Focus!

Hello. I'm Andy. This is my picture. You might suppose I read the weather or drive buses, but I don't. I'm Market Research Manager at the University of Bedfordshire and part of the wider Marketing team. Market Research is usually viewed as a poor, rather distant cousin of academic research, but provides dynamic information in support of our marketing initiatives.

This is my first post on the University’s Marketing blog. Normal service will be resumed next week. For now, it’s high time to dust off the pie charts, chuck a few pivots around, take a sneaky peak at our competitors and let you know the sort of thing we get up to in Market Research. And, perhaps, to persuade readers to take part in focus groups and help themselves to the rather enticing rewards available for an hour’s worth of time……

Market Research can very broadly be split into quantitative (quant) and qualitative (qual) research. Both are difficult to say, but both would score well in Scrabble. ‘Quant’ involves surveys, data immersion - and all the thoughtful soul searching and occasional flashes of blind terror associated with juggling huge Excel spreadsheets – qual involves talking to people, which can be even more terrifying. That's a very broad explanation; there's more

Both methods have pros and cons, although most market research problems are best approached, when possible, with a mixture. This will allow researchers to gain insight from audiences picking up on areas you hadn’t thought about (qual) and then to quantify and see how strong these feelings are across different audiences (quant). See?

Timescales and budgets don’t always allow for this two pronged approach. However, the Market Research team and a colleague from our Internal Communications team recently carried out some groups with students in Luton and Bedford in support of an online survey. We were looking, specifically, at what I’d assumed would be a limited subject - the content, display and accessibility of the Uni’s digital signage. Or “noticeboards” as I insisted on calling them to my increasingly exasperated colleague in Comms.

That’s right. Digital Signage. The merits, locations and use of. One hour. Discuss.

I prepared as best I could, mustering as much bluster, enthusiasm and stationery as I could. In anyone’s language, talking about digital signage for an hour was, I though just too focused. I’d laced the discussion guide with a few more wide-ranging questions in case things ground to an undignified, awkward halt, but still, we were really going to ask our respondents to work for their Amazon vouchers on this occasion……

But, readers, the groups not only went well, but were extremely interesting. As is often the case, there is (or are) no straight answers. No silver bullet, smoking guns, great decrees or show stopping, ground breaking insight. (A reminder, we were talking about noticeboards. Sorry, Digital Signage). The groups did, however, give the Communications team some valuable insights and pointers for future development and were more than happy to use up some of the stationery I'd bought them. 

One group member even drew some flowers. I wasn't sure and she wasn't sure why, but she did so in a supportive kind of way. She seemed to be having a nice time and wanted to let the group know. And they're nice flowers, right? Naturally, I'd've preferred a picture of football, motorbikes or rock and roll, but I was touched by the sentiment and impressed by the nifty execution.

So yes. Focus groups can be tough, for invigilators and for respondents. No doubt. And it's not always easy to tell which are going to work and which are not. But at the end of it, if all goes well, they can be enjoyable for all and provide fantastic input for the University's work. And an Amazon voucher FOR YOU, YES YOU (fill in this form if you'd like to be considered for future involvement).

If they can help improve the way we do things, then it can only be a good thing.

Through tunnels and shafts we weaved

Krystle Hall, Campaign Officer 

Yesterday I attended an IDM Google Analytics training session in Teddington. We always keep abreast of the latest innovations and marketing trends in MARC and as the market landscape has become more digitally driven so too have our corporate campaigns. Google Analytics is an ingenious tool that I use to track both our digital and offline activity. It is particularly useful when it comes to campaign evaluations and future planning. I have used Google Analytics extensively in the recent Clearing and Winter evaluations and was really excited to learn more about how to utilise the data that we capture.

Other trainees that attended the course came from a range of backgrounds and industries including travel, the arts, retail, social media agency and a few media buying agencies. It was great to see what others are doing and to have the opportunity to share ideas and strategies for online advertising. Spending the day with like-minded individuals is always a pleasure. Sharing tales and experiences with your peers provides assurance that we all face similar challenges across different sectors and leaves you with a sense of reassurance that you are doing a good job.

