Online Marketing Case Study - Education Institute | MeDigit Solutions

Online Marketing Case Study

Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India

How an education institute created its online presence to

attract potential candidates and build strong network of

influencers?

Campaign Details

• Client: Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India, Ahmedabad

• Product: Programme in Development Studies, 2 years full time PGDM Course.

• Marketing Channels tapped: Social media, Banner ads, Education Portals, Blogs and mailers

Objective

• Break the clutter around MBA institutes and increase brand awareness

• Tap MBA / PGDM aspirants category and generate interest for PGDM Development Studies

• Build influential web presence and connect with brand evangelists

Target Group

Youth of age group 18-24 years, especially students aspiring for MBA / PGDM equivalent course.

Challenges• Upcoming & Existing B-Schools– Priorities of students are changing these days. With numerous options

available for Micro specializations, the prospective candidates are scattered. So even well established institutes with rich teaching pedagogies, excellent campus placements etc. find it difficult in securing applicants year after year. Moreover, the MBA fad is now declining and thus, the number of applicants is rolling off.

• Low Awareness about EDI– Despite its 30 years of excellence, various entrepreneurial activities, past

achievements and international recognition, EDI is not a top of mind recall for most MBA aspirants.

– Unclear Identity as an academic institution– While EDI offers PG management courses, there is lot of confusion in the minds

of academicians and development professionals on account of the name of the institute. EDI is easily misunderstood as an entrepreneurship institute.

What EDI wanted?• Increased brand awareness• Growth in traffic to its web site• Positioning as a forward thinking institute • Make the college accessible, personable and more attractive to

prospective students • To promote its lesser known course – PGDM-Development Studies • To educate the public in general about the field of Development Studies in

layman’s language so that its scope isn’t limited • But most of all ….To raise enrolment

Delivering Brand Prominence through

Brand Prominence

Email

Online Search

Content Seeding

Official Website

Influencer Marketing

Strong Social Media

Presence

Solution• Create a strong Social Media for the Digital Natives• Created a digital environment to stay in touch• Tied graduating class with the past classes• Devising and implementing a communication strategy that

encompasses communication via web, mobile, social media and involves the various stakeholders – students, faculty-staff, alumni

• Content generation tactic and frequency based on content category type, content objective & content channel. Content is optimized on content performance.

Key channels tapped• Facebook, twitter, MBA Education portals, Blog• A Facebook Page is a great place to post noteworthy

happenings around the school via status update that posts on the Page’s wall.

• Most of our TG is in the age group of 18-24 and are active Facebook users. We engaged them on the brand effectively.

• Making optimum use of Social Networks for propagating brand value

Facebook

• Celebrate works of our student.• Field trips• Experiential learning activities• Assemblies or school-wide celebrations• Recognition of individual students for excellence• From 0 likes to 9k has been a journey of reaching out

to the relevant TG and spreading awareness about the lesser known world of Development Studies.

Twitter• Research indicates that the students who used twitter for academic and

co-curricular discussions displayed significantly greater engagement and higher semester GPAs.

• We thus, started the twitter trend and connected with industry influencers and the students.

• Special promotions on Twitter, live tweeting during festivals, events and student field trips helped stake holders to stay connected with the institute.

• Twitter became an efficient medium for influencer reach out. Since Development Studies is a comparatively new and complex field, twitter helped this programme gain positive word of mouth from the fraternity.

Blog• Though the segment of Development Studies exists, it is in the

Arts & Humanity domain. To look at it from a Management perspective requires an image makeover. EDI took up the challenge and started a Blog called – Development Studies in India. Which has become a torchbearer of Development Studies in country by now.

• While blog promotes various initiatives from government, institute, various NGOs etc., it also talks about how Development Studies can become a lucrative career option.

Linkedin

• A linkedin Group called ‘Development Studies in India’ was established and relevant industry people were enrolled on to it.

• This group mainly focuses on discussing opportunities in Development sector. Large group of professionals have welcomed the initiative and buzzing discussions are proof of popularity of group.

Education Portals

• Strong presence on MBA / Education portals is ‘must have’ for an MBA institute.

• We tied up with various education portals – pagalguy.com, shiksha.com, minglebox.com, mbauniverse.com etc. to build strong presence on these portals.

• Continuous tap on ongoing conversations helped us gauge sentiments of MBA aspirants and estimate their demands.

• We continuously drove conversations on such forums to drive positive sentiments for EDI and drive interest towards Development Studies course.

Ad Campaigns

• A paid advertisement campaign was devised in order to increase reach and tap MBA aspirants user group.

• Platforms used: Education portals, MBA portals.

GrowthSite Traffic: DevelopmentStudies.in. Growing at 30% MoM

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GrowthSite Traffic (Development Studies page) – Comparison – Admission cycle 2013-14 Vs Admission cycle 2014-15

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Results

Continuous growth in admissions for Development Studies course:• Batch 1 (2012) – 8 Students• Batch 2 (2013) – 16 Students• Batch 3 (2014) – 19 Students• Batch 4 (2015) – 25 StudentsStrong online presence and word of mouth has triggered a positive wave for the brand. Every year, growing number of students have acknowledged influence of online mediums in their decision making process.

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