Business Overview

Originally established as a pioneering medical school in 1834, Newcastle University is still pushing boundaries and helping shape the world we know today.
 
For example, there isn't a single computer game in the world that doesn't use lines of code that were made at Newcastle University. The New York Stock Exchange is run on its code, too.
 
There are 27,000 students and 6,500 directly employed staff, all operating on the tight-knit, city-centre campus. Alongside Newcastle United Football Club, Newcastle University is a vital force that breathes life into this post-industrial North Eastern city.
 
The University itself has a turnover of £500m+ and an economic impact of £1.1bn on the region each year.
 
But as the world has changed technologically and economically, so has the way universities recruit students. For the first time, historic universities, such as Newcastle, can't be selective in their admissions. They need to compete to attract students.

The Challenge

Historically, students have marketed themselves to universities, not the other way around.
 
More and more prospective students aren't taking what's on offer. They're choosing wisely and researching heavily.
 
Jude Browne, Director of Marketing, knew inbound marketing and HubSpot were the tools to keep Newcastle University ahead of the competition.

"It tells us whether the assumptions we've been making for a long time are actually correct. We can understand, 'if we do this, it will have that impact.'"

 

Avidly
Jude Browne
Director of Marketing, Newcastle University

However, she and her team had a four-fold challenge in front of them.

  1. Marketing for the first time from an inbound perspective
  2. Reaching students earlier in their buyer's journey than anyone else
  3. Be able to prove performance
  4. And have student information feed into multiple teams and systems

The Solution

Newcastle University needed to move quickly and at scale. So, we allocated plenty of resources for the first job, which the client appreciated.
 
We planned and delivered nine different marketing campaigns in one year, which were delivered using the HubSpot marketing platform. These were aimed mostly at international students.
 
We really tapped into the early stages of the buyer's journey for the first time.
 
We realised the first decision worth influencing was whether to study abroad and help with all the pain points associated with making that decision.
 
We did it through written blogs and downloadable content, videos for YouTube and paid social, organic social, email marketing and SEO.
 
We also set up HubSpot as the central point of the software stack to inform other tools and teams.
 
That meant results could be tracked and information passed along to other relevant teams. And there was plenty to pass on.
 

"We can now do things in this academic year that we could only dream of previously."

 

Avidly
Alaric Pritchard
Student Journey Programme Manager
Newcastle-University-headpic

The Results

  • The inbound marketing blog created for international students has grown organically from 0 to 17,733 views and counting
  • Premium content downloads enabled us to nurture 5,976 contacts. And this number continues to grow
  • This was thanks to combined efforts driving 67,498 landing page views on the dedicated international student website pages
  • The five videos we created for these campaigns generated 576,263 views and 4,126 clicks on Facebook
  • The video has also attracted 15,378 organic viewers through YouTube so far
  • We used HubSpot to help Newcastle's admission team better nurture 3,532 offline-sourced applicants

1320

marketing leads

815

sales qualified leads

2.25

million approximately generated in international student tuition fees

17700

internal student blog views and counting

5976

contacts generated through premium content downloads

67498

landing page views on the dedicated international student website pages

576263

views across five videos on Facebook

15378

Organic views through YouTube

3532

offline-sourced applicants nurtured through HubSpot
All of these numbers are exciting and, but Jude hired us to help bring in more international students.
 
After just one academic year of influence and plenty of time for the compounding effect on traffic of evergreen content to kick in, inbound marketing has created:
 
  • 1,320 marketing-qualified leads
  • 815 sales-qualified leads and 51 influenced applications
  • Which equates to circa £2.25m in international student tuition fees (the equivalent of sales)

"Avidly inherently understood that you are an extension of our team and an extension of us... it really helped us move forward."

 

Avidly
Jude Browne
Director of Marketing, Newcastle University