There is nothing better than finding a real gem of a function that can make your job easier. Our trainer Mike was like a foreman leading us into the deepest depths of a mine, “Dig here chaps and you are sure to find some gold!” And indeed we did find gold and rubies and diamonds. Through tunnels and shafts we weaved, drilling further and further to reveal segment after segment, experiment tools, attribution modelling, multi-funnel channeling and organic traffic reporting. I was able to pick up a lot of shortcuts to produce my analysis, reporting and evaluations faster and to make them slicker.    

The greatest jewel uncovered for me was multi-channel funneling and being able to build my own channel grouping. This is going to allow me to track the journey of individual users, see the combination of channels that work together and how each one compliments the other without spending hours and hours trawling through the data. This is what I have really wanted to do but didn't know how. Just image… I will be able to produce a view per campaign and see exactly what combination of techniques worked and when. I can’t wait to set this up; shiny new toys for me to play with *the moment when you realise you are really sad*

We looked at some basic tracking coding, discussed PPC and SEO strategy and techniques for enhancing delivery and return, and we also looked at the limitations in the data collected, which is important to take into consideration. On the whole, I have a huge amount of insight that I can take back to the team in preparation for the next big campaign, Clearing. 

Type soonly,

Krystle

Same difference - achieving stand out in a crowded market place

Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Standing out from the crowd has never been more important. Gone are the days of simply shouting about the big 5: high quality teaching, state-of-the-art facilities, student support, great location, and employment. Times are changing, and these are now simply a basic expectation towards any student experience. Universities are having to up their game, and showcase what makes them truly special and distinct, after all, any and every university fundamentally offers the same product: a degree, and so the need to focus on brand building and highlighting what makes us different, is becoming increasingly important.

And it's for this very reason the University of Bedfordshire launched its Verbal Brand Project - a re- positioning exercise to establish our basic truths and aspirations, and promote our extra added value in order to boost our brand reputation and present a distinct and attractive proposition against our competitors.

Shift in messaging, sector wide

Spotted!
When in London I often think to myself; have I seen this ad because they are quite simply everywhere, and quite frankly there isn't much else to look at when waiting for the tube, or would I have still noticed this ad if I didn't work in marketing? IE are adverts so ingrained into my brain that you know you're never far from a lurking competitor ad. Perhaps it's a bit of both. Nevertheless, on my recent travels to London St Pancras I bumped into an advert from our neighbouring competitor, Anglia Ruskin and in true tourist style, papped away to snap their latest messaging to feed back to our Market Research team in the hope of making it into Andy's special editions of Competitor Watch. Anglia Ruskin's latest campaign messaging is quite similar to one branch of our new verbal brand messaging: focusing on entrepreneurship and not just employability, and so they are firmly on our radar as one's to watch. However, the good old saying "it's not what you say, it's how you say it" springs to mind :-) and we're more than confident that our new marketing materials and planned activity will keep us distinct and showcase the very best of what Bedfordshire has to offer - more on this soon!

Phone company or University?

We're better, connected
As social media remains a force to be reckoned with, so does the need for younger, new generations to build their own profiles and provide their own platforms to be heard. Suddenly a person's worth is dictated by how many 'likes' or 'follows' they have from many different networks. But more importantly, it's about extending reach and opening doors of opportunity on a wider scale. And that's where this idea of being connected really becomes important. Luckily I haven't spotted any of our competitors on this thread yet, so here's hoping! I have however, included an example from Southampton, who are definitely worth a watch if you haven't yet seen some of their videos, and their video on research in particular is very nicely done, if you ask me! At the risk of all sounding like phone companies, the focus on staying connected is growing in importance, but not just from a social media, and a 'it's good to talk' point of view. From a University perspective, the ability to offer opportunities to travel, network and operate on a global scale adds a whole new dimension to offering a well rounded, all encompassing 'international' experience. This is really quite an exciting concept for the UoB Marketeer, and really gives us something meaty to work with. So you may see us out and about around campus on the quest for case studies, content and concrete examples to back up these exciting messages, so we can feed them into our communications.

For current staff members, if you haven't yet got involved in the verbal brand project, take a look at the MARC staff intranet pages where you'll be able to look at/download a tool kit for your own department.

