What we learnt from Clearing 2015

Clearing 2015

The last few days have been a hectic time for universities after A level results came out – there is a huge amount of planning, marketing, talking to potential students, making offers and operational administration that goes on in a very short period. The university sector should be congratulated on the achievement of placing a huge number of students (initial indications show an increase of over 3% on 2014’s comparative total student numbers).

Almost all UCAS universities use Clearing for some of their courses – including those with the highest entry requirements. The process of Clearing is a significant process to manage.  Last year, around 61,000 students found a university place through Clearing, according to UCAS – this equates to one in ten of all students placed at university or college through UCAS. Initial 2015 indications show an increase of 6% on 2014’s comparative student numbers placed through Clearing.

Universities have to plan their approach to Clearing in the same way that retailers plan a seasonal sale or a major product launch. The Clearing campaigns must be effective – at the end of the day, Universities are now competing for consumers in a limited time window – whilst also looking to positively influence parents, schools and colleges. By scanning the UK national newspapers and social media, you can tell that many universities are spending substantial amounts of money on advertising.

The amount of “marketing effort” that a university puts into its Clearing campaign will depend on the number of course vacancies that it is likely to have. This will depend on reputation and demand, as well as the “competitive intensity”. The past student intakes will be a reasonable indicator of how many students are likely to be placed through Clearing in the current year. This year, the lifting of student number controls in England, will have been an additional factor to throw into the planning.

Clearing formally ends on the 21st September. However, we recommend universities should have formally reviewed their 2015 Clearing campaigns by mid-September the majority of Clearing activity happens in the days after A results day.

Clearing – a strategic marketing view

We believe that the marketing spend for Clearing needs to be proportionate. Each university will have different objectives and student number targets, however, for some this could represent a significant opportunity to recruit students. Our view is that university best practice requires:

• A specific marketing strategy for Clearing with student number targets and agreed budget.
• Active sponsorship by a senior executive/VCE member.
• Detailed planning completed well in advance of A level results day i.e. all key dates are known, key target press publications can be easily identified, (e.g. The Daily Telegraph), key Twitter hashtags are known (e.g. #UCASClearing).
• Marketing tactics heavily weighted towards persuasive digital marketing and impactful social media to achieve good volumes of Clearing prospects. In the weeks prior to A level results day, there should be a mix of thought leadership, profile raising across the University and subject area/courses, and specific tactical Clearing messages across digital channels.
• A designed “end to end” Clearing experience e.g. the experience of ringing an admissions tutor to discuss their available Clearing spaces should be part of the marketing strategy, and hence needs to support a “branded” experience.

Clearing – a tactical marketing view  

The University website could be the “make or break” in attracting prospective students, and therefore requires appropriate investment for Clearing. Based on our analysis, our view is that university best practice requires:

• A dedicated web page on Clearing. This page should list the course available, but where possible should be full of “unique” content outlining the key benefits of studying at the university. On page content is closely tied to higher search engine rankings, therefore the page should contain at least 800 words and the term ‘Clearing 2015’ or ‘University Clearing’ should be present in the URL of the page (example.ac.uk/clearing2015), Title of the page, meta description, H1 tag (headline) and the image alt tag (the text description of an image).
• A focussed approach to social media. According to a survey performed by Zinch, 68% of students noted that they used social media to research educational institutions while 38% stated that they have used social media as a resource when deciding where to enrol, therefore the recently created page has to include a social view from the university’s current students. Nowadays simply placing links to a university’s social media profiles is not enough. By embedding a promotional YouTube video that showcases the campus or the courses offered, featuring the latest updates from the university’s social team on Facebook or inviting prospective students that want to get in touch to tweet a question to the university’s Twitter account with the hashtag #clearing (when this term goes viral on Twitter the university’s account will be constantly featured attracting millions of views) traffic levels will increase incrementally compared to a discreet conversation between two people through email or phone. The ‘younger’ the social media platforms the better so don’t refrain from also including pictures from the University’s Instagram or Pinterest account.
• A planned approach to conversion. The page should consist of a clean and simple template including pictures and videos of the university campus and current students and the university’s USPs (unique selling points) should also be included. These may include awards won in recent times, worldwide recognition, high rankings, employment rate, possibility of online education or even a selection of very specific courses that most other universities don’t offer. Included in the “above the fold” section of the page, there are three things that need to be made very prominent and strikingly distinct:

1. View & Apply Clearing Vacancy courses list
2. Contact Phone Number or Contact Email address
3. Twitter Handle or Social Media Account used for Q&A.

These three points should be the main areas of the page where every visitor will have no other option but to notice these calls to action. The font should be bigger than the rest of the content and in a colour that entices the user to click, preferentially a light blue or green.

Additionally the page should be optimised for mobile and the page should load quickly, taking less than five seconds to load. Ultimately a sitewide button to this page with the anchor text ‘Clearing 2015’ should be prominent so that every single visitor to the university site can see the button even if they entered the site through a blog post or FAQ page.

• A cross channel marketing strategy. The final step is marketing promotion with a cross channel marketing strategy including a paid social media campaign utilising Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest and an AdWords campaign targeting Google key phrases around ‘Clearing’. Every August, as you would expect, ‘Clearing’ generates around 40500 exact searches on Google alone, up from 3600 searches in the previous month. To round off the marketing efforts, some content outreach should be performed in order to gain authoritative backlinks to the recently created page and increase organic search positions on Google and Bing.

Conclusions

Clearing is a very important process for universities, and needs to be appropriately resourced and funded from a marketing perspective.

Strategically, our view is that university best practice requires a specific Clearing marketing strategy that is actively sponsored by a senior executive/VCE member.  The marketing tactics should be heavily weighted towards digital marketing and social media being part of a designed “end to end” Clearing experience.

Tactically, a planned and dedicated Clearing web presence is a critical requirement covering the end to end Clearing journey. Organic search is an area that the majority of universities have the potential to excel in from the vast pool of authoritative backlinks that are already in place, however unfortunately it is overlooked in most cases. Social media tends to receive a similar treatment from many universities yet when you consider that search engines and social are nowadays the main drivers of student enrolments more effort needs to be invested in these channels. Going forward a mobile optimized website is another vital necessity as mobile user traffic already surpasses desktop traffic in certain territories and with an increasingly higher number of students owning a smartphone this is definitely an area that universities need to pay attention to.

Our strong recommendation is that this year’s Clearing campaigns need to be reviewed by mid-September and the learnings fed into the 2016 planning cycle.

If you would like further information on best practice Clearing strategies, or an external review of your 2015 Clearing performance please contact us.

Co-authored by Lal Tawney & Aires Loutsaris

[email protected]

Way10 Management Consultancy

Way10.co.uk