Digital Marketing for Attracting New Students for Online Learning: A Case Study of Fairfield School of Business

This report discusses the challenges faced by Fairfield School of Business in attracting new students for online learning and suggests solutions through digital marketing. It includes a research on primary and secondary methods of data collection and various sources to promote digital learning.

Consulting in Practice

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................................3
TASK..........................................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION..........................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES..........................................................................................................................................7
Books and Journals:.................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Digital marketing denotes a marketing done through digital channels such as social
media, mobile apps, search engines, email, websites and many more. With the help of these
digital media channels, digital marketing is a significant way by which organizations endorse
brands, products and services. In other words, using internet and other online methods of
communication is a way in which a brand promotes and connects with its customers (Sinha,
Healey and Sengupta, 2020). The report is based on to discuss the issues or challenges that a
company or client needs to address. Fairfield School of Business (FSB) is a reputed community
based education provider in Digbeth, Birmingham. This report will also cover various solutions
and methods in order to resolve the issue related with attracting new students with the online or
distance learning.
TASK
Overview of the company
Fairfield School of Business is a private higher education College which delivers
multicultural and diverse learning experience to its students. It is one of the biggest educational
institution in UK. As the business world is growing day by day, it is more focus on offering
vocational learning for it students.
Mission of the company-
The mission of the company is to inspire and provide a supportive learning experience to
the students, who are looking for upgraded skills and knowledge that are required in further
employment or study.
Objective of this project-
 To enter new segments of digital market.
 To identify which segments of market have least barriers to entry and potential for
advances the business profits.
Statement of research problem-
FSB is facing an issue regarding online or distance learning. They are looking to attract
new segments of customers that is students for online learning or virtual learning. An IT expert,
Muhammad Fahim Hasan has been appointed to find the reasonable solutions and methods of
attracting new segments of customers.
Digital marketing is a new and different method to market. The importance of digital
marketing has been increasing day by day that is why the learning institution FSB wants to adopt
digital marketing advertisements in order to attract more and more students for their institution.
Digital learning or virtual learning is a new way to offer students and teachers digital methods to
improve the learning experience (Domazet and Neogradi, 2019). It refers to a system that
delivers professors digitally based methods or solutions aimed at developing an active as well as
interactive learning environments. A research has been done in order to serve the FSB with best

solutions or methods with a purpose to attract clients for digital learning or distance learning.
This is a new kind of learning where a student can get his education wherever he wants to learn.
The main aim of the FSB is to attract more amount of clients for the respective services (Saputra
and Ardani, 2020). The following are two methods of collecting data that can be used by the FSB
for the accomplishment of their aim:
Primary methods:
Primary data can be understood as a collection of data from first-hand experience which
is not achieved in the past. When data are collected through this method are particular to the
objective of research as well as highly accurate. It is further divided into two categories
qualitative methods and quantitative methods:
Quantitative methods:
Quantitative methods for demand forecasting as well as research of market generally
make utilization of statistical tools. With the use of historical data, the demand is forecasting.
Statistical tools are highly accurate and reliable (Rahmatizadeh and et.al., 2018). The following
are methods to collect data through quantitative methods:
 Time series: Time series includes a sequential order of values of a variable at equal time
intervals, known as trend. With the use of patterns, FSB predict demand of its services for
the projected time.
 Smoothing techniques:This technique can be used when time series is not working. With
the use of this technique, from the past demands a variation can be eliminated. It focuses
on recognizing demand levels and patterns to estimate the forthcoming demand.
 Baromteric method: It is also recognized as the leading indicators approach. Most of the
researchers focuses on this method to speculate the trends a future based on the existing
development. In other terms, when historical events are considered to guess the events of
future they turn as leading indicators.
Qualitative methods:
Qualitative methods are useful in those situations when past data is not available to use.
This kind of research is closely related with sounds, words,colours, emotions, feelings and other
elements that are non-quantifiable. In case of FSB, these techniques are based on intuition,
judgement, emotion, experience, conjecture and many more (Zhuang, Ke, and Wang, 2020).
 Surveys: It is a methodto gather information from the target segment of customers and
collect their insights into their opinions, preferences, feedback and choices associated to
their services as well as product. Online surveys can be personalized as per the brand by
changing their logo or theme and so on. They can be distributed through many channels
of distributions such as QR code, email, online app, website, social media and many
more. Depending on the source and type of audience one can select the appropriate
channel.
 Interviews: This is a method in which varieties of questions have been asked by
interviewer either face to face or through telephonic to the interviewees. In face to face

