Transforming audience research into actionable comms strategies for Newcastle University Careers Service
The challenge:
Newcastle University's Careers Service recognised that while they collected data on student engagement with career planning and employability services, they were not effectively using this information to enhance communication or fully understand student needs.
There were identified gaps in their comprehension of how students interact with their services and the Careers Service were keen to understand and visualise where and how their offering to students could be improved and enhanced.
What we delivered:
We worked closely with the Careers Service to enhance their understanding and strategic communication through stakeholder engagement, data review, and new primary research including surveys, interviews, and focus groups.
This comprehensive approach led to creation of a a series of profiles of postgraduate and undergraduate students at the university based on they engaged (or did not engage) with the Careers Service and other employability offerings. Our profiles were designed to show how students varied in their desire for employability information at different times during their university lives, who they might seek advice from, and what challenges and barriers they were encountering along the way.
These profiles then informed the development of a new marketing strategy for the Careers Service, which included plans for:
segmenting and prioritising student types
messaging aimed at encouraging engagement
a content and communications audit ahead of a website redevelopment
These profiles informed a new marketing strategy that included segmenting student types, targeted messaging, and a content audit for website redevelopment.
The insights gained also justified the inclusion of the Careers Service in the university's upcoming website development and supported the hiring of a full-time data analyst to continually assess and adapt to changing student profiles and needs.
Do you have valuable research but don’t know how to make it useful to you?
If you’d like to find out more about how we can help to transform audience insights into actions, drop us a line, we’d love to hear from you.
