The Client: Niagara & Halton Skilled Trades Academies

For those considering a career in the HVAC and Gas Technician industries, the Niagara and Halton Skilled Trades Academies offer a variety of courses to learn the skills and achieve the certifications needed for success. They offer programs for those with no experience in the industry as well as for those wishing to upgrade their current licenses and skills.

The Niagara and Halton Skilled Trades Academies pride themselves on providing education outside of a conventional classroom. Boasting technologically advanced classrooms, labs and shops the academy strives to provide the best hands-on learning experience possible to prepare students for the working world quickly and efficiently.

Pre-Inbound: Facelift, SEO

When the Niagara and Halton Skilled Trades Academies came to Hughes & Co. with the dreams of giving their marketing strategies a facelift, their online presence was not performing to effectively grow their business. They were spreading their marketing budget thin over a wide variety of media — newspaper and magazine advertisements, cold calls and pay-per-click advertising — and seeing minimal success.

The stats

• 85 new website visitors per month

• 25% of these visitors came from organic search

• 30 Facebook fans

• 0 tracked conversions

The intervention: Enter Hughes & Co. with HubSpot

The Hughes & Co. team could see the potential for a successful inbound marketing strategy. With  the skilled trades having such a high-demand for fully licensed workers, it was time to educate people on why they should choose a career in this industry, and further, why Niagara and Halton Skilled Trades Academies is the place to get their education.

The Plan: The development of a strategy

When the Niagara and Halton Skilled Trades Academies came to Hughes & Co. with the dreams of giving their marketing strategies a facelift, their online presence was not performing to effectively grow their business. They were spreading their marketing budget thin over a wide variety of media — newspaper and magazine advertisements, cold calls and pay-per-click advertising — and seeing minimal success.

• Creation and Maintenance of Blog: Hughes & Co. created and now fully maintains a blog that answers frequently asked questions, features graduates of the program and narrates any current events that are on-topic. All content is fully optimized with competitive keywords.

• Creation of Premium Content: An integral feature of inbound marketing is premium content offerings; this creates the opportunity for Niagara and Halton Skilled Trades Academies to be the experts and generate leads. Hughes & Co. creates and disseminates premium content pieces on a quarterly basis to encourage conversion and capture information from website visitors.

• Landing Page and Form Creation: The addition of landing pages and forms is where Niagara and Halton Skilled Trades Academies capture and nurture leads. Using state-of-the-art software, HubSpot, Hughes & Co. can deliver and nurture potential students to registered students.

• Full Site Optimization: Hughes & Co. has fully optimized the Niagara and Halton Skilled Trades Academies’ website, ensuring the best performance in search engines across the board.

The Results: Growing and growing and growing

Since embracing a full inbound methodology, Niagara and Halton Skilled Trades Academies has seen undeniable success in their first 6 months. In their most recent class, the school saw 25% of their revenue coming directly from web leads.

Further examples of their successes are as follows:

• Growth to 2000+ visitors per month

• Average 35 leads per month

• 30% conversion rate on landing pages

• Top page search results

• Inbound represents 40% of the monthly revenue for this client