There's always more than one reason to celebrate

Sarah De Guzman, Marketing Manager

Trying to wrap everything up
is no small task!

It feels like an age since my last blog post, and now it's finally come around to 'my turn', it's already somehow become my last one - at least for a while anyway. That's right, because, in a matter of weeks (4 to be precise) I'll be taking some time away from Marketing HQ to have a baby. So, for my first, and last post in a while, I've got quite a bit of ground to cover - so please excuse the slightly self indulgent theme this week, but I wanted to take the time to reflect on the many great initiatives going live, and there's also been quite a few causes for us to celebrate recently which I wanted to share with you...

Video content strategy
For any regular readers of this blog, I'm sure you'll have come across me talking at lengths about the need for good quality video content. And that's exactly what we've been investing in this cycle. Following on from the launch of our Milton Keynes and Bedford location videos earlier in the year, we've been working really hard over the last nine months (yes it really does take that long to produce great content!) to implement my video content strategy - which is basically, a more focused and strategic way to generate, and seed out meaningful content to support recruitment (or at least I hope!).

Take a look at our big brand 'Hero' content

After enlisting the help of Clearhead Media, our School of Performing Arts, and two current dance and acting students - Harry and Donatella, we were all set to bring the strategy and our unique marketing proposition to life!

I'm really proud of the videos - if you haven't yet seen them, be sure to give them a watch - and keep a look out in August at a cinema near you, as we go live with our national campaign - and a particularly rare but exciting opportunity to get our brand 'out there'.

10 year work anniversary

That's a whole 1/3 of my life!

Not only have we been celebrating seeing nine months of hard work finally come to fruition, with the launch of the video strategy and the clearing campaign, but I've been celebrating my very own personal landmark moment this month - after reaching my 10 year work anniversary. As I start to slowly but surely 'wind down' and begin the most epic of hand overs to the team, it's been great to reflect on just how much I've accomplished during my time at Beds, and just how far we've come as a team since I started way back in 2007.

Heist Awards
And if that wasn't enough of a reason to celebrate, I was more than delighted to see that we'd been short-listed for not one but two Heist Awards this year! Now I have definitely mentioned these awards countless times over the years within this blog; after all, it's the 'Oscars of the HE Marketing world' where the creme de la creme are nationally recognised - and so it's always something we aspire to achieve. Beverley and I worked really hard on two entries this year: Best Undergraduate Student Recruitment Initiative, and Marketing Team of the Year - very much focused on my marketing mantra and narrative of being small but mighty. And all the hard work definitely paid off!

The Silver for The Best Undergraduate Student Recruitment goes to BOTH @lborouniversity and @uniofbeds!! Well done all!! #Heist2017

— Heist Awards (@heistawards) July 13, 2017

Celebrating our big win on stage

To be short-listed was flattering enough, but to actually scoop a Silver in one of the most competitive categories of the night for our 2016 Clearing campaign was a completely out of this world experience; beating off some seriously stiff competition from the sector.

The comments from the judges: ''The University of Bedfordshire team should be praised for their hardworking approach to a challenging situation in an increasingly competitive market. They should be immensely proud of the significant successes that have been achieved by this campaign.''

We made the nom's list - woo!

CIPRide Awards
To really top off our week, we've just found out today that we have been short-listed for another two awards - this time it's the CIPRide Awards within the Anglia, Thames and Chiltern region. We've made the short-list for Best Integrated Campaign, and Best Education Communications Campaign for our sterling work on Clearing last year - and not wanting to be greedy, but I do secretly hope that we win - we've been the current Gold title holders for Best Integrated Campaign for the last two years - so the hat trick really would be the icing in the cake. And our Communications team are also bouncing around the office after scooping two short-lists themselves - Best Low Budget Campaign, and Outstanding In-house PR Team. We have taken the Pride awards by storm in our bid to showcase our work as sector leading - so keep everything crossed for us as we await the big awards dinner in September.

A big pat on the back for the @uniofbeds Marketing team who've been short-listed for two @CIPR_Awards - time to celebrate 🤩🎉 #PRideAwards

— Sarah De Guzman (@Sarah_Hampton) July 21, 2017

It's not goodbye, it's see you soon!

If in doubt, email
marketinginfo@beds.ac.uk

I'll be spending the last few weeks beavering away; trying to implement as much of the campaign work as possible, to alleviate the pressure of the team once I've gone - after all, it's no easy task to drive the clearing campaign forward, and to keep all the other plates spinning. So please bear with the team over the coming weeks and months! We are indeed small. We are indeed mighty, but we also only have a finite number of hours in the day :-)

There's lots of exciting initiatives still to come as the team launches into the 2018 annual campaign, and they start work on the 2019 suite of prospectuses - so stay tuned for more details on this in the not too distant future. I'll be keeping a look out for all this exciting work going live myself and can't wait to see the next phase of creative ideas coming to the fore.

Really guys - check the folder!

