This week looks set to be pretty hectic for the team, filled with Clearing videography, UCAS conventions, the launch of our new Research website section and planning for new student registration.

Some of my IDM coursemates
I must admit that this week may see me a little preoccupied as I enter the last leg of my PG Diploma in Digital Marketing with the IDM. This will all culminate with a series of three 3-hour exams next week in Wandsworth town hall, meaning my evenings will be consumed with writing revision timetables as an avoidance tactic to knuckling down to any proper revision!

The thought of sitting and writing for that long fills me with cold dread as I don't think I've been in an exam hall for about 15 years. I have horrible memories of wobbly, chewing gum covered tables and comparing notes with other students afterwards where I seemed to have written different answers to all of them!

Here are my thoughts on the course so far. I'd definitely recommend it for anyone who works in or is interested in Digital Marketing as it's a great way to fill in the gaps in your knowledge and to think more strategically about the work you undertake.

My background before the course:

Before I started the course I had 2 years in-house digital marketing experience covering most aspects of Digital Marketing, including; web development, PPC, Email, video and social. Before this I had worked for 5 years in internal marketing teams with a very similar remit. Therefore, I had a good practical background so I decided to leap straight into the diploma rather than do the certificate first.

I've found I can use a lot of my experience and knowledge from my job within the course, and that it has filled in the areas where I have had little experience, such as e-commerce and B2B.

Very vocational:

The course materials are very practical, and although underpinned by academic theory, you are not necessarily expected to reference a lot of theory during the assignments or course. The application to real life situations and backing them up with real life case studies is more important. There's also a big emphasis on budget planning and 'lifetime value' which are the two areas I have found most challenging.

Different study options:

My view of Bushey park as I walked
through it on my way to the IDM
There are various different study options to choose from, and I went for the intensive one over 8 months. This has been a really great way to study as it has fitted my 'just get it done' mentality and didn't draw it out unnecessarily. I had to attend three separate sessions at the IDM headquarters in Teddington with 15 other classmates. The first two of these were three full days each and were intended to prepare us for our assignments. The last one was four days to get us ready for our exams!

Overall the experience was great and work very kindly put me up in a nice hotel as commuting to Teddington on a daily basis would be nearly impossible. I really enjoyed getting to know my classmates and taking part in various presentations and group work. We then continued to chat via a LinkedIn group. The hardest bit was being faced with our first assignment after just three days of teaching though... I lost quite a few Saturdays working on that one!

Challenging assignments:

We had to complete 2 assignments or 5,000 words, where we are given a real case-study company and have to draw up a digital marketing plan to meet the companies objectives (Euro Car Parts and Gap360). I quite enjoyed this part of the course as I was able to put my theory into practice and be creative with my plans.

I was initially worried that I was not including enough theory, however this did not appear to have affected my results too much, as I think it is more important to get practical examples in. I also found I spent perhaps longer than I needed to on the market research aspects and that 5,000 words is much easier to write than you might expect!

Exams!

Time for me to knuckle down!
I'll mention this one again in my next post! Needless to say I did an hour timed practice question the other evening and couldn't feel my hand afterwards...

In my first 2 exams I will have to answer 3 questions from 5, which cover current issues in Digital Marketing, and can cover issues that are not covered with the course materials. Therefore, I'm spending a lot of time reading marketing blogs/news to keep up to date.

The final exam is a unseen case study, similar to the assignments, where I'll have to formulate a Digital Marketing plan (this is the one I'm most nervous about!)

Overall, this has been a great experience. Just one more hurdle to go (the biggest one!) and then I'll find out in September if I've passed and can attend the lavish graduation ceremony. I'd especially like to thank the University of Bedfordshire who kindly funded these studies as part of my professional development. Let's hope I do them proud...
Summer is on the way and I'm hoping these sunny days continue into next week (as opposed to the thunderstorms we've recently been having!) The reason for this is that I now have a week off to enjoy a break at the seaside with the family (and also limited 3G connectivity!)

