Everybody's got a story to tell

The generation now applying to and attending university are a generation of digital natives. They are generation Z and they are increasingly mindful consumers that require an open and transparent approach to our marketing. The world of social media is second nature to them and it will often be their first port of call when they want to share something with their peers.

It’s around 12 months ago now that I wrote about #MyChesterStory referencing the importance and value of referrals. It’s an idea that has helped us to narrate what it means to be a student at Chester, encouraging our students to share their stories with us. And on the eve of a new intake of students, it’s a concept we want them to engage with more than ever. We want our students to be proud of their University and shout out about it every step of the way, from enrolment all the way to graduation and beyond! Most of all, we want them to do this online in their social networks, where they and many of their peers often frequent.

User Targeted Content – The Initial Teacher Training Campaign

A few months ago, we created a new campaign area of the corporate website dedicated to the recruitment of students to our teacher training courses.This was done in response to the fact that teacher training courses are now a huge recruitment challenge, particularly for some key subjects areas, and the navigation of our website wasn't enabling us to highlight the key benefits of teacher training at Chester.

Postgraduate Student Loans

As you may be aware, George Osborne announced plans for postgraduate student loans for 2016 in his Autumn Statement. I have collated the main points of this announcement in a bid to help identify the: Who, what, when and how’s and the potential opportunities to the University and ‘young’ graduates; in addition to what implications this may have on our marketing and recruitment work.

Email Marketing Tips

Email marketing is a key tool and is used throughout the student recruitment cycle. However it’s not as simple as just sending an email, there are lots of things to consider to ensure that people receive targeted emails that are relevant to them, we don’t just want to bombard people otherwise they will only ignore our emails.

To make sure that emails are sent to the correct people at the right time and contain useful content, there’s a useful acronym CRITICAL. I will explain what each of the letters stand for.

Digital Marketing Top 10

In July and September I had the opportunity to present my 'Digital Marketing Top 10' to colleagues in MRA and at the wider Staff Conference. I recorded the first of these sessions and if you'd like to view it, it's available in the YouTube player below. Alternatively, if you'd like to skip through the presentation at your own pace (and without my ramblings) you can do so using the Prezi player.

What is #mychesterstory?

I recently wrote some blogs discussing the importance and value of student referrals for enabling prospective students to gain an authentic view of the real student experience at Chester. It's these student experiences that enable our prospects to identify with the University in such a way that it allows them to envisage what it is really like to live and study at Chester. And it's our students' stories that help tell the story of our brand and consequently differentiate what we have to offer.

Higher Education Marketing with a Difference... Differentiation

Where shall I go to university?

How do you differentiate one university over another? Ask any senior marketing professional in the Higher Education sector and they’ll recognise the importance of differentiating what their university has to offer over that of another. Yet the truth of the matter is that, as soon as you look past a university’s location, upon first glance many universities can appear to be very homogenous and indifferent from their rivals. Of course, universities are defined by the types of courses they deliver, but a prospective student will often know what course they want to study, so it then becomes a question of how to differentiate your university over those with a similar set of programmes.

As the HE landscape continues to evolve and students become a far more discerning set of consumers, HEI marketing professionals recognise the need to demonstrate the benefits of what makes their institution stand-out from the competition. And to do this, key performance indicators, such as satisfaction or employability levels, are often used as a means to highlight a good return on a student’s investment. Of course, this is very important to do and something the government has advocated, which is only too evident through the introduction of Key Information Sets. But, if all universities are making similar claims, can they really be used as a means to differentiate? And besides, surely with so much data now available for prospects to sift through, this only leads to more confusion?