By Jack Smith, Assistant Head, Strategic Marketing, Marketing Campaigns, Loughborough University

Despite the existential challenges institutions face in today’s global HE market, ‘brand’ remains something of a dirty word.

Marketing higher education more like a product than a privilege, meeting and responding to our diverse and savvy target audiences on their terms and not ours, is a tough adjustment. The marketing functions of academic institutions haven’t really been set up to speak with one clear, resonant voice. Our campaigns can feel very presentational, while we struggle to show our audiences what’s in it for them. We are perhaps (arguably) the world’s OG data-driven organisations, at least at the fundamental level, but we struggle to translate that into effective strategic leadership, frequently getting bogged down in the details.

To build an effective brand, you have to be consistent, confident and coherent.

Since joining Loughborough University in November 2023, I’ve been fortunate to get the chance to be part of a project to turn a top-ranked UK institution into a genuinely global brand through highly strategic, audience-centric campaigns.

We’ve made progress, though we’re far from the end of our journey, but we’ve picked up some learnings on the way. One thing I appreciate about our sector – we all like to share – so I hope this blog is useful.

Lesson 1: No strategy? No brand.

When I got started in marketing and PR back in 2009, I sneered at strategy. I saw it as the enemy of agility and creativity. Back-and-forth over audience segmentation, channel strategy and content optimisation made me yawn. ‘We know our customers,’ I used to think. ‘We just need to give them what they want.’

Of course, I learned first-hand the pitfalls of flying by the seat of your pants, of failing to consult effectively, obtain senior buy-in and map out objectives, audiences, channels and KPIs before launching the delivery phase of a campaign. I’d emerge from a trade show or online content drive, glowing and proud, then be faced with an Ambassador or Trade Commissioner who’d ask: ‘Yes, but did you move the needle?’ I learned the hard way that, unless you can demonstrate making a measurable difference to core business, you and your team will never be given your due.

When I arrived at Loughborough University, I was delighted to find that not only had my institution spelled out its key strategic objectives in plain English, but it had structured its senior leadership’s KPIs around them, and even highlighted thematic areas of focus for activity across the University.

This had three colossal advantages:

  • Marketeers have clear sight of core business objectives, and so could prioritise accordingly

  • Marketing activity aligned with these objectives is almost guaranteed senior endorsement and even active participation

  • We have thematic areas of focus to develop into effective proof points to inform our content

Ask yourself – ‘Do I have all these things at my institution?’

A good campaign strategy has clearly-defined objectives, deliverables, and evaluation metrics. A great campaign strategy aligns to a great brand strategy aligned to a great marketing strategy that in turn aligns to a great institutional strategy – with a clear thread that links core business objectives right the way down the funnel to the desired outputs and outcomes of each individual campaign.

A campaign strategy is the route plan. Brand strategy the road map. Marketing strategy the atlas. And institutional strategy the realtime satellite feed.

My younger self might’ve scoffed. Said ‘I work in brand awareness. It’s not in my JD to recruit more PG students from China.’

Today’s me knows better.

Lesson 2: Know Thyself

Ask yourself the question – what makes me exceptional?

Not good. Not even great. Exceptional.

Differentiation is one of our sector’s thornier marketing challenges. Go to a UCAS fair with a roll of gaffer tape. Cover up the logos on all the institutional marketing. Then try to guess who is who. We may all think our institutional identity speaks for itself. We may even think we have an iconic brand.

I’m not sure our consumers feel the same way.

Universities are by nature hard to pin down. The reason Googling the name of most towns in the UK returns the local uni top (or near enough) isn’t because we’re what most people are looking for. It’s because our online presences are usually bloated with thousands of next-to-unvisited web pages. This isn’t only wasteful (there’s a vast carbon cost to large-scale storage of useless data), it’s very bad marketing. Edit.

Most universities will talk about ‘research excellence’, ‘innovation,’ and of course their rankings position. But it’s rare to find one that will lead with a single thematic or subject strength. The politics of being seen to prefer one subject area over another – unless you’re a specialist institution - is just too tricky to navigate.

