The increase in university tuition fees now means that students will graduate with an estimated debt of £50,000. This has created an opportunity for companies to use scholarships creatively to target students, by addressing their financial concerns. A scholarship programme can be designed as a marketing campaign and tailored to achieve a wide range of specific objectives. It has the added benefit of being more likely to gain the support of universities and schools in promoting it, as they are keen to help students reduce their financial burden.

Scholarships can be created to achieve your specific marketing objectives such as brand awareness, increased sign ups for newsletters or followers on social media, brand positioning and PR. The topic of scholarships is of interest to the national media as student debt is a hot topic. A company branded scholarship can be used to boost media coverage by offering an opportunity for students to reduce their debt.

We will work with you to create a programme which will achieve your specific objectives. By taking a full brief we will then devise the structure, eligibility criteria, application forms and marketing plan to ensure that your specific objectives are met. We will also support you with a complete administration service, managing the applications and selection of scholarship winners to relieve you of any additional administrative burden involved in running and promoting the scholarship.

Setting up and running scholarships in the UK is a new field of opportunity, given that students have only recently had to start paying for university. Last year, we worked with Santander to create a new scholarship programme for their shareholders (see our listed Case Study). Please see the attached presentation for some examples of how companies in America creatively use scholarships to achieve marketing objectives.

Whilst there are many scholarships available which are offered by individual universities, those offered by companies are still rare and therefore likely to attract media attention and wider interest than the average student marketing campaign, particularly if they are open to students at more than one university. Universities are finding themselves in an increasingly competitive marketplace and any incentive they can offer students is a useful tool for their marketing. They are therefore more likely to get behind a scholarship which might benefit their students.