Marketing audits for the education sector

Mindful of the important role that marketing plays in student recruitment (and thus ultimately a balanced budget); keen to spread the best practice in marketing measurement adopted by the Government Communication Service; we have put together a team of media analysts dedicated specifically to the education sector.

Our experience in the education and public sector includes projects and ongoing measurement programmes for organisations as diverse as:

  • Department for Education
  • Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
  • Department for Work and Pensions
  • Learning and Skills Council
  • Connexions
  • Train 2 Gain
  • National Apprenticeship Week
  • Student Financing
  • Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership
  • Accrington & Rossendale College / Nelson and Colne College
  • North West Regional Development Agency
  • Cardiff University

Our director Steph Bridgeman has been active in education governance since 2013.  Team members have experience in the Studio School, FE college,  higher education, local authority and private education categories.

Our marketing audits provide assurance on marketing investment to audit committees.   These audits serve a dual purpose because they include strategic and tactical recommendations for college marketing teams.

Marketing audits are typically based on data already held within an organisation, or readily available such as:

  • News / media coverage
  • Social media analytics (Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, LinkedIn Insights)
  • Google Analytics – data related to the college website
  • Google Trends – what can Google search patterns teach us about brand awareness, our ‘competitors’, what information students or their parents might be seeking out when searching for information about our establishment.

Marketing audits can answer these kinds of questions:

  • We are spending more on social media than ever before – can we demonstrate the impact that this investment is having?
  • Is our media coverage cutting through to our target audience?
  • Can we demonstrate our brand strength or weaknesses against other local educational establishments?
  • Are there seasonal differences in audience behaviour which could help to shape our marketing strategy?
  • We feel that our marketing isn’t translating to an uplift in recruitment but are not sure why – can you provide any insight on this?
  • We’re keen to appoint a new marketing agency and are unsure of what KPIs to give them to ensure we get good value for our investment; please can you help us to set these KPIs?
  • Our organisation has just merged with another. What kind of marketing metrics were we achieving pre-merger and how can we understand whether improvements are happening post-merger?

 

Please call Steph Bridgeman on 07907 180 900 or email stephbridgeman@gmail.com if you would like to find out more about this service.