For a change I thought I'd write a post about the work we do to support other teams in the department. As part of MARC (Marketing, Admissions, Recruitment and Communications) there is a lot of cross over in what we do in attracting and helping students. My team's role has overlaps with all of the above functions whether it be assisting them with their web presence, answering questions on social media, monitoring brand mentions or attending recruitment fairs...
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The two day Hampshire recruitment fair |
So Michelle (from the Marketing team) and I set off on a Wednesday night armed with boxes of pens and enquiry forms for the three hour journey to Old Portsmouth. It was definitely a help that the area had not changed at all since I was last there (or the university) and we found our hotel with no trouble at all knowing that we'd need a restful night!
Come and see us @HantsIoW_HE we're stand no.10 & we've got free stuff! #UCASConvention @Come2Beds pic.twitter.com/P7I1XMOKNe
— uniofbeds (@uniofbeds) March 20, 2014
After a hearty breakfast we then set off to the student union and I enjoyed giving Michelle a tour of my old haunts (not sure she did!) We were stand number ten (being 'B' in the alphabet is a definite positive for our positioning) and our haulage company had already delivered our stands for us to build along with our prospectuses and freebies. What I found interesting was how old fashioned these fairs were, with most universities just having a branded table cloth and a pile of prospectuses. I decided to setup my laptop with our corporate film playing which did draw a lot of attention throughout the day. Then the hordes of prospective students descended...!![]() |
Roll up, roll up! Between us we managed to get over 100 enquiries a day |
Day two was actually busier and were both pretty tired from an epic pool tournament at the hotel the night before (no comment on who won). Again, I found it interesting to see how we had a bigger focus on collecting data than some other universities and also which of our subjects were most popular among our enquirers. We also had to tell a number of people where Bedfordshire is - I'm guessing that's not such a problem for more local fairs!
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HMS Warrior (1860) |
There's no doubt that these fairs are very important in raising awareness of our university and for gathering leads. My main feeling was that there is also a lot of scope to try and improve the interactive nature of the stands like at similar trade shows. I'm sure that with the sector becoming increasingly competitive this is something we're likely to see in the future.
For my next post I'll be returning to familiar territory as we film our second cinema advert on Wednesday. We've got a slightly different style for this one so watch this space for a full production diary!
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