Daring to be different

Warwick Business School (WBS) had historically taken a traditional approach to student marketing. They’d used a variety of different media channels for both UG and PG attraction and, whilst not struggling to attract applicants, were keen to trial a new approach. One that was content/customer centric and allowed us to invest more, in fewer channels and would help drive both cost and time efficiencies.

So, we interrogated the data and through detailed reporting, were able to identify exactly what channels and content were resonating best with WBS’s target audience. We then created an agile plan that served effective and relevant content to the right people, in the right place, at the right time.

It was a dramatically different approach

We recommended that WBS partnered with The Student Room (TSR), a channel identified as having the high achieving audience they were looking to attract. We proposed the co-creation of meaningful content to ‘sell’ WBS’s key values and USPs.

The aim was to create, distribute and amplify content with a trusted partner, to engage a more diverse global audience and place WBS as a leading business school.

Tailored content spoke directly to WBS’s audience

As part of the partnership, the TSR editorial team created various articles, that spoke to a UG, PG or all audiences and focused on themes such as, ‘Are you a natural entrepreneur?’ or ‘How to invest in yourself with a postgraduate degree’.

TSR pushed out content across social channels to either promote these articles or direct people to them. Emails were also sent to people TSR recognised as having relevant interests or qualifications, while further awareness was raised through the sponsorship of relevant high-profile forums.

In addition, we used off-site retargeting strategies to re-engage users who’d engaged with the content as well as co-branding across all business related onsite content.

WBS ran two ‘Ask me anything’ pieces on TSR. This enabled them to further personalise the WBS experience, sell the benefits of what it can do for applicants’ careers and engage with their audience differently.

Hosted by alumni and current students, they offered an inspirational window into the business school and its true potential.

He who dares, wins!

Daring to change their approach to marketing and create and distribute more meaningful, personal and relevant content, to a more targeted and engaged global audience, has helped WBS to increase the quality of their applications and diversify their cohort.

And although conversion wasn’t the main focus of this activity, our campaign tracking still measured:

• 4,700+ on site conversions including over 3,000 UG related conversions
• 188 brochure downloads
• 327 PG Apply Clicks
• 6 MBA Applications
• 100,000+ unique content page views over the year with an average dwell time of 2:11min

For WBS, doing things differently has certainly delivered results.