I knew only one thing about Loughborough prior to interview. Loughborough equals sport. We’ve held the number one spot in the QS world rankings for sport-related subjects for eight years. We’ve yet again been named the Times and Sunday Times Sports University of the Year 2025, and the Daily Mail has chimed in this year. Our East Midlands campus is a treasure trove of world-class sporting facilities. If Loughborough were a nation, we’d have ranked in the top 20 in the Olympic and Paralympic medals table. Big plus – a built-in USP. Problem – we’re a research-intensive University with demonstrable excellence in many more areas.

You can’t change your DNA. But you can choose how it defines you. So we took the spirit and values of our sporting heritage – chasing marginal gains, competing against oneself, pursuing not perfection, but incremental improvement – and applied it to our brand identity. We took a leap and highlighted the issues that mattered most deeply to us as an institution, and, our research showed, our target audiences. These were: climate change and Net Zero, sport, health and wellbeing and vibrant and inclusive communities. Once we had our themes, we set about turbocharging them, directing our strongest proof points through a sport-inspired prism of values and ambition.  

This meant we could build a brand around multiple strengths, but speak with a voice and a vibe that was quintessentially the Loughborough both our internal and external audiences would recognise and identify with.

We built these values into a message house, laying out a clear narrative and tone of voice that anyone in the University could use to inform their content, from copy to ad creative to social media videos. Rather than defining what people could or couldn’t say, we’ve laid out guidance on how to express it – in a tone, presentational and visual style that is definitively ‘us’, and that, over time, our audiences will immediately associate with Loughborough, rather than a competitor.

Don’t shy away from who you are or what makes you exceptional – everyone’s good at something, but it’s what you’re the best at that is most likely to turn heads.

 

Lesson 3: Know Thy Audience

Once you’ve defined what you want to achieve, and articulated what you know what you want to be known for, crack on, yes?

Well, no. You might know your institution inside out, but that doesn’t mean anyone will automatically care about what you’ve got to say.

‘But my proof points’, you might say. ‘My case studies! Student testimonials! It’s all there!’

It may all be there. But now you’ve got to make sure people see it, experience it, and do something in response. This is where audience insights – admissions data, personas work, student and staff surveys, and wider perceptions research can help you not only understand what your audience thinks of you – but how, when and to what extent they consume your content, and that your competitors are producing.

With clear, strategic objectives (Lesson 1) you’ll know who you need to reach to move the needle (audience). With a coherent, confident and consistent voice to apply to your content (Lesson 2), you’ll know what you want to share with them. But before you start sharing (launching your campaign), make sure you’re fitting it to their needs. You’ve nailed the ‘Why’ and the ‘Who’ – this bit’s all about the ‘How’.

Like many other UK institutions, Loughborough University needs to up its international game, both in terms of recruitment and rankings (QS voters, guys!). Running a few programmatic ad campaigns in English that get a few million impressions and drop people on our homepage isn’t going to cut it. Do we know for certain which channels our key demographics not only consume, but influence their perceptions and decision making? Do we know if English is their preferred – not just their proficient – language? Do we know their preferences for short- versus long-form? Video versus text? Corporate versus cute? Which issues matter to them and have we cross-referenced this with our content themes?

In a big, complex institution, that necessary knowledge almost always sits somewhere – or in many somewheres. Academics. Admissions. Global Engagement. International Ambassadors. Current students. Alumni. At Loughborough, we’re getting good at sharing. We’re also getting good at asking if the content or channel strategy we’re developing is meeting an audience need before asking if it’s aligned to this or that corporate expectation.

 A small-scale, bespoke campaign tailored to native language and local channels can be far more effective than a big-splurge scattergun campaign across a whole array of channels your target audience isn’t paying attention to.

 

Get cracking!

Building lasting brand power in a shrinking and increasingly tumultuous global marketplace gets harder each year. But it’s still possible.

Build a campaign strategy directly fused with your institutional strategy. Do your market research. Speak to your audiences. Listen to them. And, as my old self would’ve said, ‘give them what they want.’

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