The Map to Inbound: How Bentley University Used Inbound Marketing in Their PreparedU Project

In 2011, the team at Bentley University took on a massive task: redefining their brand. They came up with The PreparedU Project and an inbound marketing strategy after several phases of research and learning from their mistakes. At #Converge2015, Val Fox and Jeff Wright shared the story of the roadmap they followed to make their rebranding campaign successful.

After surveying several audiences and talking to shareholders at the University, they landed on one topic: prepared. Students felt they left Bentley University prepared to go out into the professional world. While the media constantly shared the story that recent college graduates were moving home to their parents’ basements, broke and unprepared for the real world, Bentley students were sharing stories of success. This became the theme of Bentley’s brand, and The PreparedU Project was born.

To begin the project, the Bentley team started their research. From past experience, Val and Jeff knew that the content needed to be rooted in market-driven research. They surveyed stakeholders and recent graduates about what preparedness meant to them and if they felt prepared for the workforce at graduation.

Bentley University defined the PreparedU project as:

1. A storytelling platform to position Bentley as an authority on preparing graduates for their careers and life success.
2. The hub of their marketing ecosystem.

The PreparedU Project was rolled out in several content formats including white papers, eBooks, alumni magazine articles, infographics, videos and live events over a course of 18 months. The project had four storytelling phases:

• Phase 1: Millennial Preparedness
• Phase 2: Millennial Women in the Workplace
• Phase 3: Millennials at Work
• Phase 4: Getting Millennials Ready to work

By using a variety of content formats and a strategic storytelling model, The PreparedU Project garnered a 400 percent increase in year-over-year media impressions.

As a result of the increase in media impressions, the Bentley team evolved frompitching their story to publishing it, and they created an inbound strategy. The team saw a 600 percent increase in visits to their website – 85 percent of the traffic from new users.

“Create once, publish everywhere.”

The Bentley University team used syndicated content and amplified content on social media platforms. By boosting content and putting paid dollars against it, they leveraged the channels that Bentley University already owned, and then they built a blog around it. Visitors saw a constant stream of content around key themes, like workplace preparedness on their blog.

The blog itself also evolving from “pitching” to “publishing.” Bentley moved from 1-2 blog posts per week and pushed quality over quantity. The campaign saw the most success in paid social content, and 95 percent of enrolled students said that preparedness influenced their decision to enroll at Bentley.

Inbound in Action

The Bentley University MBA team learned from the PreparedU project to implement inbound marketing as well. They used inbound to capitalize on existing and new content to generate marketing qualified leads via paid channels to promote paid content rather than “propaganda.”

The team used persona-driven content marketing to manage perspective students’ pain points including cost, flexibility of the curriculum and whether they can continue to work. They created gated content to attract leads based on the pain points and personas they created, targeting leads with 0-8 years of work experience in engineering, computer science or business related fields on social media channels like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, as well as through digital advertising on Google and Reddit.

Once the leads entered the top of the funnel, the Bentley MBA program nurtured them with workflows.

The results of their inbound marketing were positive:

• 1,790 MBA contacts
• 212 qualified leads
• Applicants/students: TBD (at time of conference)

At #Converge2015 the Bentley team also shared what mistakes they made, hoping their experience would help others along the way. Here’s what they learned:

• Don’t expect a playbook. There isn’t an exact formula that will work every time.
• Get started! Don’t wait for everything to be perfect. It’s better to start ugly and learn from that experience to implement better strategy in the future.
• Start with the end in mind. Attract. Connect. Engage. Delight. The stages of inbound are simple, and if you focus on the end goal, you’ll be more successful.
• Amplify or die. The greatest factor in the Bentley University team’s success was content amplification on multiple channels, especially paid. They saw a 29x increase in traffic when they began amplifying their content.

Val and Jeff also shared some tips and ideas with the audience:

• Make a case for content. Use content as a springboard to drive traffic by leveraging paid media against earned and owned media.
• Build your email list. Your email list is the most valuable asset you have to propagate your content and stories. Encourage students to stay in touch, gate content and use calls to action.

• Think like a publisher. Look at what topics your audience cares about and look at the trends and content creation influencers. What’s unique about that content and why is it getting shared? Look for ways to tell the story unique to your audience.
• Tap news refugees. If you don’t have resources readily available to write, tap into news and media outlets for freelancers that can help you create the content.
• Hire people for mindset match and who love to learn. Think of marketing today as one-part artistry, one-part science. Find people who can tap into unique narratives and visual assets that you need but can also monitor metrics on what’s working and what’s not. Look for these skillsets in individuals as you build your team. Marketing is always changing, and it requires us to continuously learn.

This is a good image of encouragement. Inbound marketing isn’t an A-to-B formula or roadmap. It can be messy with lots of twists, turns and experimentation. But plenty of rewards in the end.

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