interview, a series of questions have been asked by an interviewer to the respondent and
notes down responses. In other cases, if it is not feasible to meet physically to the
interviewer then telephonic interview can be held. This method can be appropriate when
there are only few respondents as it is time-consuming process.
 Polls:It is consisting with one single or multiple choice questions. This method is useful
when quick responses is required from the audience (Cai and et.al., 2020). It is easier to
get responses from polls as they are short in length.Online polls can be fixed to different
platforms. When responses are gained then it can be also exposed how they stand related
to responses of others.
 Questionnaire:It is a printed set of questions either closed ended or open ended. The
respondents are necessitating to response based on their ideas, experiences as well as
knowledge with the problem concerned.
Secondary data:
Secondary data are those data which have been used in past. The information can be
obtained from internal as well as external sources to the organization. Internal sources of
secondary data include financial statements, sales report, health and safety records, CRM
software, mission and vision statements, executive summaries and many more. While on the
other side, external sources of secondary data are internet, libraries, press releases, business
journals, government reports and many more (Kim and et.al., 2019). This method can include
both qualitative and quantitative techniques. It is easily available and less time consuming. But
on the other side, it is also costly in comparison with primary data.
From the above discussion, it is observed that primary methods of research can be very
beneficial in order to identify the markets which have least barriers to entry as well as potential
for improving the profitability of the business. There are several methods included in primary
methods to know the customers’ preferences, choices as well as their opinions (Ren, Wu and
Versonnen, 2019). Qualitative methods can be the best possible option to know the views of
clients as well as to consider the new market segment. Surveys can be used to gather information
about new market segments as well as to get the insights of customers’ preferences, feedback or
what they are thinking about virtual learning and many more. This service can be done on
various online platforms such as YouTube, Facebook or Twitter to know the aspects of virtual
learning. Another best option is also interview in which a series of questions can be asked to the
respondents in order to know the view about online learning or virtual learning. There are
various questions that can be asked such as thoughts about virtual learning, it may include
positive and negative responses from the respondents, interviewer may also ask what are the
difficulties they face in virtual learning and many more. In order to know the quick responses
from the audience, polls can also be very beneficial. There are various trending social media
platforms in which it can be used by asking single or multiple choice questions about learning
through digital platforms.Audience can view and easily response on the polls.
There are various sources through which FSB can promote and encourage digital learning
in order to promote education and learning digitally (Stock, 2018). It is significant to consider
which social platform one can focus on to promote virtual learning.FSB can find various social

media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube in order to promote their online
courses and to reach the target audience. For example, if the FSB have very strong presence on
Facebook then it can highly represent their thoughts for online courses. It is studied that due to
covid-19 pandemic there is a significant decline in student’s engagement in classical courses of
learning and switch attention to more focused social media channels. Digital learning can also be
enhanced if the social media profiles of company is highly approachable. One thing they should
always consider to get the right information throughout the social media profiles in order to
make its digital learning more prominent. They can also include company overview, products
and services and many more. The another source to promote digital learning of FSB is to feature
guest or popular users to promote its services. In most cases, bloggers or influencers also
required to promote a brand as well as its services through their personal accounts on social
media. Some of the influencers directly worked with third party platforms that handle all the
comes and gos’ of the process. It is important that influences have a good range of followers
otherwise the efforts ofpromotion will probably go to waste. As there are various social media
channels, it can work very well to promote and engage audience for the online learning
(Humphreys, 2018). If the company have a budget for it, they can use to attract their clients to
virtual courses through advertisements. Virtual audience is very massive in nature as well as a
specific when it comes to narrowing down who sees the advertisements. It can also approach
colleges as well as universities in order to encourage and promote virtual learning.
CONCLUSION
It is concluded from the above report is that digital marketing represents an online
marketing which includes several channels such as search engines, websites, social media and
many more. The report is based on a research to identify the new market segment for the FSB.
The research involves two methods that are primary and secondary in order to collect the
information about target audience. In this report, the target audience are those persons or students
who are seeking online learning. It is also discussed with various sources where FSB can
promote its virtual learning courses in an effective way.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Cai, Y. Z. and et.al., 2020, September. Improving scanner data collection in p4-based sdn.
In 2020 21st Asia-Pacific Network Operations and Management Symposium
(APNOMS) (pp. 126-131). IEEE.
Domazet, I.S. and Neogradi, S., 2019. Digital Marketing and Service Industry: Digital Marketing
in the Banking Industry. In Managing Diversity, Innovation, and Infrastructure in Digital
Business (pp. 20-40). IGI Global.
Humphreys, L., 2018. The qualified self: Social media and the accounting of everyday life. MIT
press.
Kim, J. W. and et.al., 2019, January. Privacy-preserving data collection scheme on smartwatch
platform. In 2019 IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE) (pp.
1-4). IEEE.
Rahmatizadeh, S. and et.al., 2018. A framework for selecting a fit-for-purpose data collection
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Ren, G., Wu, J. and Versonnen, F., 2019. Bee-based reliable data collection for mobile wireless
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Saputra, G.W. and Ardani, I.G.A.K.S., 2020. Pengaruh digital marketing, word of mouth,
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In Adjunct Publication of the 28th ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and
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Stock, K., 2018. Mining location from social media: A systematic review. Computers,
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Zhuang, Y., Ke, R. and Wang, Y., 2020. Edge-Based Traffic Flow Data Collection Method
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