Brief: Extensive marketing plan, PR coverage and proactive/reactive social media campaign to encourage student recruitment:

• Creation of impactful copy for a range of media outlets
• Complete social media management
• Liaising with local and national press to boost awareness.

Approach: Our 360° approach to the college’s marketing plan effectively raised awareness of this new University Technical College and drive effective student recruitment. We undertook research with each stakeholder group to give us clear insights into the motivating factors that would inspire young people to consider WMCUTC. Our Communitography™ model identified the best media contacts in the local region and our account management team built strong, ongoing media relationships. Our contacts at local newspapers garnered press coverage through traditional print channels, while online we orchestrated integrated Facebook and Twitter engagement campaigns, and developed the online e-newsletter, The Vocademic Voice. Parents and young people were most interested in students’ employability after their UTC experience, so we reflected this creatively, developing direct mail that replicated the job pages of a newspaper, showing the careers for which a WMCUTC graduate would be qualified.

Our in-house copywriter produced press releases on an ad hoc basis, which was particularly appreciated by WMCUTC who knew they could rely on us to turnaround requests same day if required. We also provided all content for the social media channels, increasing followers by 209% within three months. The WMCUTC website was recently refreshed, as we streamlined copy to aide its effectiveness as well as optimising it for SEO, all of which was uploaded to the website via a WordPress interface.

Key achievements:

• Consulted extensively with 1,441 people, giving us one of the most robust evidence platforms within the UTC movement and meaning that we were invited by the Baker Dearing Trust to present our plan as an exemplar case study to all new UTCs
• Established relationships with 75 teachers and arranged face-to-face meetings with 34 schools, Local Authorities and Local Enterprise Partnerships
• Engaged with the local community, establishing relationships with 45 local authority decision-makers and 77 community leaders with an involvement with young people
• Successful student recruitment of 153 highly engaged young people who attended an event and confirmed their interest in applying
• Gained 36 additional employer partners, 54 offers of work experience, 34 offers to deliver courses, 62 volunteers to mentor a student, 49 companies to provide students with job-related projects, 37 offers to provide talks at the UTC and 40 offers to help with course development – an unprecedented level of employer engagement.