In other news, the Marketing team, and colleagues from the Digital Marketing team spent a day over at the Bedford campus this week as part of our PG Media Day. We had a day full of interesting insights, talks and discussions from PG Media providers, and discovered more about external factors affecting the sector, barriers and obstacles to PG study, as well as getting an overview into some new digital platforms which we're considering trialing over the coming weeks to grow our PG brand and our digital presence. As we progress this, we'll continue to share updates with you via this blog.

We also welcomed our two new Faculty Marketing Assistants, who will be part of the Marketing team until July - and will provide a central 'go-to' contact for the Faculties, to ensure that central and Faculty initiatives are not only collaborative, but well aligned to our overall objectives. It's great to have both on board, and I'm sure we'll be able to share some updates on the exciting content that they will be producing to support our recruitment efforts in the coming weeks. If you haven't yet met your FMA, let us know, and do get in touch!

If only I had Carol Vorderman’s maths skills

My head hurts...

You guessed it from the title; I’m still working on my backlog of open day evaluations. I’m over half way through the full enquirers open day report, which covers the June, October, November and December open days. If only I was born with the maths skills of Carol Vorderman, my head would probably be hurting less. We get some great insight from the evaluations though, so it’s of course worth it to enable us move our plans forward and improve with every open day campaign.

What’s scary is that we’re smack bang in the middle of our second round of open days; February, March and April. So whilst evaluating previous open day campaigns, I’m implementing others.

The start of our February open day

The UG February open day was successful with 327 students on campus at Luton and 133 at Bedford. And when you include the parents and friends who accompany the students, that’s a whole lotta people on campus!

I’m in to the second week of the March open day plans now; Google and digital media activity is up and running, emails and postcards are being worked on and social media posts up.
The numbers for the March open day are looking healthy too!

I’m also planning for the May postgraduate open day, with some initial activity taking place ahead of the campaign starting and research and brainstorming of some new initiatives and actions which will hopefully increase the success of our campaign once it’s up and running.

So besides open day activity, I'm forward planning the editorial lists for our advice communications and monthly e-zines to applicants so we can start to plan in videos and content we may need to source before each edition.

And lastly I’m gearing up to start work on the next round of publications; the UCAS convention brochure and other collateral that we feel we may need, the 2016 UCMK prospectus, the 2016 PG prospectus, and the new student guide for September 2015, which will all be starting imminently.

Hopefully next time I blog I’ve got another two evaluations complete (it good to set targets!)

Speak soon,

K

A whistle stop tour

Krystle Hall, Campaign Officer 

I’m going to give you a whistle stop tour of campaigns in this blog as I am so busy at the moment. 

Another day, another campaign evaluation. This time it’s Winter Campaign. I have been reflecting on the activity; digging through the traps and coils and springs. I have identified the limitations, outdoor and SOI data capture along with the implications of overlapping campaigns. After all my probing what have I observed …. Google rules all. No surprises there. It was a successful campaign on the whole and the value is clear. Next up for evaluation are Jan Starts and Aylesbury.

Pre-Clearing is alive and kicking. The outdoor aspect of the campaign has now come to a close but we are still all over online and social media platforms. I always keep a careful eye on performance and the lovely Lauren Hague (Digital Officer) gave me an overview of our social media reporting last week, needless to say I was very excited to discover some new shiny graphs to play with.

Now that the Clearing evaluation is complete, I'm at planning stage. The team recently had an artwork meeting to thrash out new ideas and concepts for Clearing. I have been writing the brief for our design agency Fabrik and putting together some concept mood boards. As it will be a digital centric campaign it is important that there is synergy between platforms for brand unity. We are meeting with Fabrik this week to discuss our approach, not only for Clearing but for future branding as well, and we are all very excited. I have been working on evaluations for a couple of weeks now so I will be embracing the opportunity to turn my hand to the creative.

UCMK campaign is chugging along, no major updates to share there. I am also entering my first Heist Award submission next week and have been putting the entry together so keep your fingers crossed for a shortlist. Right, I better get back to it.

Later skaters,

Krystle