Growing brand awareness and driving enquiries for a respected tertiary institution
Stirling College, Australia
Stirling College, Australia
Stirling College, a Christian educational institution located in Melbourne, Australia, offers undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in counselling and theology. Initially tasked to perform an enrolment campaign to boost student numbers for the coming year, Stirling was so happy with The Walk’s work we were asked to support the college in a broader context.
The world of tertiary education has become increasingly competitive in recent times, especially considering the rise in remote learning options. Our challenge was to help the school achieve its growth targets, but there was a limited budget, and we needed to make it happen within a set timeframe.
The Walk began by optimising the school’s website, followed by work on its course collateral. We started to look for ways in which to speak to a wider audience, and how we could find students beyond the marketing that had previously been performed. We then shifted to building relationships and a face-to-face focus. Next, we got to work on student engagement, with the aim of creating brand ambassadors – people who could tell others about the college.
We created a 12-month strategy based on the school’s marketing budget, with the objective being to continue driving student enrolments while raising brand awareness. As marketing for educational institutions is seasonal in nature, our strategy involved quarterly sprints, each taking a unique approach.
Our work on course collateral resulted in a piece of high-quality printed marketing material the college could use off-line, while the new email template made use of a high-performing medium that consistently delivers conversions – in this case, enquiries, and enrolments. Stirling College subsequently discovered having a strong communication game via a strategic use of email had a genuine impact on both current and prospective students. Our team educated the school by delivering its initial emails, instructing them on how to work with the template we’d provided. We’re now continuing to drive awareness through search, display, and social content, and plan on moving into several event-based activities to help the brand come to life across more off-line channels.