LSBF marketing campaign helps full-time workers choose education courses

London School of Business & Finance (LSBF) integrated marketing campaign helps perspective students gather and choose their courses more easily

Campaign name: Be who you want to be in business
Brand: London School of Business & Finance (LSBF)
Audience: Full-time employees / workers
Duration: 25/07/2013 to 22/10/2013
Channels: Mobile, print, outdoor, online and social media

Social Media Portal (SMP): Name of the organisation it is for?

London School of Business & Finance (LSBF): London School of Business & Finance (LSBF) and Twitter @LSBF

SMP: The official campaign name and why was it chosen?

LSBF: ?Be who you want to be in business.?

We chose this name to communicate that LSBF has a vast portfolio of executive education courses across numerous industries, study modes, and career levels ? allowing students to meet any number of career aspirations. They can be who they want to be in business with LSBF.

SMP: What was the start and end of the campaign?

LSBF: Start date 25/07/2013 and end date 22/10/2013

SMP: The target audiences of the campaign, who are you trying to reach and why?

LSBF: Our target audience for executive education programmes are primarily UK/EU residents who are currently employed full-time. We want to reach this audience to let them know they can fit relevant, industry-focused studies around their schedule, without interrupting their career.


SMP: Briefly, tell us about your campaign

LSBF: This campaign was created with the knowledge that prospective students had a difficult time navigating through our huge portfolio of over 200 executive education courses and finding relevant ones for them to meet specific career aspirations (industry, study mode, career level). We built the course selection tool (web-based mobile app) with feedback from our previous students and an excellent in-house creative team.

The campaign combines a useful tool with eye-catching visuals, which are also used for the advertising. We like that the tagline can be interpreted in more than one-way, which is the basis for the tongue-in-cheek artwork.



SMP: What are the goals of the campaign and why is it different?

LSBF: Our goals were to maximise engagement with our target audience by not only attracting their attention to our variety of advertisements, but by encouraging them to visit our mobile, web-based application / landing page and find out how they can become who they want to be in business.

The campaign is different than anything we?ve ever done before because we approached the campaign from another direction ? discovering what was missing in our student journey and introducing the missing link with a bang.

SMP: What are the channels, platforms and methods you?re using and why did you elect to use them?

LSBF: We are using outdoor, online, mobile, print and social media channels to engage with our audience. We specifically chose outdoor media because of the huge footfall traffic, with the majority within our target audience. We wanted to ensure our course selector was designed for mobile because the majority of prospective executive education students in the UK have smartphones, and they definitely have them while they are outdoors and engaging with this campaign. We want mobile users to engage with this campaign on as many platforms as possible, particularly social media.

Social media is a major component of our campaign because LSBF has a substantial presence on social media channels (connecting to over 470,000 students globally), giving us additional exposure, as well as letting our followers know that we have been listening to their feedback.


SMP: How and where are you using mobile advertising to reach your audiences ? and why did you decide using this channel in particular?

LSBF: All of the campaign?s outdoor media is completely focused on promoting our mobile-optimised course selector because we have a constantly increasing ratio of mobile traffic to the LSBF website in comparison to desktop traffic, with a 100% increase from 2012 to 2013. The smartphone usage in the UK is the highest in Europe, and we wanted to communicate with our target audience on a relevant platform.

SMP: Why is an integrated approach important for what you?re doing at LSBF (what channels are you finding to be most effective for these type of campaigns you are creating and why do you think this is)?

LSBF: The integrated approach to this campaign was extremely important to the success of this campaign because the higher education market in the UK is extremely competitive, with both private and public institutions vying for the same student population. We wanted to engage with prospective students, but had to stand out to do so. With online, social media, mobile, outdoor and print media ? we aimed to get noticed and show our audience that we have the courses they need.

SMP: How long did the app take to build and where can students (undergraduates and graduates) access it or download it?

LSBF: From concept to a working mobile application, the course selector took two weeks to complete (including a massive photo shoot, which included many students and LSBF employees). Students can access the web-based application at
http://www.lsbf.org.uk/you or https://isthisyou.lsbf.org.uk





No download needed ? as our course portfolio is growing regularly, we wanted to ensure it would always be up-to-date with new courses. However, once the mobile landing page has loaded you can browse all of the courses within all filters without Internet access ? giving you plenty to do during your tube journey.
   
SMP: What are you achieving (what are the results so far) and how many downloads has the app received?

LSBF: We?ve had thousands of students use the course selector so far. We?ve also had a huge uplift of both direct and organic traffic from UK users to the LSBF website during the first three weeks of the campaign, and the mobile traffic to the website has increased by 97% in comparison to the three weeks before the campaign.

SMP: What are you doing to measure the campaign and what measurement tools do you have in place to do this?

LSBF: We are using Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Google Analytics to measure and track campaign success and engagement. Our social media channels are also being closely monitored to track discussions about our campaign via our hashtag #isthisyou or otherwise.

This has definitely been our most talked about campaign to date!

SMP: What is the budget used for the campaign?

LSBF: We can?t share any specific information on the budgeting for this campaign, however ? what we can say is that our free campaign social media posts and activity for this campaign have generated almost a quarter of the traffic to the LSBF course selector!

SMP: How are you making the campaign social and how are you integrating activity into offline channels that you are using?

LSBF: We are using the #isthisyou hashtag across all offline media, as well as posting alternative ?filter combination? images from our social media accounts to pique interest in the campaign.



SMP: Are there any dedicated hash tags or social media profiles for the campaign?

LSBF: #isthisyou. This hashtag has been designed to encourage people to engage with the various filter combinations on our ads.

SMP: Is there anything else we should know, or is there anything in particular that you?d like to share about the campaign?

LSBF: We would like to give a special mention to the incredible student photographers from our partner institution London College of Contemporary Arts (LCCA) who donated their time and talent for our 10-hour campaign photo shoot ? Edward Robinson and Creston O?Raine Hamilton.

SMP: Best way to contact you and elements of your campaign?

LSBF replies with:

Facebook
Google+
LinkedIn
YouTube


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