How HE Marketers Can Drive Impact in Clearing Campaigns
The Clearing window has become a key area of focus for those working in higher education marketing, recruitment and admissions. Year on year, UCAS report growing numbers of applicants securing their university place through clearing. In August 2022, 53,000 applicants found their place through Clearing, representing an increase of 33% on the previous year and the largest number of applicants placed via Clearing in 10 years.
The headline is that we can expect this trend to continue, and Clearing to become a feasible option for all students. The 2021/22 edition of the National Clearing Survey noted an increasing number of mature applicants and deferrers, prospective students who have changed their mind, and school-leavers who have attained better-than-expected grades among those accessing university places via Clearing.
HE marketers must be agile and prepared to react and adapt to these trends and, as such, the Clearing window can present opportunities – and challenges – for professionals. You may be hoping to use the Clearing window to meet student recruitment regional or course recruitment targets. However, many other institutions are competing for students through Clearing. On top of this, students going through Clearing may be experiencing disappointment at not securing a space at their preferred institution, so engaging them can be difficult. You’ll need a clear and impactful campaign in order to stand out and reach the right students.
In this article, we outline actionable steps you can take to drive impact in your Clearing campaigns.
Play the Long Game with SEO, Web Content and Brand Consistency
While, on the surface, Clearing may seem like a short, intense period of offer-making, it shouldn’t be an addendum in your recruitment campaigns. The window itself is long, running from July to October, and, as the latest NCS suggests, not all students who secure a place through Clearing will do so on results days.
However, having a long-term, strategically planned campaign for Clearing will also be crucial for those applicants who are navigating clearing on results day. In the Clearing period, SEO is king as most prospective students will make calls during Clearing off the back of using a search engine to identify institutions.
To make sure you’re well placed to appear high on search engines ahead of results day, take the following steps to optimise for SEO:
Conduct thorough keyword research, selecting terms that align well with your recruitment targets (e.g., by region or course).
Put Clearing information on your website live in good time. Making this content live a week before results day won’t give the search engine sufficient time to crawl and index your page.
Link clearly to other useful resources, such as UCAS Clearing information or course information pages.
If updating the website is not the responsibility of your team but a different department, make sure those colleagues are aware of what is expected of them and when.
Starting early also has the added benefit of delivering an initial learning period for your campaign. Once your content is live and your dashboards are ready, you can track the effectiveness of your campaign and feed this into the approach you take on results day.
You might also consider creating some ‘evergreen’ content that will be useful for prospective students all year around. For example, Leeds Beckett University have a whole podcast episode dedicated to the topic of Clearing.
Overall, your Clearing campaign should be well aligned with your overall brand strategy. It’s likely that the applicant will have likely come across your institution in their original research. A sense of consistency and a gradually built brand awareness in this time of uncertainty for applicants will go a long way.
Plan Strategically According to Recruitment Targets
While Clearing can be a challenging period to navigate, it also presents the chance for admissions professionals to meet strategic goals. As with all recruitment campaigns, it’s crucial that your Clearing campaigns are well aligned with these targets.
Start by holding conversations with senior leadership to determine targets specific to Clearing. Too often, marketers may find themselves asking budget holders for more resource on results day to support their Clearing campaign; by the time the budget has been allocated, many applicants have already been placed.
To make sure you don’t miss that key window, communicate the true cost of advertising on results day to budget holders. This will help you stay well resourced, and competitive, on results day, so as not to miss out on potential students.
Here, you should also define what “success” looks like in your Clearing campaign. It’s unlikely that this will be clicks or impressions, so consider how you will measure this and communicate it to senior leadership. For example, a successful Clearing campaign might be measured by the number of phone enquiries received, the percentage of recruitment targets filled or the total number of conversions.
Your recruitment targets should also inform the specific marketing functions you opt for in your campaign. For example, if you are seeking to recruit students interested in a particular course, you might opt for programmatic remarketing, which allows you to tailor your approach according to the web pages the applicant has visited.