And for my team members reading this - if in doubt, if in despair, just refer to the nice big black folder I've put together - it really is all in there! Promise!

Prospectus, and panels and pitches; oh my!

Sarah De Guzman, Marketing Manager


Whilst a large element of my role can be desk bound - crunching numbers, planning campaigns, writing evaluations, and putting my organisation hat on to drive initiatives forward, one of the bits of my role that I happen to love the most are the chances to be 'creative'. So it's no surprise to read that this week was Prospectus pitch week. Hurrah!  

Searching for the perfect agency
to partner with.

We've been running a tender to appoint a creative agency to work alongside us on the latest publications for 2019 (2019 already, you say!). So after getting through all the paperwork, questionnaires, budgets and admin, we're at the bit I love best - the creative presentations. It's great to meet different agencies, breathe new life into our work, and ensure we're future proofing our designs, our brand and our proposition to drive recruitment for the coming years (so no pressure then?).

It's always a crammed packed day of back-to-back presentations - but it definitely gets the creative juices flowing across the team. Colleagues from the Recruitment team, and International office joined us, to ensure we had key stakeholder views taken into account, and it made for a fun day for everyone (or at least I hope). We're still deliberating over which agency to work with, and so after we've totaled all the scores I'm sure we'll be able to share with you who we've selected, and some exclusive sneak peaks as to how the visuals could be developing for our future recruitment campaigns. Stay tuned!

Can you ever be too organised?

As the chair of the panel, it's my job to lead the day, keep us on time, and to drive the questioning to ensure we get all of the information we need from each of the agencies to make a good, informed decision. (This is where my organisational hat comes into play again). After all, it's not just a pretty design and nice prospectus cover that we're looking for. A key part of producing the prospectus is all about the processes and structures in place (boring! I hear you say). Ok, so perhaps not the most exciting part of the pitches, but for me, whose produced more than 20 Bedfordshire prospectuses I know a thing or two about the logistical nightmare that can be the prospectus, and if you don't have the right people, processes and infrastructure in place to deliver your publication the whole thing can be absolute torture to deliver. Don't get me wrong, creative is definitely important, but my key driver is making sure we have a company who can deliver on the creative - there's nothing worse than having high hopes for your publication, and half way in, finding out the end result is far from your grasp.

The team (left to right: Sara,
Beverley, Kylie and Sarah).

In other news, we've sadly said farewell to Kylie, our Marketing Officer this week. She's left the team this week for pastures new - and is relocating back up north to Newcastle University. We're all really sad to see her go, after three years as part of the team. For those of you who have worked with Kylie, I'm sure you'll agree she's been an instrumental colleague in running our open day campaigns. We wish her all the best, and am sure we'll still see her round on the university circuit in the not too distant future.

But to cheer us all up, and stop us feeling all sorry for ourselves as our marketing team of three has dwindled to a team of just two, we were absolutely delighted to find out just now, that we've been short-listed for not one, but two, Heist awards - for Best Undergraduate Student Recruitment Initiative, and Best Marketing Team of the Year! Now Heist had been keeping us on our toes, and fully in suspense as to when the big reveal would be, and it certainly didn't disappoint. It's been some much needed excitement in the office as we can reflect on our achievements, and celebrate our successes - small we may be, but mighty and effective we are! Usually, we've just entered submissions for our work, but this year I decided this was the year to celebrate us as a team - and boy am I surprised to see we've been short-listed. To have been short-listed for team of the year is a massive coup, and a particular career high for me on a personal note. For our regular readers, you'll often see me banging on about awards, and how much we love them - but it's a big boost for the team, and a lovely end to the week!

Absolutely thrilled to see we've been shortlisted for 2 @heistawards. The @uniofbeds team are celebrating in the office as we speak 😜😬

— Sarah De Guzman (@Sarah_Hampton) May 19, 2017

A picture is worth a thousand words

By Sarah De Guzman, Marketing Manager

Perfecting the pose - on our
quest for the perfect marketing
pictures

Unsurprisingly, there's quite an emphasis placed on imagery when it comes to Marketing. After all, the more visual, the more it can drive engagement, right? Marketing is all about communicating value to our 'customers', and so presenting good marketing photos, makes for good marketing; as it not only conveys quality but also supports us in showcasing our 'products' and in telling the story of our brand.

We're all now living in the age of visual culture, where the focus is firmly placed on the 'show rather than tell' mentality. Don't get me wrong, there's still very much a place for the written word. Heck, we'd be out of a job if it wasn't for information hungry students; but the need to convey stories and to showcase reality means that there is a real appetite for rich media and dynamic visual content.

Projecting the right kind of content is a hot topic. With the latest technologies and must-haves, there's more or less a camera in everyone's pocket, and so practically anyone and everyone becomes a content generator. However, whilst we can all patrol campus armed with the latest iphone filled with snazzy apps and filters to capture those moments as they happen, in order to have that 'zing' factor, we bring in the professionals...

