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.

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.

Engaging with students in The Student Room

There's been a lot of talk recently about departments setting up Facebook and Twitter accounts, and I'm really pleased to see new accounts being created by colleagues in Art and Design, Warrington School of Management and others. As I mentioned in my previous blog, these are great platforms to communicate specific information about your courses and departments, in a way that we just can't manage on our general accounts.

However, another popular platform that you might not be aware of is The Student Room, a community of over 1.2 million students who visit to discuss all sorts of topics ranging from study, to current affairs, sport, health and relationships.

Tips for setting up departmental Facebook and Twitter pages

I've recently been getting a lot of requests for advice about setting up departmental Facebook and Twitter accounts. I think this is a great idea, because it gives you the opportunity to engage with prospects, applicants and students of your course in more detail than the main University ones, which, by design, has to be more general.

Rather than emailing everyone individually, here are a few general tips for setting up these various pages, which I hope will get you up and running. Of course, if there is something specific you'd like to ask me, or I've forgotten to include anything, feel free to get in touch with me by email.

Marketing School Direct

For those of you reading this with absolutely no responsibility for the recruitment of School Direct places, or the recruitment of any kind of teacher training course for that matter, you might think that there is little point in reading on. However, if you have a general interest in student recruitment and raising the profile of your course, I would urge you to stick with this blog, especially if you are concerned with ensuring the best return on your marketing expenditure. The marketing principles discussed within this blog really can be applied to any course at the University.

A Game Changer

A change of government policy and the introduction of a new course called School Direct not only changes the rules of the game but also presents new challenges for student recruitment. Raising the awareness of new course provision can often be a challenge in itself, but with School Direct this responsibility doesn't just sit with the university that the school, or group of schools, have decided to go into partnership with, but also with the school itself.

Avoid getting spam on your phablet (or creating an email campaign in 2013).

You'll probably not be surprised to learn that email is a big part of our communications strategy. How big? Well, in the last 12 months we have sent over 225,000 emails to prospects, applicants, current students and alumni. So although they might not be as publicly visible or permanent as the website or prospectus, they make up a really important part of our marketing communications mix and they offer some unique features that we try to fully harness.

Yes, email is 'cheap' (less than 1p per email), but they are much more valuable to us than that. The flexible nature means that we can target them much more easily to an individual's needs, and increase their relevance to them. They also offer useful tracking options, so we can see which messages are working and follow up on these accordingly. They're also instant, and during a nervous application cycle, people seem to appreciate it!

Email marketing serves as as useful communications tool to remind people that we are thinking of them and to provide targeted offers of courses and services they might find useful. They also reinforce our other print and digital messages, and it is important that maintain the same design integrity as our other communications. 

It's easy to get email wrong, so here are a few best practice tips to ensure that we are delivering the best quality messages to the right people.

Fusion: Looking outside the world of HE

Recently, I was asked to write a book review for Euro RSCG People's Education Marketing Magazine. It's a publication that's well read by HE marketing professionals and this was an interesting opportunity that I wanted to investigate. 


I had been reading a fascinating marketing book and when I suggested it as the topic of the review, the publishers were happy with the choice. They agreed that it's useful to look outside HE when considering marketing planning and so I was set the task of writing 400 words on the book Fusion: The New Way of Marketing by David Taylor and David Miles. It's surprising how little you can say in 400 words, but I gave it a go and the resulting review was published in the magazine last month.

I've reproduced it here for you to take a look at. The book is a pretty interesting read and, while I wouldn't recommend it as a pool-side page turner, it's worth a look if you are interested in where we can take marketing given the remarkable opportunities that present themselves to us today and in the future...

Fusion: The New Way of Marketing

David Taylor & David Miles

Ecademy Press

2011

ISBN: 978-1-907722-35-6

www.fusionbook.co.uk

‘Fusion: The New Way of Marketing’ is a book that practices what it preaches. This is a book and e-book download that enjoys 100% five star reviews on Amazon and has its own website, Facebook page and twitter profile. Its aim, we are told, is to ‘demystify the internet’ and show us how to harness the power of new technologies to help us fulfil our marketing objectives.

An excellent read

Usefully, ‘Fusion’ isn’t about higher education. By stepping away from our everyday concerns and considering the reach and scope of the modern, digital world, we are able to take the time to do some of our most creative thinking. And this book will get you thinking. From the beginning, it sets out the idea that we now have a completely new and democratised way of accessing and sharing information. This hasn’t just changed the way we communicate with one another as individuals, it has completely changed marketing. Understanding how to connect the two is the key, and this gives us an insight into the book’s core message: the world has changed and unless we embrace this new world bravely, our marketing efforts could fall by the wayside.

We are told that the key is to get your website to the heart of your marketing activity and, by carefully assessing some marketing basics, to get marketing to the heart of your website. By getting your website right and developing a strong online marketing strategy around it, you will benefit enormously from social media, pay per click advertising,
                                                            SEO, analytics and interactive media.

The article in print

Of course, we all know that we should be using online technologies and social media but unless we do so in a well thought out and integrated way then there is no point. And this is the other core message of the book:  get the basics right.  Having an out of date marketing strategy that doesn’t appreciate the enormity of the opportunities or that deals with emerging new media in a piecemeal fashion is a recipe for disaster. If you are going to do it, understand it and do it right (and keep re-educating yourself). 

The true value of ‘Fusion’ is that it contextualises online and digital technologies in a traditional marketing sense. For the ‘non-techie’ marketer this is especially useful. And the reminder to first get back to basics is refreshing – each chapter’s suggested action plan, web and video links encourage us to ask ourselves the key questions that underpin a true marketing strategy. But perhaps most pertinently of all, given the times we live in, ‘Fusion’ asks us to re-think what we do (and why we do it) and focus on making our work more efficient by ‘using our brain instead of our bank account’.

Thanks for reading,

Ric.