Out and about on campus

It's been a busy couple of weeks in the Marketing Department to say the least! I've been helping out on our Clearing and Winter campaign photo-shoots, which involves sourcing students to take part, meeting the students on the day, helping with the creative direction of the shoot and interviewing students about their UoB experience. We've got some really great shots, with students from various departments, and I'm excited to see the finished result of our Clearing campaign! A massive thanks to all of the students that took part in the campaign, and to all the staff that helped us source props, or recommended students to us.

I really enjoy getting out and about on the photo-shoots. I find it really interesting working with the photographers as they have such a different way of seeing things. I also really enjoy speaking to students and hearing their thoughts on UoB; it helps to see and understand things from another perspective which can never be a bad thing - especially for someone in Marketing!

On Friday the Marketing Team also got to spend the day over in the Bedford campus, meeting various media suppliers with our Media agency. This is the first time that I've been involved in a day like this since I started at UoB so it was a really great experience for me. Each supplier presented their media offerings to us and explained the different options available and how their offerings have evolved over the last year. For me, it was also a chance to put faces to names that I've been emailing the past year!

I've also been working on our PG campaign over the last few weeks. I've been sending emails to our current students about the benefits of progressing onto postgraduate study and recommending some courses that might appeal to them (and compliment their current studies). I'm also currently working on some materials for the Jubilee Scholarship, which offers UK/EU students the chance to study a Master's for free this September if they receive a first class Honours from us, so keep an eye out for these around the university!

On the subject of PG study, I also filmed Barbara Guinn from the Research Graduate School to find out more about the excellent support they offer students. Keep an eye out for the video on our YouTube channel, it'll be up by the end of the week!

In other news it's officially been over a year since I started at UoB! I can't quite believe how quickly the time has flown by but they do say time flies when you're having fun!

Printed hands and salad days

A few weeks ago, I raided the University archives and sneered at the design of prospectuses from our former institutions from the 1940s through until the 1980s. Before handing these back, I decided, once again, to discard the hep, groovy ‘now’ and look back to that even tattier time before space travel and bagged salad.

These days, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects are back in vogue, as befitting the world's preoccupation with bytes, bits and a grim determination to find ever more inventive and/or effective ways of wiping ourselves out. Epidemics, medical cures, performance enhancers, global warming, jet packs, superheroes, self driving cars and the internet don’t invent themselves.

Universities are an essential component of this global technological push. At Bedfordshire, our recent contributions have been impressive, with undergraduate courses in Computing, Biological Science and Health and Social Sciences among those underpinning our world-leading research was is helping to change lives. This week, for example, we've been bowled over with the inspriational work carried out by our Computing department in building a hand for 8 year old William Joyner.

But back to the salad. In the 1940s, bagging the stuff was a distant dream, although food technology was eagerly pursued. Luton Technical College's offer was dominated with Chemistry, Commercial and Engineering courses, though there was a two year City and Guilds in Breadmaking and Flour Confectionery on a Wednesday or “Domestic Science and Women’s Classes", including Cookery, Dressmaking and Make-do & Mend. 1945's course offer looks as tired as the country must have been coming out of war, though the £3 fees don’t look too onerous for Bedfordshire residents (hilariously, this increases to £5 for Hertfordshire residents; £6 for those from elsewhere). 

Crazy, crazy Mrs Sew-and-Sew

In 1952, students were treated to the excellent news that the canteen served dinner between 12.50 and 1.30pm and that the College now held classes in Art and Building. Women’s courses still included Cooking and Dressmaking, although Make-do and Mend had been replaced by Millinery, Needlecraft and Tailoring.

In the 1960s, the wise decision was taken to instruct pupils not to carry bottles of ink around the campus unless they (the bottles) were transported in polythene bags. Women’s courses seemed to have disappeared, what with liberation and all, although the College's Department for Food and Clothing had courses for Brides, Hostesses and Housewives. Heston's food scientists may have sniffed at the cookery courses, but reipes included ”Rice, Risottos-Pilaffs Pasta Dishes’, ”Sauces in High-Class Cookery” and “The Use of Herbs”. Far out, man.