Campaign photoshoots in action -
Roy Mehta Photography

Over the last week we've worked with two professional photographers on a rather jam-packed schedule to support our Marketing work and increase of bank of photography. Scene Photography supports with our campus based imagery and architectural shots, and Roy Mehta specialises in portrait photography and executes our case studies and corporate campaign visuals.

We've spent a lot of time working on our visual identity, and carving out our creative proposition and point of differentiation. All of this culminated in this year's Clearing campaign visuals. If you haven't seen it yet, where have you been? The latest round of campaign photography was focused on plugging the gaps and expanding the range of campaign images we offer - we've broadened out to capture Sports Therapy, Psychology and Accounting & Finance, on top of the many subjects already being represented.

Prospectus cover shoot - with
Chris from Scene

In addition to the campaign photography, we've also been running the 2018 prospectus photography at the same time, which is no mean feat. You may have seen us running around campus over the last few days, dipping into classes to capture the latest goings on. The most challenging aspect of this photography by far, is the prospectus cover. A lot of emphasis is placed on this one single image. It's the one image that most of our enquirers may see as their first introduction to the University. It's the window in to university experience, and needs to appeal to a wide range of people from a wide range of backgrounds world-wide. No pressure then. Overall the shoots went really well, and the students who took part were great and incredibly giving of their time. Stay tuned over the next few weeks, and we'll keep you posted on our new imagery as the prospectus cover starts to take shape, as we select that one single 'hero' shot that sells the University.

Visual content is critical to marketing
and story telling strategies - source: Blog Hub Spot

The power of the image is reinforced by LifeLearn who state that when people hear information, they are likely to remember approximately 10%. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later.

Good marketing photos which showcase our campuses, the latest facilities, and the student experience go a long way in engaging an audience as opposed to text alone. And I always find it fascinating that many companies, and indeed many universities, don't always invest in commissioning custom photography, and instead turn to stock. For us at Bedfordshire, that's not an option. We pride ourselves on showcasing the real student environment and working with real students across our prospectus and campaign photography to tell our story and to convey our brand narrative. We ensure that our visual identity is unique to us, and ultimately stands out in the mind's of our prospective students.

Top tips to get the most out of your visual content:

1. Mood board ideas - and build up a bank of images or ideas that inspire you; from poses to props, it's great to have visual inspiration to help shape your shoots
2. Consider the type of image you need - is it to showcase a course or event, or are you trying to present statistics in a visual way (ie through infographics which is fast becoming a powerhouse for any content strategy)
3. Use real students - as much as possible. What better advocates for a brand than to work with the people experiencing the University themselves
4. Refer to style guides - and brand guidelines as a helpful reference for an over-arching look and feel of the brand - whether it be for profiles and case studies, action shots to exterior architecture, that way the images work towards increasing a bank of good quality content that reinforces the brand and creative proposition
5. Be aware of your environment - from the people in the shots to cultural sensitivities. And also do a reckie around campus to scout out possible locations before the day - watching out for those pesky bins in the background!
6. Get creative - an don't be afraid to try shots and set ups that are slightly 'outside of the box' - there's only one way to see if it works - and that's to snap it!

We're feeling simply the Beds. with another award accolade

Sarah De Guzman, Marketing Manager

After spending a week in sunny Las Vegas, USA, it's back to the not so sunny Luton, and a mountain of emails and campaign work to catch up on.

Another accolade to add to
the marketing shelf

Whilst ploughing through the hundreds of emails (yes really, and I was only gone for a week!) I happened to stumble across one particular email which caught my attention - from UKBA - the UK Blog Awards.

A while back, Andy our Market Research Manager and I decided on a bit of a whim to enter this here blog for an award, to see how we fared amongst the sector and our fellow marketing peers and HE professionals. I was pretty happy to see that whilst we didn't secure the big win, we did receive a 'Highly Commended' recognition from the judges.

It was great to see that we'd made the short-list in the first place as it was very competitive. There were 2,000 entries submitted for the award, and 79,000 public votes were cast resulting in our Marketing Blog beating off stiff competition to make it into the top ten short list. So we're very pleased with the result and to make it that far, considering our humble blogging beginnings.

UKBA sent us an email notifying us of the big result:

"Congratulations on being awarded highly commended at the UK Blog Awards. The judges assessed your Blog against a rigorous criteria of: Design, Style, Content, Marketing, and Usability which was then assessed against five sub-criteria’s. Some of our judges have said that the criteria is the most intense that they have critiqued against. Therefore, you should be super proud of your highly commended blog achievement!" - And indeed we are!

So, a big thank you to everyone who voted to help us secure the short-list, and we'll be sure to continue to share our marketing updates and insight and to build on the good work here, ready for UKBA 2017, next year!

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.

Winning isn't everything, but the will to win is everything

By Sarah De Guzman, Marketing Manager

So much data, and so little time
to write awards...

