Case Studies

Home Learning College

‘Convince a sceptical board that the Internet is a viable marketing medium’

The Requirement

The Home Learning College are the UK’s largest home learning specialists, offering a wide range of distance learning courses. The Home Learning College was established 18 years ago, and has trained over 280,000 students in a multitude of courses, ranging from I.T and Computing, Book-Keeping, Marketing and Social Care

The Home Learning College’s marketing strategy was based around a traditional offline model, focussed on direct mail and door to door sales. The board were sceptical about the role the internet could play in their marketing mix. Bloom Media worked in conjunction with Home Learning College’s media buying agency to offer a constructive review of all the Home Learning College’s online marketing activity. 

Bloom Media recognised the need to update the existing website and efficiently track leads generated by the site, in order to prove to Home Learning College the power of the internet as a marketing medium. A test budget for Pay-Per-Click advertising was agreed, and Bloom was commissioned to redesign the site with the brief of giving it a fresh modern design, and a truly usable customer experience.

The Approach

Working closely with Home Learning College’s marketing department, a new home page design was presented and evolved to meet the Home Learning College’s satisfaction, and importantly was designed to achieve the core marketing objectives of the business.

The focus of the redesign was to achieve the following:

• A new design reflecting the Home Learning College brand
• Strong call to actions to drive enquiries
• Expanded course content
• A ‘white label’ design that is easily redeployed in partner company branding
• Prove that the internet represents a prime opportunity
• Drive enquiry volumes and sales revenue

Intuitive navigation and strong calls to action, combined with clear brand communication were developed to deliver an immediately engaging home page, quickly driving the visitor to the course of interest, and through to placing an enquiry.

The Outcome

As soon as the site was launched the volume of leads increased rapidly and it was clear the project was going to be a success. Three months after launch, and combined with an effective internet marketing campaign, the lead volumes went through the roof, escalating to thousands every month.

Analysis of the lead to order ratios, and average order values, proved that not only was the website now the highest volume lead generator of all of Home Learning College’s marketing channels, but the conversion rates and average order values were also beating all other media.

The impact of the website has been so great that the company has radically altered its marketing focus and changed its sales model to capitalise upon the opportunity the internet offers. The website is now redeployed for over 20 partners with more joining every month.