In-depth audience insights drive awareness for VU’s unique sustainability offering

About Victoria University

• Devastating bushfires, a global pandemic and once-in-a-century floods. In less than three years, Australians have witnessed a host of events directly linked to a worsening climate crisis.
• At the same time, the business world is moving beyond standard sustainability practices and is looking to balance profits with their overall environmental and societal impact.
• In the context of these developments, it’s no surprise that demand for Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) professionals is at an all-time high, with organisations struggling to fill critical positions.
• In response to this demand, Victoria University (VU) developed the Graduate Certificate in Planetary Health, a transdisciplinary approach that addresses the health of people, place and planet. The course shows how each profoundly impacts the other and provides everyday managers with an all-encompassing way to think about sustainability in the business environment. 

The challenge

VU launched the program at the height of the pandemic in 2020 and received many student enrollments. However, while many know the term ‘sustainability’, few recognised the broader concept of ‘planetary health’ - which made it difficult to build on the initial momentum. In the following semesters, student numbers fell below expectations.

But VU continued to believe in the value and the importance of the program, though. They just needed to refine the message to market.

VU partnered with Bc to better understand what students are actively searching for and what motivates them to pursue a Graduate Certificate. We developed detailed and qualified buyer personas and uncovered what students hoped to gain from completing formalised training in planetary health. The findings from the audience research would then flow into an awareness content marketing campaign.

The approach

Bc’s qualitative student persona research unearthed key information about students’ motivations and decision-making processes. The vast majority of Planetary Health graduates:

1. Already had a keen interest in sustainability before they enrolled in the program.
2. Saw completing a formal degree in sustainability as a critical next step in their career.
3. Stumbled on the Graduate Certificate in Planetary Health by accident and didn’t fully understand what it entailed until they started studying it.

Based on these insights, we developed a content marketing ‘call-to-arms’ campaign with the theme:

Level up for the planet. Build a career with impact.

The creative theme allowed us to highlight the three main benefits that completing the certificate would present to potential students:

• Taking an active step to address the climate crisis and associated societal issues.
• Growing their knowledge of planetary health issues, no matter their baseline experience.
• Using their new-found knowledge and frameworks to build a meaningful career that has longevity.

To achieve this, Bc produced a high-quality ebook and videos featuring interviews with previous students who shared their real-world outcomes. The campaign was distributed via email to the VU database, organic and paid social. We also designed a nurture campaign to boost enrollment numbers from people who downloaded the ebook.