Career Coach Digital Marketing Best Practice Guide economicmodelling.co.uk/careercoach
Welcome to Career Coach! Career Coach is a web-based tool which tells young people how the education you provide will lead to sustainable careers that interest them. The tool is used by colleges across the UK to help engage with parents, prospective students, current students, and members of the community. Currently, more than 60 FE colleges utilise the tool in a variety of different ways -- marketing, IAG, recruiting, schools engagement, and website enhancement, to name a few. This guide will show you some innovative ways to make the most of Career Coach for digital marketing. We ll walk through what some other colleges have done with tool, and hopefully this will give you a few ideas. Tip # 1: Showcase Career Coach Prominently on Your Website Career Coach adds a unique element to your college s website, helping you highlight the careers you train for, and allowing visitors to find your curriculum in new, intuitive ways. To get the most out of the tool, it s important that you don t hide it away. Many of our most successful users make a point of linking to Career Coach prominently on their homepage:
City of Liverpool College has integrated our career search throughout their website. This has generated a huge amount of Career Coach usage (this is easy to implement ask your Client Services Manager for more details!) Bournville College has linked to Career Coach using a sliding banner image on their home-page. Tip # 2: Make it Clear A simple Career Coach button with no explanation does very little to promote good usage it s important to make your links to Career Coach explanative and clear. We ve found that the most effective links provide a basic, helpful explanation of what the tool does:
Barnet and Southgate College has created this Online careers advice button, which is displayed prominently on their homepage. This provides a helpful explanation of what Career Coach does, and has promoted lots of good usage. Tip # 3: Use Career Coach to Support Social Media Campaigns You can use the information in Career Coach to shout about careers in your area, or to showcase careers events at your college: New College Durham wrapped their own design around the data presented within Career Coach, and featured a number of careers on Twitter. During National Careers Week, Career Coach was used heavily at West Lancashire College they shouted about this on Twitter.
Tip # 4: Use the Career Coach API The Career Coach API allows you to tightly and dynamically embed careers information throughout your college s website. Ask your Customer Service Manager how you can make use of this feature! New College Durham: Using the Career Coach API, New College Durham has integrated careers information throughout their website. This includes a career search on every page......a related careers section on every course page......and careers pages, which link back to the relevant courses:
Many other colleges have developed (or are in the process of developing) a similar integration model. For more examples, or for information on how to take this approach, contact your Customer Service Manager. Career Widget: Using the API, Sunderland College has developed a widget which sits on their course pages, and features specific careers. Tip # 5: Link to your Internal and External Marketing Campaigns Many Colleges feature Career Coach in their marketing efforts for open days, student casestudies, their prospectuses, and much more: Sunderland College and Burton and South Derbyshire College each feature careers information from Career Coach prominently in their prospectuses.
Tip # 6: Monitor Usage of your Career Coach site Your Career Coach site provides helpful usage statistics, which give insight into how the tool is being used. We recommend monitoring these to identify which courses or careers are getting the most traffic, and where those visits are coming from. But wait, there s MORE! So far, we ve covered a few key ways that you can use Career Coach to support your digital marketing. However, the applications of Career Coach extend far beyond this. For more tips and best practice examples on implementing Career Coach, visit our new resources page. Tip # 7: Set Up Google Analytics To Monitor Website Visits From Career Coach Simon Connor of FEmarketing recommends using Google Analytics to track the actions your visitors take once they land on your College s website from Career Coach. According to Simon, Google Analytics is such a powerful tool to help you understand your website visitors and the career paths they are interested in. You can set up your Google Analytics to monitor: Clicks from your website to Career Coach Clicks from Career Coach to your website The Course pages they landed on... The time of day they used Career Coach
How many submitted an online application or online enquiry How many visitors accessed Career Coach via their mobile device How many visitors clicked on your Career Coach banner or link The course searches they undertook on your website Clicks from your social media campaigns promoting career options And much, much more In the example below we can see the Course Page visitors land on and how many successfully submitted an online application: Please contact Andy Durman, andyd@economicmodelling.co.uk, or visit economicmodeling.com/career-coach/new-resources-page/ for more information.