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Henley Business School – The Career Workout

Wouldn’t have been possible without the HL team. Great teamwork.

Chris Rice

Head of Recruitment Marketing

During 2021, prospective PG and MBA students were understandably uncertain about what the future may look like.  Henley’s recruitment figures were down, and they were unable to attend recruitment fairs, or invite students to the impressive Greenlands campus.

This, together with other pressures such as home-schooling children, job insecurity and lack of motivation, left many feeling unable to take the next big step professionally.

Hunterlodge researched three core areas to inform our strategy, each of which uncovered fascinating insights.

Research areas:

  • Current employment landscape
  • Career sentiment
  • What (if any) action are people taking?

 

The research pointed to how events in 2020 had pulled careers into sharp focus, with many looking to shake things up. A large proportion of these sought out a sense of meaning and purpose, while some lacked confidence and experienced more unhappiness in their careers.

From our research, we were able to identify three distinct career strategies emerging:

  1. Double-Down
  2. Pivot
  3. Reboot

The Strategy:

With such a complex landscape of economic uncertainty, coupled with shifting personal priorities, we knew that our content strategy was key to solving this problem.

Content vision:

To encourage audiences to see postgraduate education as key to career progression and Henley Business School as the place to do it.

Content mission:

“To drive audience to a rich, valuable content destination that helps them crystalise their own career strategy while positioning Henley Business School as a leader in the field and making a PG/MBA course integral to their next steps”

Career Workout:

The concept for our content destination was Career Workout’ – A self-coaching session to help get people ready for their next move.

By answering 10 questions in under 10 minutes, individuals received a score that reflected their suitability for each of three career strategies.  An engaging email and results page provided tips on how to fulfil that strategy, inspiring examples from alumni that have already taken that path, and an invitation to view relevant courses that might help them pursue their next career move.

 

Over a four-month period, the Career Workout was supported by a paid advertising campaign aimed at raising awareness of the content page to drive engagement. The advertising messaging was entirely led by the content strategy.

 

The Destination:

The Career Workout landing page was the hub of this campaign.  It was a hugely engaging concept, and as mentioned above, helped participants get the direction they needed in just 10 minutes.

The Webinar:

When participants visited the Career Workout and received their results, taking on board the tips, they were also invited to attend a webinar focussed on Alumni who had chosen to Doubled-down, Pivot or Reboot their careers.

 

The Impact:

Driving engagement and participation:

In total, almost 30,000 people started the Career Workout during the campaign period, resulting in over 17,800 completions. 3,200 of which were directly attributed to the paid advertising activity – an incredible level of participation from the target audience.

Additionally, the webinar attracted 123 registrations and 82 participants

Driving and capturing interest sustainably:

Critically, of those taking part, many specifically expressed interest in Henley’s MBA and PG programmes, with over 2,900 expressing interest in MBA, and over 4,200 expressing interest in PG.  Data was captured via the registration process for the Career Workout.

Delivering leads:

Almost 1800 people indicated they were also happy to be contacted by the recruitment team in those all-important 1-2-1 conversations.

The webinar was also promoted in social media using the inspirational stories of Henley alumni who had taken each of the three paths to further their careers.

To discuss how we can help deliver an engaging full funnel campaign that’ll make the most of the resources you have at your disposal, then please get in touch with nick.friend@hunterlodge.co.uk

 

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