The Client

Ahead of the 2019/2020 academic year, we teamed up with Hartpury University and Hartpury College on a clearing campaign designed to attract undergraduates to five key areas of study.

The campaign aimed to showcase the vast array of facilities the University and College offer students, including the world’s largest equine educational facility, which hosts three international equine events a year. Included in the facility is a water treadmill and a Racewood event simulator, and a Tech Centre with the latest agricultural technology.

This, alongside a range of other cutting-edge sports facilities, including a power gym, pitches and a stadium, and Hartpury’s extensive animal collection, animal therapy centre and commercial farm, makes the University and College one of the UK’s leading specialist education providers in agriculture, animal, equine, sport and veterinary nursing.

The Brief

Hartpury came to us with a clearing goal in mind. The University and College wanted to generate interest from undergraduates located within a two-hour radius of their campus, in their five target courses – animal, equine, sport, veterinary nursing & agriculture – with a total target of 80 applications.

The Solution

Putting our digital marketing heads together, we decided that the best approach would be to create a campaign with the message ‘Do what you love’ that utilised a mix of subject-level ads across a variety of paid search and social channels, including Google Ads and Display, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and, for the first time, Snapchat.

We then split the creative into different messaging types:

  • The direct one – straight to the point, this ad type focused on promoting specific Hartpury clearing courses and subjects
  • The supportive one – this ad offered information and support
  • The specialist one – this was our opportunity to promote the unique facilities and specialisms Hartpury offers its students
  • The timely one – we used a ‘time is running out’ message on this ad and scheduled towards the end of the campaign to highlight the need to take action before all available places were gone.

Throughout the project, we held weekly update calls with the Hartpury team to make sure we were on top of all ad performance and to identify any opportunities for amendments, which would help us to maximise the effectiveness of the campaign.

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