All eyes on the World Cup in summer 2014
The forthcoming Brazil World Cup is already dominating the news (and as someone originally from Southampton I'm pleased to see three of our players have made the squad). There's no doubt that this will continue to get some major news coverage and we'll see a number of big brands trying to jump onto the bandwagon - ourselves already included...

'Newsjacking' is where brands take to social media during a big global or national event and attempt to capitalise on the coverage it is getting for themselves. While on the surface this might seem like something PR people have been doing for years, newsjacking takes the practice to the next level, it also has a number of risks attached and is a tricky and delicate thing. But when businesses learn how to effectively navigate Twitter (and other real-time social communities), there’s a lot that can be achieved by playing into the news of the day.

It's with this in mind that the team got chatting a few weeks ago and noticed that Roy Hodgson was to announce his England squad at the Vauxhall car plant in Luton. So we set to work on this Tweet:
All in a usual days work really but we then noticed via our media monitoring software that our efforts had been quoted in a Guardian article highlighting how us universities are now learning to advertise. It's a really thought provoking article so I suggest you take a look and what interested me was not only that we were being monitored by them but that the digital marketing techniques they cite are pretty much standard practice for any well organised big business.

In 2012 the market changed forever
Overall however, I'd agree with their synopsis and feel that the rise in tuition fees has been the driving factor in making good marketing in HE all the more important. However, what must not be forgotten in all this is ensuring the students get the best experience possible. Even the best marketing in the world can't sell a poor product!

This leads me nicely on to a guest Blog post I was asked to write last week for the UK Digital Experience Awards 2014. Here I argue that customer service is the best form of marketing and that as professionals we also need to be marketing ourselves internally to gain recognition for what we can bring to the company. This includes bringing home external awards (something which I'm a big fan of!) It's a good job then that we've just racked up another nomination for the Heist awards in July!


Here we go again!
This is for Best Strategic and Corporate Campaign (with last year's cinema advert the focus). There's a big field for this one with some massive campaigns competing against us so we'll see how we get on. We'll be there again anyway at the Gala Dinner in Manchester with our fellow Bedfordshire nominees in the Undergaduate Prospectus and Internal Communications categories, cheering each other on as usual.

That's enough from me for now. Time to start packing the bucket and spade - here's hoping there's no big Luton/Bedford related news that I miss while I'm out of the office to miss 'newsjacking'...!
One task in my role as Digital Marketing Manager which I didn't realise would have quite such an emphasis is that of giving presentations. Looking back, I have given at least two 20min+ presentations a month on a variety of subjects - it's a good thing this is something I really enjoy! Perhaps it's because I'm some sort of natural showman but I think it's vital for me to get out there and promote the team's work with the hope of imparting some useful knowledge or triggering a brainstorming session.

The stage is set for a full day of
Higher Education presentations
So it was then that Sarah Hampton (from our Marketing team) and myself were asked to present at the Inside Government Future of Higher Education Marketing 2014 conference. This was due to us being commended back in December for our website at the Prospects Postgraduate Awards and we've also recently seen an uplift of 30% in our Postgraduate student applications for September 2013. Our shift to digital techniques to achieve this was to be the main focus - it's a good thing that's in my job title!

We set off to London earlier than usual on 29th April due to the fact there was to be a Tube strike. This would give us plenty of time to walk to the Hallam Conference Centre in Marylebone where we were due to present in the rather opulent Council Chamber (thankfully the weather was on our side!) We had the after lunch slot at 2.20pm so needed to make sure our energy levels were turned up to the maximum to keep the audience awake.

Before our talk we listened to a number of other speakers either from government funded bodies (e.g. the QAA, HESA, HEFCE and the mighty UCAS), to fellow universities (e.g. SOAS, Exeter and York) and the 100+ delegate list read like a who's who of higher education marketing. No pressure then...

