McCormick School of Engineering Digital Marketing
Evanston, IL
Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs and research opportunities, empowering their students to become whole-brain engineers. Students from the McCormick School of Engineering are equipped with the tools to pursue a wide range of careers, advanced study, and experiences after graduation.
Northwestern was looking for a strategic partner that could bring their brand and graduate programs to life. With 11 separate and distinctive programs to promote, the GMB team met with each program director to understand what makes them unique and how their different prospective student groups live in the digital space. Our plan included diving deep into target audience demographics research, discovering appropriate channels to reach each audience, and establishing budgets. Each digital marketing campaign speaks to the School of Engineering brand, while weaving in unique language that tells the story of each graduate study program. The programs were not using graphic type ads previously, and this gave a consistent look and feel across the portfolio while speaking specifically to the individual program. These programs include artificial intelligence, robotics, biomedical engineering, engineering management, design and innovation, and more.
At the same time, it was important to Northwestern to accurately document and retain student data from their marketing efforts. After losing historical data from previous campaigns, our team helped empower the client to keep and use their own accounts to produce transparent reports that informed their marketing teams, the dean, and program directors.
Over the past three years, we have continued to refine their digital campaign language and audiences to reach a higher quality and engaged student pool. Our team has also led additional projects with Northwestern, including a CRM audit that targeted best practices for tagging and tracking, SEO analysis, and website landing page audits.
The McCormick School of Engineering graduate programs emphasize excellence in education and research, where the students are exceptionally prepared for academic and professional success. From 2023 to 2024, the campaigns yielded consistent results across all programs:
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