grow course, we achieved impressive growth and exceeded our goals.

These results enabled us to meet our year targets ahead of schedule.

This strong performance also allowed us to reallocate the remaining budget to future activity, ensuring every penny was used efficiently and delivered maximum value for our client.

The Background

Oxford Brookes Business School’s Help to Grow initiative is a government-backed scheme that empowers leaders in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across Oxfordshire to grow professionally and strategically. It is a 12-week programme designed for senior leaders to help them build the skills needed to take them and their business further. The programme includes support from a business mentor and is designed to fit alongside full-time work.

Long Standing Partnership

We have partnered with OBU for several years, gaining deep insight into their priorities and what drives their success. Through consistent collaboration, we have built strong trust with their teams, enabling seamless teamwork and positioning us to deliver impactful, long-term results.

Our Latest Mission

We set out to drive enrolments for the Help-to-Grow programme, empowering more business leaders to take their skills and their businesses further. Our goal: at least 15 sign-ups per cohort, with a stretch target of maximising each group’s full potential. With under 12 months to achieve it, we were ready to deliver exceptional results.

We specifically targeted senior business professionals from SMEs based within a 30-mile radius of Oxford (including Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire). Working with a specific media spend budget to cover a 9-month campaign, we knew we had to be agile and reactive with our optimisations to maximise our budget and get the best results.

Strategy in Action

Achieving our targets required a strategically built marketing funnel.

• To raise awareness at the top of the funnel, Google Display was utilised to retarget website visitors alongside reaching high-intent prospective audiences who were most likely to convert in specified timeframes.
• Utilising interest layering, such as demographic targeting and URL targeting, to reach users who had previously interacted with relevant brands further increased the likelihood that our ads would reach the most engaged audience at the right time to convert.
• Over time, we moved away from retargeting because analysis showed the activity generated limited website traffic, and we wanted to prevent ad fatigue and prioritise fresh audience engagement.

To refine our Google Display targeting, we crafted affinity audiences focused on:

• Business professionals.
• News enthusiasts.
• Frequent business travellers.
• In-market audiences for business education.

Demographically, we targeted individuals aged 25-65+ who were either planning to start a business or had recently launched one. To maintain precision, we implemented negative placement targets to exclude irrelevant audiences. Specifically, we filtered out users aged 18-24 and retirees, ensuring our focus remained on senior business leaders. We also utilised URL targeting and auction insights to ensure we were reaching users who had previously looked at competitors.

Supporting our lower-funnel strategy required a more targeted approach, which made LinkedIn Ads an ideal channel. We targeted three audiences on LinkedIn:

• Users at Director and Managerial seniority levels.
• Users who had “Business Owner” or “Manager” in their job title.
• Users who listed Management & Leadership in their skills.

To avoid high CPC due to advertising against high-cost audiences, we also set cost caps to allow us to stay on top of budget usage throughout the campaign effectively.

Last (but certainly not least), we primarily utilised Google Search with high-intent keyword targeting for our bottom-funnel strategy to generate conversions.

Our main keywords were:

• Leadership courses.
• Management courses.
• Mentorship.
• Strategy and planning.
• Small business growth.
• Help-to-Grow branded keywords.

By continuously monitoring performance, we reallocated budgets to the highest-performing channels, enabling us to stay agile and user-focused with our optimisations throughout the campaign and deliver impactful results.

Challenges

Our most significant challenge came during the UK general election, when government-backed campaigns such as Help to Grow were paused to comply with restrictions. We had to pause all activity for the entire month of June, which condensed our timeline from 3 months spanning June to August, to only 2. All budget that would’ve otherwise gone towards the June activity was held and redistributed to July and August.

• Whilst we did experience lower numbers due to having less time to generate momentum for sign-ups, we still surpassed budgetary enrolment targets by 153%!

Another challenge we faced was strong competition from other local business schools delivering the Help to Grow programme, as well as from the Small Business Charter (SBC). The SBC, which accredits UK business schools, runs its own national advertising campaigns. This created overlap with our highest-spending keywords in biddable auctions, meaning our campaigns were effectively competing not only with other local providers under the SBC umbrella but also with national SBC activity itself.

To overcome this, we closely monitored keyword performance, refined our targeting strategy, and focused on high-intent, region-specific terms that aligned more directly with Oxford Brookes University’s offering.

• This approach reduced unnecessary bidding competition, improved cost efficiency, and ensured our campaigns maintained strong visibility and performance despite the crowded landscape.

Breakthrough Success

Our long-standing partnership with Oxford Brookes University has gone from strength to strength over the years as we saw remarkable growth for Oxford Brookes Business School throughout our campaigns.

• In the first year of our campaign, enrolments increased by 125% year-on-year.
• The next year, we exceeded registration targets by 73%, enrolling 164 participants across six cohorts, enabling OBU to support even more business leaders in the region.
• Our most recent campaign marked a standout milestone, as we filled all 30 seats in the cohort ahead of schedule. With the remaining marketing budget, we focused on building broader awareness of OBU and the Help to Grow scheme, ensuring every penny was used to maximum effect.

Exceptional Results

Google Search was the standout performer, achieving an impressive account average of 11.14% CTR and driving 132 registration clicks in the campaign’s final months, surpassing budgetary enrolment targets by 153%.

This success demonstrates the power of a well-executed strategy, thoughtful targeting, the importance of campaign agility, and our commitment to maximising the marketing campaigns’ full potential.

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