Enrollment can't depend on one channel.
Skilled Trades College is an Ontario education provider for careers in the skilled trades. Students search for programs campus by campus, but many young adults still see the trades as dangerous or unstable work. The goal was to win the search, change that perception, and widen the audience to include women and other groups underrepresented in the trades.
Search catches demand. Brand creates it.
Search only captures people who already want a program. To grow past that pool, the brand had to feel familiar before anyone typed a query, so we connected search, social, and sponsorships into one system, with every channel feeding the next.
Google Ads & SEO
Paid & Organic Social
Influencer & Sponsorship Marketing
CRO & Content Production
Search, social, and sponsors. One system.
We built a 360 digital program for Skilled Trades College, connecting Google Ads, SEO, paid and organic social, and sponsorships with UFC, Scottie Barnes, and CIBC, all pointed at location pages built to convert.
Ran Google Ads by campus market and redesigned location pages for conversion
Built organic search visibility across campus and program pages
Produced real-student content for lead gen and high-production commercials for awareness
Amplified reach through UFC, Scottie Barnes, Georges St-Pierre, and CIBC
Search: Google Ads & SEO
Google Ads ran by campus market, with location pages redesigned for conversion, while SEO built visibility behind every program. Search is also shifting. In Q4 2025 average position improved from 20.4 to 10.1 and impressions rose 66%, but clicks fell 32% as AI Overviews answered more queries on the results page.
Results:
Social & Content System
Always-on organic and paid social, with real students and instructors on camera and scalable templates built alongside the college's design team, kept the brand consistent at volume. Impressions grew 150% to 17.5M in a year.
Highlights:
Sponsorships & Creators
UFC, Scottie Barnes, Georges St-Pierre, and CIBC took the story past the college's own audience, each with a campaign built around it, from scholarships and commercials to fight-week social.
The result: +15K followers in one year, a 1,876% jump, while Google Ads leads grew 272% over two years.
272%
increase in Google Ads leads, Q1 2023 to Q1 2025
43%
lower cost per lead, from $23.80 to $13.56
1,213%
growth in ranking keywords (923 to 12,121), Q1 2023 to Q1 2025
3.62M
Google search impressions in Q4 2025, up 66% year over year
1,876%
follower growth year over year (+15K followers)
1.9M
impressions from one month of UFC Vancouver content (88 posts and stories)
01
Paid search and brand work together
Google Ads leads grew 272% while cost per lead fell 43%, with social and sponsorships building familiarity alongside paid search.
02
Landing pages do the closing
CRO-focused redesigns of 12 location pages lifted form submissions at every one, so more of the paid and organic traffic turned into leads.
03
Real people beat polish
Authentic student content lifted average video views 452% to 5.4K, and impressions grew 150% to 17.5M.
04
Big names widen the audience
UFC, Scottie Barnes, GSP, and CIBC took the story past the college's core audience, and one viral post alone earned 440K organic impressions.
