Background
Activate Learning comprises of three FE colleges, two technical colleges and a marketing consulting company providing secondary, further and higher education as well as apprenticeships, workforce training and business consultancy. Whilst these establishments are individually branded, Activate Learning had recently been launched as the overarching brand.
Challenge
The team wanted to carry out a more comprehensive perception testing survey to discover what people know and understand about Activate Learning and its offerings.
They wanted to take a snapshot across three geographical areas where their further education colleges are based – Reading, Oxford and Banbury. They were interested in what people know about them at a ‘college level’ and whether they have any understanding of the wider group.
The Marketing Team had developed a set of assumptions about the local population and their knowledge of the Colleges and the Group that they wanted to test.
In addition to geographical areas, the survey needed to cover all the target audiences:
- prospective 16-19 year olds
- parents of prospective learners
- prospective adult learners
Solution
We conducted a total of 1,100 surveys across the 4 locations where the Colleges had campuses with local residents aged between 16 and 55.
The respondents were asked both unprompted and prompted questions about education and training provision generally and the College/Group specifically. We included rating and ranking questions to identify key messages for marketing purposes and established a benchmark Net Promoter Score (NPS) with regards to likelihood to attend and/or refer the College and the Group.
Outcome
The Group Marketing Team are using the results as an input into their marketing strategy and planning and have a benchmark against which they will be undertaking a tracking survey every 1-2 years to assess the success of their marketing activities.