As the 2015 September recruitment cycle officially comes to a close, it's time for us marketers to bury our heads in the mountains of metrics that we've put in place, on our usual quest to evaluate our performance and effectiveness, to demonstrate ROI, and to churn out those all important reports which provide valuable insight to inform our future work. Whilst on the one hand it's quite an intense aspect to our roles, with many an hour spent crunching numbers, and getting bogged down in the data wondering why I didn't pay more attention in maths classes at school, I quite like ploughing through the reams of insight and analysis to do a round up - it's always nice to see our contribution, and to assess our highlights and successes (as well as identifying what we can do better, which is a constant learning curve and central to all that we do). But as many of our regular readers will know, I'm also guilty of writing reports for dual purposes. That's right, I'm a cereal award-writer, and I'm not ashamed to admit it!

Who needs sleep when you
can write awards!

Since I started writing awards in 2013, we've gone on to win eight awards, with two award wins and a Heist short-list in this year alone, which we're mightily proud of. Winning, and even being short-listed for these coveted awards is a massive coup for the team, and I'll be the first to admit that it's nice to see the office adorned in our achievements. Not only is it a great big pat on the back and morale booster, but it's great to be recognised by our peers and the wider sector, as being the best in the region, or nationally at what we do.

And so, with all of the report writing that's going on at the moment, we'll soon be able to see if we have some pieces to enter early next year, when awards season for us typically kicks off. In the meantime, I thought I'd share some helpful hints and tips on writing a winning award entry, should you choose to give it a go for yourself in the new year...

Before you start

Look beyond the marketing hype
- do the facts speak for
themselves?

First things first, before you do anything you should assess your goals and ask yourself these questions:

• Why I am doing this?
• What do I want to get out of it?

Writing awards is a lot of work, so make sure it's worth your while. In other words, be brutal. Is your initiative really good enough? Remove the bias, and look at the facts. Does it stand out, and do you have the evidence and hard facts to back up your claims?

Getting started

Be individual - sometimes small
or niche can win big

So once you're certain of what you're setting out to do, it's time to search through the different awards, and scour the categories to see what's on offer, and where you think you might be able to contribute and make a submission. It's always worth noting the deadlines at this point, to make sure all your award writing won't be in vain. Once you've selected the categories it's time to write that entry!

Tip: Really consider your category and who you may also be going up against. Whilst we all want to win big, sometimes the niche categories make for an interesting and successful submission. And whilst we fully believe our initiative is amazing, you never know what, or who, you're up against.

Writing that award winning entry
So it's time to write that entry. Anyone can write and submit entries, but to secure the short-list, it requires time, effort and dedication.

1. Research previous winners - and take a look at their entries - most winner's entries are hosted online, and can provide a great resource when looking at format, and the level of detail needed
2. Really look at the entry criteria - and the questions that you're being asked. Stick to the point at all times, and keep the entry focused on fully evidencing the success and ROI of the work
3. Keep it concise - brief and to the point. Most awards have strict word counts, and so you have to make every sentence and every word count - cut the waffle
4. Keep it simple - whilst it's important to include the relevant lingo and jargon in the entry to showcase your expert knowledge, remember who your reader is - they may or may not be a specialist in that particular area, and they have many to read! Keep it simple and understandable - after all, if they don't get your point, you won't get the marks
5. Be bespoke - tailor the information to what is being asked, and the specific category - especially if you're entering the same initiative for multiple awards. A simple copy and paste job will not do
6. Make it pretty - spend sometime on the layout, and devise the sections so that they correspond with the criteria and questions being asked, to make it easy for the judge to give you marks. But make sure you know the restrictions on including graphs and images (in most cases you can place these in an appendices if these are allowed). 
7. Make it stand out - showcasing new initiatives, or novel ways of working and achieving your objectives provides a great way to catch the judges attention. Think our Clearing Flash mob from the 2014 Clearing campaign. Different is interesting. But only include it if it's relevant and you have a point to make.
8. Make it personable - in some entries they ask why you should win. Whilst the stats are great here to evidence this, don't shy away from adding a personal narrative. If it's relevant, talk about the people involved and play on the emotive aspects. Celebrating real people and real achievements is great, and adds a bit of personality to the entry.

Failing to plan, is planning to fail

But most of all. It's important to allocate time to this. Balancing writing award entries alongside the day job is a challenging task. Conducting research and analysis to collate the evidence is time consuming but a crucial aspect, as without the evidence it's just an opinion piece. And carefully constructing an entry to satisfy the criteria takes focus and determination. So be prepared to put in the hours if you take it on. But if you secure the short-list it's always a nice rewarding feeling.

Tip: Carefully select your award categories and make sure that the stats stack up. After all, no matter how proud of the work you are, if you've spend ages pulling an entry together which has weak evidence, you won't get very far. It's important to remember quality over quantity.

What to do if successful
After submitting, make a note of the short-list confirmation date - after all that hard work, you want to make sure you know if you made the cut!

