NCT had never sold a course online when lockdown closed every venue it taught in. Absolute Digital Media rebuilt the charity’s Google Ad Grant search activity around a national online offer within weeks, on a fixed grant allowance that could not be increased.
Absolute Digital Media's PPC campaign for NCT delivered +411% course sign-up conversions (first campaign month), +384% clicks from high-intent searchers, -81% cost per lead (on flat grant spend) and 184,818 Semrush estimated UK paid traffic (May 2020, from 105,369).
NCT is the UK’s leading charity for parents, delivering expert-led antenatal and postnatal courses and providing community support to thousands of new and expecting parents every year.
The charity’s model had always been built on face-to-face teaching. Courses ran at venues across the country, taught in small groups, with the community formed in the room being a substantial part of what parents were paying for.
It operates at scale digitally as well. The NCT website draws more than 160,000 UK organic visits a month, and its search advertising runs on a Google Ad Grant, the programme that gives eligible charities a fixed monthly allowance of search advertising, capped at US$10,000 and restricted to the search network. NCT worked with Absolute Digital Media for around five years, and this campaign is the point in that engagement where the charity’s delivery model changed overnight.
Performance movements are reported as percentages against the account’s own performance in the month before the rebuild; absolute conversion, click and cost figures are not published for this account. The account ran on a Google Ad Grant, so cost figures describe grant allowance consumed rather than cash paid by the charity, and the derived spend figure assumes conversions and leads are the same counted event measured on the same basis at both ends of the window. Semrush figures are the UK database’s modelled estimates of paid visibility and traffic, verified August 2026. They do not measure actual clicks or spend and are used as third-party evidence that the account expanded, not as a count of visits.
Integrated Agency of the Year - SilverEuropean Agency Awards 2026
Best Use of Search B2C (PPC) Small (The Swallow Co.)European Search Awards 2026
Standout B2C Ecommerce Website of the Year (Stelrad)UK Digital Excellence Awards 2026
Best Integrated Paid Media CampaignUK Paid Media Awards 2026
Best New Business CampaignUK Agency Awards 2025
Best Use Of Search (Retail/Ecommerce) - SEOUK Search Awards 2024Integrated Agency of the Year - SilverEuropean Agency Awards 2026Best Use of Search B2C (PPC) Small (The Swallow Co.)European Search Awards 2026Standout B2C Ecommerce Website of the Year (Stelrad)UK Digital Excellence Awards 2026Best Integrated Paid Media CampaignUK Paid Media Awards 2026Best New Business CampaignUK Agency Awards 2025Best Use Of Search (Retail/Ecommerce) - SEOUK Search Awards 2024 
The team worked with NCT’s internal team to reposition the value proposition for online delivery and reshape the user journey from search through to booking. The fastest technical response would have been to swap destination URLs and keep the campaigns running, and it would have advertised a local, in-person course to people who could no longer attend one. What parents were buying had changed, so what the advertising said had to change with it.
In-person courses could only be sold to people within travelling distance of a venue, which had always limited the addressable audience to the sum of the charity’s catchment areas. Online delivery removed that constraint entirely, and campaigns were expanded to full national coverage. Keeping the existing location targeting would have missed the pivot’s largest commercial opportunity: not that courses could still run, but that for the first time they could be sold to anyone in the country.
A hybrid targeting structure ran keyword targeting alongside dynamic search coverage and in-market audience targeting, capturing both people actively searching for an online antenatal class and people showing relevant behaviour, such as researching maternity brands, baby clothing or nursery products. With no historical data on which search terms would convert for an untested product, relying on keyword intent alone would have narrowed the campaign to guesswork at exactly the moment breadth was needed.
Ad copy was rewritten to lead on comfort, safety and accessibility, with lines built around attending expert-led courses from home. Tone acknowledged the circumstances without dramatising them. Urgency and scarcity messaging was inappropriate for an audience already under pressure, and reassurance converted better anyway, because the objection being overcome was doubt about whether an online course could work rather than hesitation about booking.
Edwina worked with NCT’s internal team on repositioning the online proposition, rebuilt the account from venue catchment targeting to national coverage, designed the hybrid structure combining keyword intent with in-market audiences and search remarketing, and ran the daily optimisation that kept the account learning and inside grant programme rules.
Creative built around the reassurance-led messaging framework: ad copy leading on comfort, safety and accessibility, and visual consistency between the ads and the online course booking journey they pointed to.
Reaching people researching parenthood, baby products and maternity services, and re-engaging those who browsed courses without booking. The grant restricts activity to the search network, so remarketing lists were applied to search rather than display.
Venue catchment targeting replaced with whole-country coverage for the first time, with bids, audiences and messaging refined continuously because the account had to learn in real time.
