Sacramento was a mature market for Swing Education. We'd optimized everything we could optimize. Lead volume had plateaued. Incremental spend in paid channels showed diminishing returns. Cost per lead kept climbing as we chased volume that wasn't there.
This wasn't a creative problem or a targeting problem. It was a system constraint. Direct response channels had been tested extensively through A/B testing, bid testing, and surge testing. Performance had stopped responding to those levers. The market was supply-constrained, and continuing to pour capital into the same channels was economically irrational.
The Situation
Research confirmed what the numbers suggested. Brand awareness and preference were low among both substitute teachers and schools in Sacramento. Persona surveys and qualitative interviews surfaced a consistent finding: substitute teachers trust other substitute teachers and educators more than they trust brands or ads when deciding where to work.
That insight reframed the growth problem. We didn't need better ads. We needed a different kind of credibility. One that couldn't be manufactured through paid media alone.
Why Sacramento
We chose Sacramento because it matched the right conditions and we had the right people. The market had the growth dynamics we needed to test against. And we had a team member based in Sacramento who could activate on the ground, coordinate the event, and maximize output from a small budget. Running this remotely from HQ would have undercut the whole premise. Local credibility required local execution.
What We Did
I designed this as a small, asymmetric bet. Less than 2% of total ad spend. A single-market experiment, not a scale rollout.
We started with real people. We hosted a local event with actual Swing substitute teachers in Sacramento. Every person on camera was a real Swing sub. Zero scripts. They talked about why they loved working with Swing, in their own words, from their own experience. The result was content that sounded like a recommendation from a colleague, not an ad from a company.
Then we saturated the market. That advocacy-driven creative ran across a coordinated omnichannel mix: paid social, search, programmatic display, mobile geofencing, connected TV, digital out-of-home, retargeting, email, and job boards. The objective was market-level presence across every touchpoint a substitute teacher might encounter.
The timing was intentional. We ran the awareness campaign from February through April, ahead of Back-to-School season. Spring awareness would prime the market so that when fall recruiting demand peaked, we'd convert at higher rates and lower costs.
What Happened
The spring campaign produced early signals. Organic traffic increased. Direct traffic increased. The campaign landing page saw significant engagement. These were leading indicators, not proof.
The real impact showed up in the fall, consistent with how brand influence compounds over time.
Cost per lead dropped significantly. Lead volume roughly doubled from its plateau. A materially larger share of acquisition came from organic and direct channels, the high-intent, low marginal cost sources we'd been trying to grow.
The downstream economics improved structurally. Back-to-School LTV:CAC improved 30% year-over-year when comparing the same Aug-Oct window. That's not a seasonal artifact. Something structural changed.
How This Changed the System
The increase in organic demand created optionality. We no longer had to force volume through inefficient channels. Spend could be reallocated toward the best performers. Blended CAC improved and performance volatility decreased.
Brand functioned as a force multiplier because it unlocked organic acquisition. As more substitute teachers found Swing through word-of-mouth, search, and direct traffic, our reliance on expensive direct response channels dropped. That improved downstream channel efficiency without requiring additional spend.
When to Make This Bet Again
This approach is not universal, but it is selectively repeatable. The preconditions are clear:
- Rising marginal CAC. Incremental spend in paid channels is producing diminishing returns.
- Flat lead volume. The market has stopped responding to optimization.
- Low unaided awareness. Research confirms a trust and familiarity gap in-market.
When all three conditions are present, brand becomes the higher-leverage move.
What I'd Do Differently
Run a geo-holdout. Testing Sacramento against a comparable market with no brand investment would have isolated the effect cleanly. The evidence we have is persuasive, but a controlled comparison would have made it conclusive. Next time, that's the first thing I'd design into the experiment.
Extend the campaign through the summer into the school year to reduce brand decay. The spring-to-fall gap left room for awareness to fade before the highest-demand period.
Add a capstone in-person activation focused on conversion, not just awareness. A follow-up event timed closer to the school year could have turned familiarity into immediate sign-ups.
The Takeaway
This campaign worked because brand was treated as a constraint-solving tool, not a belief system. The insight was validated before spending. The bet was small, controlled, and economically rational. Success was measured through structural improvements in unit economics, not click-level attribution.
In a mature market where direct response channels had plateaued, the highest-leverage move was expanding awareness and trust through the voices customers actually listened to. That's not a brand play. That's a growth play.