If you've made it to the short-list, here's what you do next:

• Shout about it - it's great news, why wouldn't you? But get in touch with the press team and give them all the details
• Get your seats booked - for the coveted 'do, and get planning what to wear (check if the 'do has a theme or dress code)
• Befriend twitter - especially on awards night. Many awards have their own twitter handle and hashtag and encourage you to tweet throughout the evening - great for fun and profile raising 
• Talk to us - keep the MARC department (and the press team) informed of the evenings events - whether it was a win, or not! Being short-listed in itself is an amazing achievement
• Make space - in the office to proudly display your winners or finalist certificates and awards

Writing awards has many rewards, and I'm not just talking about the certificate if you win. Quite often, we're so busy with our day-to-day work that taking the time to truly reflect on our achievements and performance passes us by. Being able to see success, and just how well a piece of work or an initiative has performed is great. So if you do write award entries and go on to win, great! But remember, it's not just about the winning.

A constant state of change

By Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Back to the day job
after a wonderful few
weeks!

This weeks post is focused on change. No matter how much we all try to resist sometimes, its the one thing that's always remains constant. And for us fellow Marketers, embracing change, and being responsive to change is all in the job. The sector and marketing environment is constantly adapting and changing, and therefore so must we!

Slightly off topic, but a change nonetheless, is me! After three long weeks, I'm back in the office and back to the day job after taking a few weeks off to get married. So, if you start to see Sarah De Guzman popping up every now and then in your inbox don't be alarmed, it's just me!

Getting back into the daily grind always takes some time, especially when there's literally hundreds of emails to catch up on. And so that's exactly how my first few days have been spent. It's amazing how quickly you can switch your mind off as you go into holiday mode, and then all the information, meetings and work updates come flooding back upon your return, as though that holiday was a thing of the past. I wish the same could be said for the jet lag!

Pretty much what my desk
looks like at the moment!

Well, it's now week two, post holiday, and the emails have been read, the calendar has been updated, and it's pretty much back to normality for me. Clearing is still underway, just about - we expect this to slowly tail off in the next week or so, as we firmly focus our attentions to the 2016 cycle, which has quietly been ticking along in the background since April this year.

Change in tactic
Ok so back to the focus of my blog post - change. The main focus of the marketing team has been in supporting the Recruitment team in the promotion of the September open day and lots of changes have been made to this years plan; from the media inventory selected to the times of communications. We've implemented a much more aggressive Digital Marketing campaign this time round, pulled back some communications based on intelligence learnt from previous plans, and we're very pleased with the results. If you happened to be on campus (Luton and Bedford) on that day you'll have seen that it was very busy indeed, and had a great vibe on campus, and that's always great to see. Take a look at our open day picture gallery - kindly taken by Sara, Marketing Assistant. And a big shout out to the recruitment team who really pulled it out of the bag with the number of schools in attendance. The day was a resounding success. That's one event down and on to the next, as we're already busily preparing a promotional push for our October events.

Krystle, far left, is setting off for
new adventures

Team change
This week will be offering up a bit of a mixed bag for the Marketing team. Krystle, our Campaign Officer is sadly leaving us on Wednesday, after being part of the Marketing team for about 18 months now. We're really sad to see her go, and to see our mighty marketing team reduced to just three colleagues now. In the relatively short time that Krystle has been with us, she's made a significant difference to the way in which campaigns are planned, implemented and evaluated, and she will be very much missed by us all. We'll be sending Krystle off and wishing her well over lunch on Wednesday. And, to pick up our mood, the remaining Marketing team will be heading off to Homerton College in Cambridge on Thursday, for this year's coveted CIPRide awards. We're up for two awards: Best Integrated Campaign for our 2014 Clearing campaign, and Best Low Budget Campaign for our September 2014 open day promotions. So a good evening out shall definitely pick up our moods, and provide a much needed evening out to re group, celebrate our achievements and look ahead to the future.

Keep everything crossed for us, and follow @CIPR_Awards to watch the evenings events unfold!

So change can mean many different things to many people. And boy are we experiencing a lot of it at the moment. From changing the way we do things and implemented planned changes to be more effective, all the way through to adapting to unforeseen changes, and changes in team resource and dynamics, we remain a positive marketing force to be reckoned with - it may just take us that bit longer to reply to your email, so please bear with us!

What's my name again? Clearing, campaigns and creative pitches - all in a days work

By Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

What's my name? Where do I live? What do I do? What day is it? These are just some of the many questions you'll find us asking ourselves over the next few weeks. With the mad Clearing rush in full force, all of the days start to blur into one. The multi-tasking marketers strike again...

We're making it happen for many
students who we hope to join this Sept!

Clearing...
And so Clearing has finally begun for many students in search of that university place. But for us over in Marketing, Clearing has been high on our agenda for months now. Although results day was all but yesterday, planning for this infamous campaign first started way back in November, so it's great for us to finally see the campaign taking shape, and to hear the busy phone lines ringing, whilst we constantly refresh our dashboards to track our performance and make adjustments to our campaign targeting.