The overwhelming feeling I got from the other presenters was that of some very talented and experienced marketers sharing what we need to focus on for the future in what is becoming a very competitive marketplace. Personally, the reason I like HE is that people are willing to share best practice, but this time it was clear people were happy to share what needs to be done but not necessarily how - I hope this is not a vision of our future. Where we differed slightly from the majority was that we had real examples and figures charting the success/failure of everything we did. Perhaps we were being too honest and a little naive?!

Me in full flow on the podium in
the Council Chambers
Despite these concerns the presentation all went rather well, we stuck to time and I made sure that I packed in as many success stories as possible whilst Sarah shared some of our admissions data. I was also very happy to get some great questions in the Q&A afterwards and as hoped it sparked a good opportunity for networking at the tea break (I have a new wad of business cards as a result!)

Jo, the conference organiser shared some feedback with us post event and this was overwhelmingly positive with one person saying it was 'a really engaging and insightful showcase of our work'. All in all, a good days work!

Next up for me is an hour long presentation at our Clinical Education and Leadership away day this afternoon. We're then straight into the launch of our new iTrent jobs site for HR and I've been asked to contribute to the design and functionality of our forthcoming University app. Alongside all of this we're switching our website hosting package and are redesigning our news listings. Finally, is that the dreaded Clearing I see looming on the horizon? When's that next May bank holiday again...?!
Back in June 2012, when I first started this Blog, the idea was that it would be in equal parts therapy, a document of the team's work and a place to share our innovations with the University and wider HE marketing sector.

St. Paul's cathedral made a particularly
impressive (and prophetic) backdrop
Little did I know that two years (and 49 posts) later I'd be up for a national award at the inaugural National UK Blog Awards 2014 and with over 900 entries, just making it into the shortlist was a massive achievement for me. The ceremony was due to be held at the very swanky Grange hotel in St. Paul's and was all the brainchild and hard work of Gemma Pears and Becki Cross who saw the need for bloggers from all sectors to be recognised on a national scale. Needless to say they did an amazing job of laying on a truly memorable night for all involved.

So, as soon as I finished work on Friday I rushed home to get dressed up in my trusty Matalan Tux (the cost per-wear is now down to 13p!) and headed down to the big smoke. The hotel was definitely a very impressive venue just across the road from the cathedral and I grabbed my event lanyard for a bit of networking and lots of food (the Content Click sponsored cupcakes were particularly nice). There was also a very tempting candyfloss and popcorn stand and I was suitably impressed by the scale of the whole event.

The Grange made a brilliant venue
with great views from the top floor
At 8.30pm we took our seats for the awards ceremony to begin! Having looked at the competition I was certain that this was not going to be my night. They seemed to blog with much more regularity and also have a more monetised publishing model than this lowly blog with its modest readership. In fact, I was so certain I wasn't going to win that I promised my wife I'd shave off my beard if I did...

I was up against bloggers who have appeared on TV with their work and was amongst special guests who included BBC Click, the original Stig from Top Gear and the Mayor of Camden. The awards then started with a bang (and an Oscar inspired selfie) and I really enjoyed being at a ceremony which was refreshingly un-corporate. What was great was that as well as the usual big brands there were also lots of people there who just enjoy writing their blogs for themselves from home. This meant there was a real mix of people making it all the more refreshing.

My category was up fourth and then the announcement came: "Winner of the organisation category - the Digital Marketing Team Blog!" Woah...

On stage collecting my award from the
very generous judges!
From then on the whole evening became a bit of a blur. I was absolutely shocked and flattered to have won such a prestigious prize against such brilliant opposition. I really didn't feel I deserved it but whilst sipped a refreshing gin and tonic and waiting for my photo (and video interview!) I had an opportunity to chat to the judges in my category. Elliot Simmonds from DJS Research and VoicED and Julian Stanley the CEO of the Teacher Support Network were a couple of really friendly guys and whilst comparing the delights of the Grange to a Travelodge they assured me that there was a particularly stringent mark scheme to decide on the winner. I must be doing something right then!