Collect Data, Analyse, and Adapt
Reporting will be a crucial tool for understanding how you can attract applicants throughout Clearing. You campaign should be informed by data and analysis from the previous cycle, and your upcoming campaigns can be used as an opportunity to collect insight for your next one.
Considering learning points from analysis of previous campaigns is the first step. Make sure you have a strategy in place to analyse data following a campaign, identifying trends and potential pitfalls.
You should also aim to perform a thorough audit of your tracking and reporting to identify any potential gaps. Having all of this data on one dashboard will be vital, as it will allow you to easily compare conversions by channel, thereby informing which channels you invest in most heavily.
The data you collect in Clearing can also be used to inform your recruitment campaigns across the board. Determining what didn’t land with students the first time, and what eventually does in Clearing, can help you to adapt future approaches to be better targeted, more robust and engaging.
Key questions you should consider when reviewing your Clearing data might include:
At what point in the campaign do we experience surges and/or decline in enquiries and traffic?
What might some of the reasoning be behind declines in traffic, and what kind of content or messaging might re-engage these prospective students?
Are there data points that we did not record last year that could useful for informing next year’s campaign?
Be Empathetic, Responsive, and Relatable
For those students seeking a place in Clearing because they didn’t their expected grades, it’s likely they will be feeling stressed and experiencing a loss of confidence. The aim of your Clearing campaign should be to rebuild that confidence and reassure them that they have still have a fulfilling university experience ahead of them at your institution. This will also have an added impact on student experience and satisfaction.
Ultimately, this comes down to two elements of your campaign: responsiveness and storytelling.
For example, a Clearing applicant who has missed out on a place at their first-choice university will be relieved to encounter a helpful member of staff who is able to provide them with clear and concise information. Make sure you have enough staff on hand to answer phone and social media enquiries (the latter being important, as students may be more comfortable sending you a DM than giving you a call). Reducing waiting times and transfers between platforms and staff, as well as delivering offers in good time, are key to ensuring the prospective student has a seamless and comforting Clearing experience.
The wording you use in your campaign can also have an impact. Hartpury University’s ‘Don’t worry, be Hartpury’ campaign emphasised the phrase, ‘There’s still time to study…’, which was incorporated into website copy, social media channels and dedicated email campaigns targeting students with specific subject interests.
Clearing applicants will also be keen to hear from students who have gone through the process before them. You can provide these first-hand accounts in social media content and blog posts (make sure to get the content up and optimised for SEO well in advance of results day). These accounts are most effective when they come from the ‘average’ student, rather than elected representative.
You also don’t need glossy, well-produced video content to bolster your Clearing campaign – low-budget, student-produced content such as vlogs can be equally, if not more, impactful.
Overall, your storytelling should seek to emphasise the applicant’s agency. A great example of an initiative that successful incorporates this is the University of Wolverhampton’s ‘Be Who You Want to Be’ campaign, which recasts clearing as an opportunity – rather than a challenge – and emphasises that applicants can still take action to have an exciting, fulfilling student experience.
Finally, making sure the staff who are on the receiving end of enquiry lines are also briefed on this messaging is crucial. When prospective Clearing students speak to the university, they should feel supported throughout the process. This means engaging in active listening, reducing waiting and transfer times as much as possible, and having access to information and guidance to answer questions. Consider aligning briefing and training for staff with the messaging of the marketing campaign, to ensure there is a smooth transition between marketing materials and students’ experience of the admissions process.
Clearing: A Challenge and an Opportunity
While Clearing can be a taxing period for admissions teams, as this article has outlined, there are number of actions you can take to both reduce pressure on the day and drive impact throughout the window.
Ultimately, the key is to make sure your Clearing campaign is strategically planned and consistent with your overall brand strategy. You can then use learnings from the campaign to inform future recruitment drives.
When planning your next Clearing campaign, here are some key questions you may consider:
How do you define ‘success’ in a Clearing campaign?
What unique attributes does your institution have that can be used to reassure prospective students that they are making a good choice?
How will recent campaigns inform your targets for this year’s efforts, and how can you distribute resources to ensure you meet them?
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