Whilst Clearing often ensues months of organised chaos, I always particularly enjoy the chance for us marketers to do what we do best - be creative! Each year in Clearing, we have the opportunity to trial new innovations and initiatives to grab the headlines, boost traction in the media, and beguile and inspire the minds of our audience. Following on from last year's Flash mob, we've had heaps of fun working with the press team to launch some Guerrilla marketing techniques in the run up to results day; this involved projecting our marketing messages and campaign creatives on to a series of buildings and landmarks. If you haven't already seen it, check it out below...

Our nice and new shiny
shell scheme

We've also been supporting the Recruitment team as they gear up to lead a series of community events in a whole host of locations, including: Luton, Bedford, Milton Keynes and London. You can see left, a new shell scheme which I put together (design wise of course - I can not take any credit for assembling the actual thing, and so a big well done is due to recruitment for overcoming the ultimate flat pack challenge). These 'Pods' as well call them lead on our verbal brand themes, and this nice, new piece of kit enables the team to offer more engaging and interactive sessions with the local community - providing a real insight into what exciting subjects we offer. So I'm really looking forward to seeing how the team gets on.

Campaigns...
Whilst Clearing remains at the forefront of our minds for the next few weeks, we've already been looking ahead and turning our attention to our 2016 enquirer recruitment, which we officially started back in March. The photoshoots have taken place, the artwork is almost finalised, and the plan is moments away from being approved (I'll get round to it shortly, I'm sure!). But if working on two consecutive intakes and recruitment cycles isn't fun enough, let's throw a third one in there for good measure shall we? Yes, not only are we working on 2015 and 2016 recruitment, but we are well away and are already working on our 2017 marketing. And this comes in the form of our publications tender which took place this week, over at the Putteridge Bury campus.

And creative pitches
I always enjoy the publications tenders. Whilst the admin aspect can take a lot of time, it's really refreshing to meet the different agencies, and see how they respond to the challenges and brief that you set. This tender was particularly interesting, as 4 of the 5 agencies were entirely new to us. So we set out on a fact finding mission to grill each company in turn, to make sure we haven't just got a stand out creative, but the man power behind it to deliver it. Although a long day, the panel had lots of fun, and came away feeling inspired. Keep a look out in future posts for more on this - as we'll share more, once the agency has been appointed.

For now, it's the end of my blog post, and back to the day job and the ever growing list of things to do before my holiday (woo - 2 weeks to go!). So whilst I'm slowly getting excited, there still seems to be an awful lot to do before that holiday milestone even starts to begin to feel like it's within my reach - right, back to work - what year is it again?

Marketing, Media and Emerging Trends for 2015

By Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Being able to monitor trends is a key part to any marketers role, as this is fundamentally the best way in which we can stay ahead of the competition. Now that we're well and truly back into the swing of things after the xmas break, I thought I'd start off our blog this year with a series of tips on what to watch out for in 2015 from the Marketing department. So, this post is more of a focus on our own emerging trends for 2015 if you like: take a look...

Content is king

1). Content is king
Marketers are being called upon to place less of a focus on the hard marketing sell, and more emphasis on providing information and useful content to support potential students in their decision making. And whilst this is an emerging theme across the sector as a whole, we're already one step ahead as we continue to develop our content marketing strategies here in the Marketing department. For 2015, we're building on last year's introduction of a variety of new initiatives, which all focused on one thing: providing relevant and useful content which our customer really wants, so that they can better engage with, and buy in to, the Bedfordshire brand.

As we approach the Conversion stage to the recruitment cycle, we'll be implementing a number of key communications such as themed emails, the B4Beds Undergraduate e-zine, and our CRM personalised web portal, in order to share a wide variety of rich content with our applicants.

Peer-to-peer and user
generated content

2). Offering value through content marketing
Building on the above, as the demand for non-university generated content increases, we'll be shortly rolling out Student Bloggers for 2015. This year we have even expanded on the number of bloggers we have, to generate even more subject specific content which is written by our very own current students. We're really excited as we continue to build up the peer-to-peer content which focuses on real experiences of real Bedfordshire students.

This idea of offering value through our marketing, also translates over to our PG recruitment too. Last year saw the pilot of 'PG Tips' in our monthly, award-winning Postgraduate e-zine. These short videos act as a mini lecture series, and are loosely modeled on MOOCs (Massive open online courses ie free online classes) which some other universities have dabbled in, in order to reach and engage with an audience in a more meaningful way.

Moving towards mobile 

3). Welcome to the mobile age
Through our many post campaign evaluations and live campaign reporting, the one thing that was clear from 2014, was the major shift towards mobile usage from our prospective students. And that's why we've been working with the Digital Marketing team to produce and launch a brand new set of email templates for 2015. These new templates are all optimised for mobile use, making our marketing messages more easily readable across the vast array of media devises currently available. The new templates will be in use from 15 January onwards, so keep a look out for our new professional, and 'snazzy' looking templates, coming to an inbox near you!