Two decades on, Luton’s College of Higher Education was moving forward apace. Prospective students in 1979 were promised a 36 user Computer Centre using Basic Plus, Def Leppard, Fortran, Cobol, Terry Jacks and Macro11. Business and Management courses had crept in, mainly because, by that time, the art of cookery had largely been replaced by PotNoodles; the manufacture of which needed a steadying management hand and some smart marketing rather than nutrionists.


Notes
Principles from Make-do & Mend are still applied in University Professional Services departments.
Bagged salad first appeared on UK supermarket shelves in 1986. 
Def Leppard was and might still be a band, not a computer language. Terry Jacks isn't a computer language either.

Making your marketing strategy work in a Digital Marketing age

Sarah De Guzman, Marketing Manager

It's an exciting time to be a marketer. But equally, it's also a challenging one. Our customers' preferences are ever changing, and at a fast pace. And, with a digital first attitude our prospective students are 'always online' and are 'constantly connected', often will the expectation that we are too!

Modern day marketing -
always online.

Our potential students, or 'Millennials' as they are otherwise known, have grown up in an electronics-filled and increasingly online and socially-networked world. It's therefore become a pivotal moment in marketing, where the offline versus online debate falls to the way side, and the focus is firmly being placed on digital marketing just being the new norm for marketing, and our previously 'tech-savvy online users' are simply now just known as our potential customers. In other words, digital marketing is no longer an experimental innovation for us, it's a daily marketing necessity and a fundamental means through which to talk to, and reach, what we hope to be the newest crop of Bedfordshire students.

For us, failure to jump on the digital band wagon, would leave us out of touch with our millennial audience and lagging behind our neighbouring competitors. But simply placing ads isn't enough. The need to create communities, content (of the relevant sort) and rich media has never been greater.

With that said, we're going to be incredibly busy over the next few months as we start to implement the start of this year's Clearing campaign which will be predominately digitally led. Our photoshoots are about to take place in the coming weeks, where we'll be gathering a range of image-led and video content to support our digital drive over this important recruitment period.

Digital vs mobile first

Operationally, we've experienced a significant shift towards digital in recent years, which opens up a vast selection of tools and channels at our disposal. We're constantly seeing new digital platforms, websites and social media options springing up. Thankfully, we have a Media Planning and Buying agency to support us with that; helping us track down the latest innovations, trends and digital products so we can make sure we're promoting in the right spaces and are talking to the right people, whilst ensuring we're getting the best return (more on this in a future post). We're also working closely with our Digital Consultant on a regular basis who works alongside us to monitor the quality of our web traffic, and keeps an ever watchful eye on where online conversations are taking place so we can continuously refine our audience targeting and make sure our advert placements and content strategies are working hard and yielding the desired results.

Making good data decisions:
Analyse to optimise 

Ultimately, the one thing that we can not forget is that data is king. The amount of data which we can collate, monitor and observe on a daily basis provides a wealth of insight into our markets (existing or new) potential customers, and campaign performance as we track their journey. As Kylie mentioned in the previous blog post, the analytics we work with can tell us a lot about our customers, and how our promotions have performed, so we can make regular adjustments to ensure we're getting the desired results, whilst constantly learning, and adapting to ensure we're keeping ahead of the curve and are providing relevant information to inform decision making.

The ability to track all of our digital output provides valuable insight which informs our future working. We're looking forward to getting some dashboards set up ahead of our next campaign, enabling us to see in real-time how our work is performing and how we can optimise further.

An understanding of data, and the need to formulate digital and social content plans is key as part of our ongoing strategy. And, with an ever increasing competitive market place, and with more Russell Groups competing in Clearing each year, it's becoming crowded with more online marketing noise than ever before, and so the need for us to hold our own, digitally, becomes paramount.

Keep an eye on this blog for more updates on the Clearing campaign, coming soon. Interested to see what other universities are doing? Then why not take a look at Market Research Manager, Andy's Clearing blog to keep on top of the latest competitor innovations and observations.