From Bookmarks to Buses Dave Wakefield Customer Services Manager (Southern Region) Marketing Your College Using Career Coach

Career Coach More Than Just a Careers Tool Dave Wakefield Customer Services Manager (Southern Region) With its LMI on occupations, salaries and transferrable skills Career Coach is clearly a great tool for use in Careers Guidance. But it is also a powerful marketing tool. Our aim is to help you make the most of it not just as a tool for careers advice, but also as a marketing tool.

Marketing? How So? Dave Wakefield Customer Services Manager (Southern Region) According to a recent AoC survey, young people want careers advice to include more relevant local information. With Career Coach you can give them this, but more than that, you can point them to your college. The great marketing potential in Career Coach chiefly lies chiefly in the links to your courses. This gives you good opportunities to promote your courses to potential learners, especially school leavers.

Ideas: From the Basic to the Elaborate Dave Wakefield Customer Services Manager (Southern Region) There are a variety of ways in which Career Coach can be used to promote the college. Some of these are basic and require almost no budget. Others are more elaborate and require large budgets. Our purpose is not to overwhelm you, but simply to get you thinking about how you can maximise the potential of the tool.

The Basic Dave Wakefield Customer Services Manager (Southern Region) We recently added a Career Coach Marketing Resource Page to our website, and it includes some simple and cheap ways of marketing your college through Career Coach. Includes prospective marketing materials which you can download and customise. Also includes Web marketing tools such as Web Buttons, APIs and a Twitter Feed.

Bookmarks Dave Wakefield Customer Services Manager (Southern Region)

The Intermediate Middlesbrough College bought Career Coach in They made it freely available on their website and embedded it into the course search facility. The College also had Blackboard Learn – a comprehensive virtual learning environment for teaching and learning. Since the two tools are both helpful tools for both colleges and learners, the College decided to put them both together. Dave Wakefield Customer Services Manager (Southern Region)

Mbro Mobile Key labour market data offered through Career Coach Holistic learning environment through Blackboard Learn Access to university news, course information, maps, event info. Can access anytime they like and anywhere they happen to be. Dave Wakefield Customer Services Manager (Southern Region)

The Elaborate Southampton Solent University bought Career Coach in They wanted to promote it heavily to their region. Their solution was unique: they hired a single-decker bus – the Career Coach – and equipped it with state-of- the-art software, monitors and work stations. The aim was to bring advisors to schools, colleges, public areas, events and even military camps. Dave Wakefield Customer Services Manager (Southern Region)

Buses The Career Coach has travelled more than 4,000 miles. Has been at over 110 separate events. Public Events (Southampton Boat Show, Event at the O 2 in London). Outreach /School Engagement. This mobile solution has allowed people in areas with little contact with universities to discover course and career options. Dave Wakefield Customer Services Manager (Southern Region)

Some Final Ideas Greenwich Community College embedded a Career Coach ‘widget’ on each course page so that visitors can see their progression routes into employment once they have completed their course. This has enabled over 5,000 current and prospective students to map the courses they are studying or applying for to their career goals. Also embedded Career Coach into internal and external communications, such as aspirational case studies in the college, along with print and social media. Dave Wakefield Customer Services Manager (Southern Region)

Some Final Ideas Lakes College hosted a Youth Event in collaboration with Job Centre Plus. All advisers were equipped with iPads with access to Career Coach so that they could deliver “on the fly” information advice and guidance. The immediate feedback from the unemployed young people in attendance was extremely positive, in particular the link between courses and careers. The day resulted in a record number of applications to the College for an event of this type. Dave Wakefield Customer Services Manager (Southern Region)

Do Something Dave Wakefield Customer Services Manager (Southern Region) You don’t have to hire a bus to promote your college through Career Coach. Simple promotional materials in schools, for instance, will draw people to your college. Decide who you want to reach and, within your budget limits, think about how you can get Career Coach in front of them and them in front of Career Coach. Whatever you do – whether Basic or Elaborate – do something.