Keeping one eye on the competition

4). It's all about who you know
Last, but certainly not least, we'll be continuing to work with our Media Planning and Buying Agency to meet different suppliers and HE advertisers so we are fully clued up and get the latest on the latest technologies and marketing products currently out there. We'll be hosting our very first set of meet the supplier days later this month, where the wider MARC department is able to meet the key players, movers and shakers in the HE advertising industry, and they share their insight on changing consumer behaviour, what works, and most importantly, what our competitors are up to!

Stay tuned throughout the year, as we keep you posted on the many initiatives that we'll be rolling out over the coming months. We'll be keeping you posted on what's worked particularly well, and what developments and insight there is from our university neighbours.

A thrilling week at work

Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Managers Away Day

It seems that time is flying by at the moment. And the days seem to go by all the more rapidly, especially when you're limited to only two days of desk time within the working week. That's right! I've been out and about this week, breaking out from my 'typical week' which usually involves quite a lot of meetings in and around campus. Don't get me wrong, I think it's important to get 'out there' and meet the wider University to support their recruitment efforts, but it always makes for a nice change to get off-site and progress your own projects. After taking Wednesday out with the other Marketing Managers for a team building away day, it was off to Manchester with Krystle, our Campaign Officer, on Thursday morning to meet with a Media Agency we've been working with on a rather ad-hoc basis to discuss our 2015 Winter Campaign.

The one that everyone wants
to win!

But I must confess, my trip to Manchester wasn't all work and no play. Straight after the meeting I, alongside other Marketing and Digital Marketing colleagues made our way over to the Palace Hotel in Manchester, in anticipation of this years Heist Awards, aka the Education Oscars. Anyone who works within the HE Sector, and Marketing specifically, will know just how much importance is placed on the coveted Heist awards. If a team was going to win an award that represented a shining example of best practice then this was the one. The entries are notoriously difficult to compile and so to get short-listed, for us, was a massive achievement in itself and one that we are very proud of.

At the @heistawards. Lets see if table 34 is lucky for @uniofbeds this evening pic.twitter.com/2aGoay73cZ
— Sarah Hampton (@Sarah_Hampton) July 10, 2014

Getting in the carnival groove

This year's theme was 'carnival', and we were in for a very special treat with an array of singers and samba dancers performing on stage, much to my delight (the singer could be a potential winner for Eurovision in years to come I'm sure of it - which I adored). And, known as a team who likes to get stuck in and get involved, we donned our carnival masks and wore them with pride and we bopped away and boogied in our seats.

Out en masse: left to right:
David, Me, Sioned, Beverley
and Paul 

We were up for Best Undergraduate Prospectus, for our 2014 Publication. This category is one of the 'biggies' and so it was no surprise to see that we were up against a 'short-list' of 13 other UK Universities. Although we had a great evening, we sadly didn't get the gold this year. We were pipped to the post by the University of Leicester who had presented a great looking Undergraduate Prospectus focused on their finding of Richard III. Funnily enough, we lost out on the Best PG Prospectus title last year to the same University for the very same reason - I'm seeing a pattern here! So, if you see me by our new library development armed with a spade, you all know why!

Exclusive: our new PG15
prospectus

For the second week running, I only have two days in the office, but this time it's because I'm taking some much needed annual leave - a whole three days, to celebrate getting our Postgraduate 2015 Prospectus off to print. After a great team effort over the last few months, we've finally signed the publication off. It'll soon be available online, so keep checking back over the next few weeks for a first look at our brand-new prospectus. We'd love to know what you think! We're not entirely finished yet, as we still have the printer proofs to sign off, but the big bulk of the work is now complete, so I'm taking the time while the sun is still shining, as when I come back, everything will be firmly focused on Clearing.

Shaping the future of HE Marketing

Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

The Future of HE Marketing Conference 2014

This week saw the culmination of a months hard work and preparation as Paul Fryer (Digital Marketing Manager) and I made our way to London for this year's Inside Government 'The Future of HE Marketing" Conference 2014. Paul and I were invited to speak at the event, focusing on "Enhancing Postgraduate Recruitment Through Developing A Digital Presence." Well, we were more than happy to oblige, after all, PG is one of my favourite subjects!

Paul and I taking centre
stage

Before we knew it, the day had arrived, and there we were armed with our nifty USB stick (always carry a back up!), ready to share our PG knowledge with approximately 100 delegates, most of whom were either Directors or Heads from other universities from across the UK. After overcoming some initial nerves and stage fright (bar Paul who was raring to go!), we successfully delivered our presentation to what we thought was a really engaged audience. There's nothing like a room of frantic pen scribblers to make you second guess whether you've over shared or not. Nonetheless, we were pleased to be sharing best practice and have our work recognised by our peers, after our recent success in generating a 30% increase to PGT applications for our September 2013 intake, especially given that the national picture suggests that universities are experiencing a 12% decrease year on year.

And the feedback from some of the delegates was great...