I came away from the evening with a brilliant trophy, a winners certificate and a hilarious goodie bag (containing carpet samples, tea, wallpaper rolls, Brazilian cocktail mixer, wedding magazines and a USB stick). I also made some really good contacts and have some amazing memories for the future.

Finally, I'd like to sign off my fiftieth post by thanking my team - as without their excellent work I'd have nothing worth blogging about! Now do I shave off my beard as I promised or not...?
One thing you can be sure of in digital marketing is that if something works then you do it again! The phenomenal success of our last cinema advert (and accompanying online campaign) meant that it was a foregone conclusion that we'd be repeating the same activity a year later - so here we are...



In many ways the process has been a lot easier this year due to us already knowing the production company we'd like to use (Spectrecom again obviously) and we have a tighter grasp of the budgets and schedules required to get this thing moving.

After getting three different concepts the one we chose was entitled 'Good Choice'. This had an emphasis on showcasing the range of reasons people might want to go to University but also would lend itself to being a conversion activity as part of our pre-clearing campaign (where students decide that we are their first choice after adding us to their UCAS form).


Our new School of Art and Design which
was a brilliant location for the big screen
The original concept was a strong one with various keywords appear on the screen alongside (some) newly filmed footage. We ensured that we included the relevant keywords by involving all heads of department into the decision making process and also ensured that the final advert showcased a good range of courses (especially those which historically need a bigger push to recruit to).

Once this was all in place Lauren, Graeme and myself sat down to discuss how we thought the graphics could look and the logistics of arranging a days filming which included some areas of our Luton campus not previously captured on film! Lauren did an amazing job of scheduling the day to include our new School of Art and Design and to round up a variety of current students to star - all with the promise of a £15 Amazon voucher for their efforts!

The day of the filming arrived and actually went relatively smoothly with us sticking to schedule and only needing to relocate for one shot. Staff in Media and the Science labs were particularly helpful and we were all wrapped by 6pm as planned.


Filming outside of campus centre in Luton.
This time, the weather was on our side!
The next stage was then to choose the music and purchase the rights (thanks Spectrecom for going with our choice) which was aided by our remarketing data showing the type of music people who visit our website are interested in. We also had a lot of to-ing and fro-ing to get the graphics as we wanted them but Spectrecom were as accommodating as ever of our requests - I quite enjoyed the role of 'pushy' client for a change!

We're really happy with the final product and although it packs a little less of an emotional punch than last time, it shows us to be a really vibrant and upbeat place to study. So if you live near one of our campuses look out for it on a screen near you in the coming weeks. We're also putting the finishing touches to our online campaign so nowhere will be safe to escape that catchy soundtrack!

In other news I've just come back from a week at the IDM in Teddington where I completed the final stage of my Postgraduate Diploma in Digital Marketing. I'm pleased to report that I passed my final assignment and now need to get revising for the real challenge of three 3 hour exams at the beginning of June.

I've also booked my ticket for the 'oscars of the blogging world' the National UK Blog Awards 2014 at the Grange Hotel, St. Pauls. I'm really excited about this one and there's due to be some high profile companies to network with over a glass of champagne as well as the promise of 'sumptuous bowl food' (whatever that is?!) A win would make all the time I spend writing these posts worthwhile!

Finally, I've been putting the finishing touches to a presentation which Sarah from the Marketing team and I are set to give at an Inside Government event on 29th April. The focus will be 'Enhancing Postgraduate Student Recruitment Through Developing A Digital Presence' and I'm really looking forward to sharing some of the lessons we've learned and some of the latest innovations to keep out website at the forefront of our Marketing strategy. There's my next two blog posts written right there!
As someone who was bought up in Southampton that's a pretty hard blog title to write!

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...

