Helping Bishop Grosseteste University Recruit More Students

Before starting Web Marketer I consulted for some advertising agencies. From small independents to global names. My goal was simple: take their university advertising campaigns to the next level.

I wrote strategies and ran hundreds of campaigns. They focused on: undergraduate student recruitment; postgraduate student recruitment; international student recruitment; and promoting open day events.

I say ran campaigns, but we actually built ‘applicant engines’ using cutting edge digital marketing thinking. And we always got great results.

The clients loved working with me and respected my work because I made myself accountable.

I didn’t care about vanity metrics like impressions and clicks. I focused on prospectus leads, inbound clearing calls, open day registrations, and enquiries. The things that say “this student is far more likely to apply now”.

Bishop Grosseteste University (BGU) was one of these former clients.

A challenger university with some clever challenger university marketing dynamics. If they could get more leads, they were confident to take it from there.

Case Study

Just over six months after starting Web Marketer, Bishop Grosseteste University asked us if we had any ideas that would work for marketing universities.

We looked at their Google Analytics data, tested a strategy and projected a rise in the number of monthly leads. The client was excited to get cracking.

30 days later and the results spoke for themselves:

• 11% rise in open day registrations
• 101% rise in prospectus orders
• 35% rise in website conversion rate
• Delivered results 72% higher than early projections

Open Day 

Open Day Registrations: 11%

Prospectus Orders: 101%

Website Conversion Rate: 35%

Expected Results: 72%

BGU’s marketing director was thrilled. “Web Marketer has enabled us to cut through the barriers faced by users on our customer journey and the results speak for themselves.

“Getting better value from our advertising spend is important and knowing that our website is doing the job effectively is key to our future planning.

“We’re confident to try new website acquisition strategies, safe in the knowledge that the spend is driving us to recruit more students.

Jonathan Batty,
Director of Marketing, Recruitment and Communications
Bishop Grosseteste University

Let’s sketch this out below (these figures are estimates).

If…

• A student’s average lifetime value is £27,000 to your university
• 1,500 open day registrations via the website each year
• A show-up rate of 60%
• An open day visit to enrollment conversion rate of 30%

An 11% rise in open day registrations means an extra £800k+ in your pipeline of applicants. All from existing website traffic. This means growing revenue by making more of the existing opportunities.

I’d encourage you do this equation yourself with your own numbers. You can even use the calculator we built specifically to do this.

You’ve seen the kind of results you could get. Want to know how to do it? Find out in the final section.