Bodwell Highschool

Meeting the needs of Chinese students.

As an overseas boarding school in the Chinese education market, Bodwell faces some serious challenges. There are tons of competition and the market is heavily agent reliant. We took this opportunity to bolster Bodwell’s exposure through Baidu SEM and increased Bodwell website’s convertibility by making adjustments to contents and simplifying the application process.

Client

Bodwell Highschool

Project Scope

Baidu  / Search Engine Marketing / Reputation Management

The Game

Understanding how the game is played is a must for the Chinese education industry. Through research, we discovered a major disconnect of information related to overseas schools and their application process. This is due to language barrier, unmatching academic credentials, and uncertainty in applications. Most Chinese applicants rely on education agents to help them apply for their oversea studies – but there is a very hefty fee.

The Opportunity

We noticed an opportunity in the current game –  if the students and families had access to all the information they needed to successfully apply for an oversea’s school, it would save them a very large sum of money. To jump on the opportunity, we know we needed three things: information, awareness, and assistance on action.

Information

Showing the target audience the information they need is priority. Changes such as video hosting, form translations, and other adjustments were made on Bodwell’s Chinese landing page to accommodate for the Chinese audience and making sure everything is accessible in China.

Existing Chinese content was re-checked for readability. New content on subjects related to school ranking, application procedure, on-campus living are being written to ensure the audience get what they are looking for and feel comfortable applying without consulting with agents.

Awareness

Next step was building awareness. We launched SEM campaigns on Baidu targeting specifically families and students who want to study abroad in Canada. The keywords used were closely related to the audience’s behavior and touched points on key questions and concerns they might have. The campaign drew traffic China-wide and was particularly successful in the three major cities: Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. We also managed and maintained Bodwell’s SoP (Share of Page) and reputation on Baidu and its line of products including BaiduZhidao.

Assistance

With awareness and information available, we wanted to make sure the Chinese families and students are able to convert. Even with the aid of information, the likelihood of the applicants filling out a foreign application is very slim at best. External help is required to help them through the process. So we did onsite optimization to make sure they have access to the help they needed – WeChat services. This meant the primary conversion goal on the land page is no longer filling out the form or downloading an application. But rather, it is connecting with Bodwell through WeChat.

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