@Sarah_Hampton @deep_phat @InsideGovt fantastic presentation.. Thanks for sharing some of your secrets ;-) #ighemarket
— Joe Etchells (@JEtchells88) April 29, 2014

Back in the office, things have been equally exciting, as we push forward with our conversion activity and publications; both the PG 2015 and UCMK 2015 prospectuses. We're fast approaching the proofing stages, so it's always great to see how your work slowly comes together. Stay tuned over the coming weeks for some sneak peaks into how some of the visuals are progressing.

Heading on out to Koz
in search of sunshine

For the next week I leave you in the very capable hands of the Marketing team, as I take some very long awaited annual leave in search of a spot of sunshine. I'll be back soon with more updates on our new CRM system, and may even share some of our PG secrets from our presentation earlier this week.

And we're live! - Getting to grips with CRM

Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

LIVE: Our new CRM personalised web portal:
Belong at Bedfordshire

Hi everyone. It's been a short while since my last post. But now that I'm back from my staycation, I'm already ploughing through hundreds of emails and getting my calendar filled up with meetings to progress some exciting initiatives. First on my list was to progress the launch of our new CRM system, Belong at Beds. This has been a long project in the making, headed up by our CRM Manager Amanda, and Digital Marketing Manager, Paul. Since I took up the Marketing Manager role last June, I've been getting my teeth into it also; understanding what it is, what it can do, and what we need to do to get it up and running. After a few initial delays in development, we're finally ready to go live, which we're all very excited about. Training complete, data at the ready, content schedule devised. We're going for a soft launch whilst we settle into working with a live system and live data, but that's not to say we're scrimping on the content. So what are you waiting for? Take a look for yourself.

Now that the March cohort of students have arrived, it means that our MSc Project Management Distance Learning Marketing plan has come to an end. Over the last few days I've been collating stats and assessing the performance of our digital communications to pull together into an end of campaign report. Here, we'll be able to look at what activity has worked particularly well for us, and what hasn't, all of which will help us plan for future campaigns and make recommendations for improvements. So far it's looking good in terms of traffic generated and reach. I've also got my hands on our student numbers for the courses, and it seems that we've met the original targets set at the start of the campaign. It's always great to see when a campaign has gone well and delivered on it's initial objectives (Well done team!). The report will soon be available on the Staff Intranet site in.beds, so if you're an internal member of staff reading this blog and want to know more, be sure to take a look, and do get in touch to discuss how the Marketing team can support your courses.

New UCMK, Milton Keynes Prospectus
ready June 2014

In other news, work is now well underway on the UCMK prospectus. Kylie, Marketing Officer, and Clare, Marketing Assistant, have been busily updating text, imagery, and auditing courses to feature in the 2015 publication. We're now ready to brief this in to our agency, and so look forward to seeing 1st proofs shortly. We can then turn our attention to the PG 2015 Prospectus. I've audited all of our Postgraduate provision to form a flatplan, and we're now ready to start reworking content over the next few weeks. We'll keep you posted on the progress of these publications, and make sure you keep checking back to get a first-look at the visuals.

Presentation preparation: Boosting our PG
Profile

In between all of the above, I've also been doing a fair bit of number crunching to look at our Postgraduate student numbers between 2011 and 2013. Paul Fryer, who heads up our Digital team, and myself have both been invited to present at the Inside Government Conference: The Future of Higher Education Marketing 2014 later this month on the success of our Postgraduate marketing. Our talk title is: Enhancing Postgraduate Student Recruitment Through Developing A Digital Presence. Wish us luck!

Well deserved fun needed I think!

By Michelle Ramsumair, Marketing Administrator

Firstly, a huge congratulations to Sarah Hampton for her promotion to Marketing Manager! Truly well deserved and she is going to do a superb job I’m sure.  If you can’t tell already it’s all happening in our team.

If you haven't noticed us about with our Clearing advertising and appearances at various locations in Luton and Bedford, a summer holiday is not an excuse! It's pretty hard not to see us, and we have a number of events coming up.  

Wednesday 11 September 10.30am-3pm we have our first Open Event during the week for anyone interested in 2014 entry. It will be at both our Luton and Bedford campuses so a huge department effort is being made. If you or you know anyone who may be interested come along.

On Wednesday 18 September from 1-7.30pm the public will be able to drop-in to our new campus UCMK! With brand new facilities and academics there to talk to, it will be the perfect opportunity to find out what it would be like to study with us. There are full-time and part-time courses available, so if you are interested why not come see us. It’s a good excuse to have a snoop around too. For more information, visit www.ucmk.ac.uk.

At the moment you can tell it's rather manic, working on current campaigns and the beginning of our Part-time and Winter Campaign also. Now we are out and about we won't be going anywhere, so watch this space to see what's coming next. Obviously after a non-stop few weeks we deserve to let our hair down, so a group of us gorgeous ladies will be going out tonight. It could get a little messy but it's much needed indeed. Although summer is at an end why should the fun stop right? Have a great relaxed or lively weekend!