Digital Marketing Strategy: Individual Assignment

Overview of task:
Students are required to build on the acquisition plans made within their group reports
and derive individual digital marketing proposals for the conversion of the 40,000
leads/registrations generated to enable the company to deliver its overall goals. Students
must consider both the message strategy and media issues along with legal, data and
ethical considerations within their recommendations. The work must be formulated into a
high quality business report/proposal of c2000 words. Coursework deadline: Week 15
(you may submit earlier if you wish to!)

Introduction
A short summary introduction with highlights from the acquisition proposals
leading into details of the retention/conversion objectives, issues and
proposed strategy

10

Retention Proposals
Implementational digital marketing retention plan including itemised budget
breakdown (100,000).This may include proposals for delivery of web and
customer database strategies

50

Measurement and evaluation

Identification of key metrics together with plans for monitoring and analysis

20

Presentation
Professional presentation in the style of a business report inc. Referencing

20

Overall comment

100

IDM BRIEF
Background
The Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) is the government
body tasked with recruiting and developing teachers for schools in England
and Wales. Reporting to the Department of Education, it has an ongoing
requirement to help recruit up to 40,000 new teachers every year. Their
website address is www.tda.gov.uk
The TDA aims to support those considering teaching along every step of the
process towards becoming a teacher, outlined below:

You need to be Eligible to continue to Application stage (i.e. have at least a

2.2 at degree level). With so many careers on offer to those graduating from
university, the TDAs first role is to make sure that a career as a teacher is
part of their career consideration set.
Previously teaching has sometimes been seen as a fall back option for
graduates and something people fall into without necessarily really wanting
to. The TDAs aim is to instead have teaching viewed as a first choice career
for top graduates, and for teaching to be viewed in the same professional
light as other careers they may be considering such as Management
Consultancy or Marketing or more technical roles such as a Research
Scientist.
The TDA is looking to recruit quality teachers who are currently high-fliers
with the academic ability and necessary soft skills (e.g. communication
skills) to meet the challenge of being an excellent teacher. In particular it is
looking to recruit more Maths and Science graduates as there is currently a
teacher shortage in these subject areas.
Product
Teaching. The TDAs task is to persuade students that teaching is the right
career for them. This will involve prompting a slight re-appraisal about what

teaching is like. In particular teaching has been seen either as a bit of a soft
option or as a stressful job which can end up being simply glorified
babysitting. What we need to show people is that teaching is in fact an
extremely challenging career, but a fantastically rewarding one if you are up
to the job.
Its been proven that teachers are the single biggest influence on a pupils
achievements, and the challenge as a teacher is to inspire ordinary children
to achieve extraordinary things. Not everyone is able to do this, but if youre
good enough you can really make a difference as a teacher, its a career
where those who are driven can definitely make their mark. And if you are up
to this challenge its one of the most fulfilling, rewarding careers you can
have.
Additionally, a barrier for many students is the poor perception they have
around teaching salaries and the lack of progression they see in the job. In
fact you start on a really competitive salary and teachers are constantly
training and moving up levels, with pay rises to match. You may therefore
want to include some of the following finance-related messages:
Start on 21k in England and Wales (26k Inner London)
Earn up to 43k by the time youre 30.
Earn up to 60k as an Advanced skills Teacher
Earn up to 109k as a Head Teacher within 10 years in London
You could receive a tax-free bursary of up to 9k to train
Applications for teacher training programmes are handled by GTTR
(www.gttr.ac.uk). In 2009/10 the number of student enquirers was 40,000
from a total of 115,000 enquirers which resulted in 26,700 applications. TDA
were responsible for generating about 50% of the applications which were
processed by GTTR.
Target Audience:
High-fliers students predicted to get a 2.1 or above in their penultimate or
final year. Were not talking about those students who literally spend all of
their time barricaded in the library with only their books for company. Were
talking about the really bright ones in your year who really stand out who are
ambitious and fired up by the idea of taking on new challenges where they can
really make a difference and make their mark. Theyre probably already thinking
about careers and starting to make plans for what theyre going to do when
they leave university.
They think they know teaching, after all they were at school not that long ago,
and probably arent currently considering it. When they think of ambitious
careers for professional people teaching doesnt spring to mind its a soft
option for saints who spend their time dealing with poor discipline and dont
actually achieve anything in life.

Current Activity
Currently the TDA runs a general above the line campaign (press, outdoor, TV
etc) as well as events and a DM programme. Specifically for students it has

produced some outdoor advertising around university campuses and has an

online presence on student websites such as Milk round, Prospects and Student
Beans as well as Facebook and You Tube pages.
Examples of previous TDA student activity can be found at
www.tdanewadvertising.com and other activity with students on the following
links:

Milkround- Profile:
http://www.milkround.com/employers/employerprofile.aspx?
employerid=803&admin=1 Job: and
http://www.milkround.com/jobs/graduate-job.aspx?
isPreview=1&jobid=361171
Prospects- http://www.prospects.ac.uk/life_as_a_teacher.htm.
Student Rooms http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/wiki/Become_a_teacher
NUS online http://www.nus.org.uk/teach

Task and objectives

You are tasked with creating a 12 month student-specific communications plan
which will generate 12, 000 applications from eligible students. (There is an
over-arching plan ongoing for the general public, which will be seen by students,
your task is a student specific campaign). There are lots of stages at which to
contact people who have a degree or are planning to do a degree but the focus
for this brief should be on those students who are currently on a degree course
or who have graduated in the last two years.
In 2009/10 the GTTR (graduate teacher training registry processed 54,700
applications for post graduate teacher training courses. 26,700 of these were
from students. Currently 26% of students who make an enquiry do so make an
application in the same year of enquiry. TDA wants to increase this conversion
to 30%. This will involve a two stage process firstly registering
interest and secondly to convert that interest to application.

1. Register interest: Objective:

Encourage consideration of secondary school teaching as a career and

get 40,000 eligible students (2:1 or above) to register online at
tda.gov.uk for more information.
Task: Create an innovative 12 month communications plan and (if
appropriate) media schedule considering both on and offline channels.
Budget 500k for stage 1.

Enquiry stage considerations:

Target high-fliers who may not previously have considered teaching,
especially science and maths students
Encourage a re-appraisal of teaching as a career and get them to add
it to their consideration set
Prompt them to register on the TDA website to receive more
information about becoming a teacher

2. Apply: Objective

30% conversion of the 40,000 people who enquired from stage

1 (within the year) 12,000 applications.
Task: Create a communications plan with innovative creative
ideas to demonstrate how you will convert the 12,000
students. Again you should consider online and offline
channels.
100k budget for stage 2

Application stage considerations:

Different messages would be deployed at different points
along that persons journey to becoming a teacher (i.e. a
different message for someone who has just enquired, to
someone who enquired 6 months ago but still hasnt applied).
Encourage people to take the next step in the process to
becoming a teacher and apply for teacher training.
Fuel their enthusiasm for teaching and the subject they want
to teach.
Overcome any barriers they may have.
Prompt them to take the next step in applying and nudge
them along in the process.
Decide how to use the data gathered in the first stage from
registration in the most effective way e.g. how would you
segment it by subject, by year at university?