A tertiary education institute in Scotland wanted to increase their brand presence in the Middle East – Specifically the UAE. They wanted to create interest around their undergraduate, postgraduate and online programs for foreign student enrolment.
The campaign aimed to attract students from the Middle East to study in Scotland.
Aims of the campaign:
- Raise brand awareness of the University with prospective students in Saudi Arabia
- Share positive messages about the University and engaging content
- Generate leads
[Strategy/Approach]
With 3 main verticals of study to cover, we approached the campaign holistically, with the intention to gain traction for each specific area of study as each target audience would differ slightly. The intent was to narrow down on the area of study that showed the highest performance in order to generate as much quality leads for the University.
- ONLINE COURSES
- UNDERGRADUATE STUDIES
- POSTGRADUATE DEGREES
Language barriers | Creatives | Landing pages
In order to create interest in the Middle Eastern market, we made sure that each separate creative had both English and Arabic counterparts in which we took charge of on what would work best in terms of creative for the market’s unique nuances.
[Implementation]
Phased approach:
Phase one was used to garner data around which formats and language saw the best response in line with the main objectives.
Phase two saw us narrowing the audience and changing the objective from awareness to lead generation using the data received from phase one. The rationale was to utilize the remaining budget on the best performing creatives in phase 1, along with the introduction of Lead Form ads to bridge the gap between users clicking but not converting on the landing pages. We also changed the copy to entice further click throughs for successful form fills.
Brand awareness: Phase one is the awareness phase to collect data and understand the behaviour of the audiences engaging.
Concurrent: Begin consideration and performance campaigns whilst running brand awareness across the country
Performance: Phase two is the consideration and performance phase to re-target those audiences to generate clicks and enrolment forms.
Media Channels:
Programmatics: Various programmatic formats were used to create a constant stream of brand awareness across highly targeted websites. The formats used were:
- Native
- Standard
- Video
Social Media:
Facebook and Instagram were used to reach the target audience through a range of formats and intent. Each ad set had one English and One Arabic counterpart. The target audience focused geographically (UAE) with an interest in studying. Each ad set had a unique custom audience focusing on specifically Online, Undergraduate and Postgraduate studies.
Phase 1: Reach build campaign carousel ad set with each vertical as a separate card. Unique landing pages per vertical with different messaging and CTA’s.
Objective: Brand awareness
Phase 2.1: Click based campaign with 3 ad sets for each vertical- clicking through to each individual landing page
Objective: CTR
Phase 2.2: Lead forms campaign for each vertical