The two day Hampshire recruitment fair
All staff in the MARC department are required to attend at least one UCAS convention a year as it's a great chance to get out of the office and to shadow our Recruitment team. When choosing which fair I should attend I decided to go back to where it all began and head back down south to the University of Portsmouth (where I studied many moons ago!)

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!
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
It was definitely a busy few days with coach loads of students from local colleges walking the floors. Some were great with a real idea of what they wanted to study and where and we absolutely smashed our target of completed enquiry forms.  We also were one of the only stands to be giving out freebies (light bulb stress balls and tote bags) and I took sympathy on some people carrying arm fulls of prospectuses and just gave them a bag anyway.

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!

HMS Warrior (1860)
We finished at 3pm on the second day which left a bit of time for sightseeing at the historic dockyard and a decent meal at Gunwharf Quays. I also managed to find some HMS Victory rock to bring back to the team from one of the gift shops (ever the tourist...)

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!
This is usually the time of year that we can experiment a bit with our marketing activities to get some customer insight on what generates the best return on investment (and what doesn't!) Usually this means we trial a few small online campaigns to allow us develop a really robust plan for our clearing activity. However, we've just hit upon something which not only could teach us a lot but also allows us an even better way to reach our target demographic.


We've all seen examples of bad
re-marketing that can literally
take hours to remove or rectify!
Re-marketing is something we've been using on a small scale for a while. This is basically where a potential customer visits a website and is then targeted with their adverts forever on any site they subsequently visit. I know from experience that this can definitely get pretty annoying. The user feels like they're being stalked and in many cases it does more harm, to the brand using it, than good. I've definitely seen lots of bad examples of this in the past (mentioning no names!) where one innocent Google search destroys your browsing experience forever.

This is why, up until now, we've been cautious with our approach. However, a recent UI Refresh from Google has made it a lot easier to target meaningful adverts and track them in Google Analytics. As usual, we've been working with Ranjit at Statistics Into Decisions to get this up and running on our site and by just adding a bit of code we're now good to go.


One day's worth of data showing the
common interests of our site visitors
After spending a few days looking at this there's very little we can't do all from our analytics account. For example, we now get really good data on the sites our visitors go to after they go to ours. this can show us anything from their common interests to which of our competitors they are looking at for which courses. One thing I was very pleased to see was the amount of 'Movie lovers' we have who visit us - meaning our cinema advert was money well spent!

The segmentation options are always very simple to use and we can either import our existing lists or create new ones. The one option we definitely will use is targeting only people who visit key areas of the site (i.e 'Open days') and we'll ensure that there's a clear cap on the length of time they see our adverts with useful information.
We already learning a great deal about the type of person who is interested in coming to Bedfordshire to compliment our current data set and with the ability to add a myriad of filters can ensure we don't do more harm than good and oversell with blanket advertising across the internet!

In other news the team has been monitoring and tweaking our pre-clearing campaign which seems to be performing pretty well and I've been continuing to champion the cause for the right usage of social media. In particular I've been working on a report for our International Centre who are investigating a strategy to engage and highlight further their great research. The report looks at mentions, sentiment and common themes in order for them to see how they are currently perceived and how they can keep up the momentum that culminated in their recent Queen's award.


Portsmouth spinnaker - I remember
voting for this design way back in 1999!
Last of all, this week will see a couple of interesting new initiatives within the team, as on Tuesday we're meeting with Spectrecom to discuss an exciting new video project (more on that in the next post). I'm also off to 'Pompey' on Thursday and Friday to do my bit in assisting with staffing a stall for a recruitment fair. In our department we're obliged to do one of these a year and the reason I chose this one is that I studied in Portsmouth for my degree. I'm intending to take a bit of time to also see how much it's changed down south and re-visit some of my old haunts. I hope Kingfisher is still there as they used to serve the best fish and chips on the south coast!
Next PostNewer Posts Previous PostOlder Posts Home