Making contact

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How a targeted media plan significantly increase applicants to Sussex Police

What’s a contact handler?

Being a Contact Handler is a varied, intense and challenging role. They are often the first point of contact between the public and the police, the reassuring voice at the other end of the line.

Clearly, it’s a vital position to fill, but Sussex Police have often found it hard to attract the right people with the right skills.

What were Sussex Police doing?

Their recent campaigns ran every quarter using both organic and some paid social media activity.

However, with the increasingly limited reach that organic posts now offer organisations, they were not seeing the results needed.

As a starting point, our aim was to reach more of the right kind of people, making them aware of these roles.

And how did we do that?

We put in place a paid media strategy to help promote Sussex Police to a bigger and better audience across a wider range of digital channels.

This, coupled with a renewed creative approach developed by their own creative team, provided the right combination to appeal to an audience that hadn’t necessarily thought about becoming a Contact Handler previously.

There were a few challenges…

To start, we were given a very short campaign window – applications are open only for three and half weeks – and a limited budget.

With a target of a minimum of 250 applications required from a restricted geographical area, ideally from within a one-hour’s drive from Lewes, we had to focus on high-impact channels and formats that could deliver awareness, engagement, and most importantly, applications.

But we conquered these challenges

Our Service & Performance team worked closely with our Digital and Social experts, to deliver an effective and efficient media strategy – one that resulted in a highly-targeted campaign across paid social media such as Facebook and Instagram, programmatic display and more traditional job boards.

There was solid evidence

Armed with thought-provoking, challenging creative and messaging, the immediate results were impressive. The campaign saw:

  • Over 15,000 local users reached on social media alone
  • More than 5,000 people visiting the campaign landing page in just over three weeks
  • Over 560 candidates going on to apply

The campaign received over double the number of target applications, meaning our work helped Sussex Police to increase their application volume by more than 181% when compared to previous activity.

And the client?

We’ll let them speak for themselves:

The campaign went better than expected. We normally get 200 applications and we received 562, which is fantastic. Many thanks your assistance in helping us achieve this.”

Shirley Holmes, Senior Recruitment Consultant

Sussex Police Channel planning and buying