Tiffany Shears leads the PPC department at Absolute Digital Media, running paid media across Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta and TikTok for lead generation and eCommerce clients. She specialises in…
Edwina Lambourdiere is a Senior PPC Account Manager at Absolute Digital Media, running paid media accounts across Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, LinkedIn Ads and Meta Ads for UK and international…
Alex is Head of Content at Absolute Digital Media, overseeing content production and ideation for regulated-sector clients in iGaming, finance, and healthcare. He specialises in creating content that performs reliably…
Shane Fox is Lead Designer at Absolute Digital Media, responsible for the agency’s creative output and for the design of everything a client actually sees: campaign creative, brand systems, landing…
The first campaign month produced more than five times the sign-ups at a fifth of the cost per lead. Conversions for course sign-ups rose 411%, clicks from high-intent searchers rose 384% and cost per lead fell 81%.
The derived rows are the detail worth reading. Spend stayed roughly flat, which is what a capped grant produces, so the growth did not come from buying more media. It came from cost per click falling by roughly four fifths as the account moved out of contested local antenatal terms into national, audience-qualified search, which bought nearly five times the clicks for the same allowance. Conversion rate improved as well, by around 6%, which means the cheaper national traffic converted at least as well as the local traffic it replaced. When a grant account grows fivefold on flat spend, the lever was efficiency, and the geography and the targeting were where the efficiency came from.
The scaling is independently visible. Semrush’s UK index records the paid footprint contracting in April as venue-based campaigns were paused and expanding to a peak in May as the national build went live, estimated paid traffic rising from 105,369 to 184,818 between March and May, a rise of 75%.
| Measure | Reported | Multiple | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Course sign-up conversions | +411% | 5.1x | Reported |
| Clicks from high-intent searchers | +384% | 4.8x | Reported |
| Cost per lead | −81% | 0.19x | Reported |
| Grant spend | roughly −3% | 0.97x | Derived: conversions × cost per lead |
| Cost per click | roughly −80% | 0.20x | Derived: spend ÷ clicks |
| Conversion rate | roughly +6% | 1.06x | Derived: conversions ÷ clicks |
Semrush UK index, paid keywords and estimated paid traffic by month: February 2020 1,147 / 110,693; March 900 / 105,369; April 679 / 132,522; May 1,015 / 184,818; June 889 / 117,008. Semrush estimates are modelled from the ads it observes in search results rather than measured from the account, and cannot see grant spend, so the traffic figures should be read as a visibility index rather than a visit count.
The site improved exponentially by the end of the first month. Absolute Digital Media is proactive and approachable. Their quick response time eliminates the need for SLAs. The team researches the markets they work in to achieve great results. Their thoroughness, expertise, and proactive approach makes them a pleasure to work with.
NCT’s campaign delivered a 411% conversion increase and an 81% reduction in cost per lead within the first campaign month, having had no previous online course offering or associated performance data. Rebuilding the proposition, the targeting and the copy takes longer to agree than repointing URLs, and produces a working campaign in the same timeframe.
By widening the signals the account can learn from. Keyword targeting alone relies on assumptions about which search terms will convert. Adding in-market and behavioural audience targeting captures people showing relevant intent through their browsing, which generates usable performance data considerably faster.
The geographic constraint disappears, and it is usually the largest available lever. NCT’s in-person courses could only be sold within travelling distance of a venue. Online delivery made the same course sellable nationally, which expanded the addressable audience far beyond anything bid or creative optimisation could achieve.
Acknowledge without dramatising. NCT’s audience of expecting and new parents was anxious and isolated, and copy that leaned on urgency or scarcity would have been both ineffective and inappropriate. Messaging built on comfort, safety and accessibility converted better because it addressed the actual objection.
Because the spend stayed roughly flat while the account bought nearly five times the clicks. Clicks rose 384% and conversions rose 411% on a grant allowance that cannot be increased, which means cost per click fell by roughly four fifths as the account moved out of contested local terms into national, audience-qualified search. The conversion rate improved as well, by around 6%, so the cheaper traffic was at least as well matched as the traffic it replaced.
By treating the grant as a ceiling rather than a budget. The allowance is fixed, search only and subject to programme rules on click-through rate and keyword quality, so the only route to more outcomes is more outcomes per grant dollar. For NCT that meant national reach, audience targeting that qualified clicks before they were paid for, and daily optimisation, which together cut cost per lead 81% and lifted sign-ups more than fivefold on the same allowance.
Yes, and most under-use it. People researching a significant decision rarely convert on a first visit, particularly when the service is emotionally weighted. On a Google Ad Grant that means search remarketing, re-engaging visitors who browsed courses without booking when they search again, with messaging that addresses their actual hesitation. It recovers demand the account has already paid for.
Against the specific action the campaign exists to drive and the cost of achieving it. For NCT the measures were course sign-up conversions, which rose 411%, and cost per lead, which fell 81%. Clicks and impressions describe activity rather than outcome.
If your delivery model has changed and your paid media is still describing the old one, the conversation worth having is about what the change made possible rather than what it cost you.
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