Posted: Friday, 4th May 2012
THE University is launching it’s largest-ever advertising campaign to attract postgraduate students. The ambitious campaign based around the concept ‘An Investment in your Future’ starts online this week and runs for 6-12 weeks across a range of media.
The postgraduate and professional markets are key growth areas for the University - currently around 30% of our students are PG or Professional, and the University aims to grow numbers by 50% by 2017. ‘An Investment in your Future’ – understood to be the largest advertising campaign by a North West university in 2012 – underlines MMU’s:
It also promotes the high quality of our ‘networked’ teaching staff many of whom have industry experience and our 70-plus professional accreditations.
Gary Hughes, director of Marketing Communications and Development explained that the campaign is aiming to capitalise on market analysis with target audiences, pricing, and applicant behaviour undertaken in conjunction with colleagues in Recruitment and Admissions.
“There is a high level of ‘window shopping’ in our postgraduate offering with an average of 40,000 course views each month, but we need to transform this interest into applications and enrolments. This campaign is tailored to do exactly that and will support faculty and central postgraduate work to drive awareness, interest and conversion.”
Google, LinkedIn and Facebook...
The campaign starts this week on Google, Facebook and LinkedIn before moving outdoors from 15th May onto dozens of large poster sites, bus and taxi sides and hoardings at locations across Manchester and Crewe.
The advertising channels prospective students to a new postgraduate homepage on our website - www.mmu.ac.uk/postgrad. This has been fully updated by teams from Marketing Communications and Development and Recruitment and Admissions to sell the benefits of postgraduate study at MMU. Much praise is due to Derren Wilson from the new media team for creating this in a very short timeframe.
The creative design was produced from the award-winning agency The Chase, who produced the 2013 undergraduate prospectus, and the media buying was provided Carat, a leading Media Agency.
Response mechanisms are already in place and additional activities –events, online chat and the PG Fairs on May 16 – are added to the overall package to aid conversion into enrolments.
The campaign’s impact will be measurable via course-by-course web analytics, applications and enrolments. We will provide further updates as the campaign develops.