Tag: marketing

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Recruiting International Students: More than the 4Ps

January 25, 2022, by Don Hossler Philip Kotler, considered by many higher education professionals to be the Godfather of modern university admissions marketing, urged professionals in the field to consider the 4P’s when putting together a recruitment marketing plan. The 4P’s stand for:

  • Product
  • Place
  • Price
  • Promotion

However, when developing admissions marketing plans for international students, I always keep in mind the 4P’s, plus one R, and the word “courtship”.

The R stands for risk reduction. Any effort to create a targeted marketing plan for international students also has to consider the risks that students, and often their families, evaluate when they are contemplating attending a university in another country. This is true for both prospective undergraduate and graduate students. For me, the word courtship is an important consideration because we are courting these new students. And we must always keep in mind that courting a new partner from another culture, who may speak another language, adds a level of complexity to the process. Although, these are considerations for both undergraduate and graduate students some of the factors that go into the decision-making process are sufficiently different that I will focus only on undergraduates.

The 4P’s are also relevant for undergraduate international students. The majors, academic programs, and the out-of-class experience are an essential part of the product that any university offers. College rankings are important in the United States and even more important to students from other countries. Whether we like it or not, our ranking is part of our product. And an institution’s ranking is also an important part of risk reduction for international students. The place is another factor that gets careful consideration. How far is my institution from the home of this international student? For decades, universities located in metropolitan areas were more attractive to many international undergraduate students. The idea of being in a large city with many cultural opportunities was attractive. However, with growing concerns about personal safety, some students and their families may prefer being located in a small town where crime rates are lower, and personal safety is not as great a concern. It is axiomatic that price, the total cost of attendance, including travel, will always be an essential consideration for international students and their families.  Finally, promotion and courtship are similar constructs for admissions recruiting.

 The risks that potential international undergraduate students face include being a long distance from home, cultural similarities or dissimilarities, concerns about safety, uncertainty about whether or not their degree and the institution that they attended will be valued in their home country, and concerns about their ability to get relevant work experience before returning to their country of origin. Enrollment management professionals, admissions leaders, faculty members, and student life professionals should always be cognizant of these risk factors for potential international students. For example, the language barriers for students arriving from European countries will not be as pronounced as for a student coming from Thailand. Because English has become the lingua franca of business, many European countries offer or, in some cases, require programs in English. In addition, there will be more cultural similarities for these students in comparison to an undergraduate coming to the United States from Senegal.

Enrollment professionals understand that promotion – admissions marketing – plays a vital role in students’ decisions as to where to matriculate. However, I have always found it helpful if I have a broader metaphor to use as I consider new and existing admissions marketing and recruitment approaches. To that end, I have always found courtship to be an evocative metaphor for my thinking. If I was indeed courting the person whom I hoped would become my life partner, or even someone with whom I’m trying to develop a really good friendship, thinking about my actions as forms of courtship helps to broaden my thinking, to think beyond the traditional approaches to admissions marketing and recruitment and to evaluate new strategies. How might a prospective cosmopolitan female student who speaks Mandarin or Hindi respond differently than domestic female students to the various steps in the admissions and recruitment process? For institutions that might use financial aid to recruit prospective international undergraduates, admissions and financial aid professionals need to be aware that these students  might have no understanding of campus-based financial aid at the start of the recruitment process

Within this framework, when recruiting international undergraduates, colleges and universities must do comprehensive self-assessments of their market positions. Enrollment leaders need to know where they stand in relation to their products, including rankings, competitor universities, or specific academic programs. For example, not all colleges have high quality undergraduate performance-oriented music programs. Enrollment professionals must have a clear-eyed understanding of the extent to which the university’s location is attractive to prospective international students. Senior campus administrators, faculty, admissions marketing staff, and enrollment management leaders should realize that they have limited ability in the short run to change the academic programs (products) they offer or to alter their location(s).  It often takes a decade or more for a university to substantially improve its position in ranking schemes. The attractiveness of a location is likely to be a function of distance from home, similarity of cultures, and personal safety. In the short term, institutional net pricing (which is the cost of attendance minus any institutional financial aid), promotion, and actions aimed at risk reduction are the only policy and programmatic levers that enrollment managers can employ.

Promotion and related risk reduction strategies need to be based on an understanding of where the university stands in the higher education marketplace in the United States.  Understanding the cultural milieu from which students are being recruited is also essential knowledge for admissions professionals. This understanding can help them to develop effective messaging around the attractiveness of where the university is located, and the degree of safety for international undergraduates. More importantly, this knowledge can help admissions staff to identify the cultural norms associated with “courting” someone from that part of the globe.

It is also essential for universities to collect information on the competitor universities that their targeted international students apply to, and where they enroll. This knowledge is essential for developing more effective recruitment/promotion strategies. A competitor analysis also enables universities to make comparisons of the net price of attendance. These competitor analyses must be rooted in data. Promotional and recruitment tactics are unlikely to be successful if enrollment leaders have identified aspirational competitors as opposed to those institutions with whom they most often compete directly for international undergraduates.  

  Alongside the most highly ranked universities, or programs, in the United States, enrollment leaders are likely to discover that they have other competitors in different international markets. Thus, the enrollment modeling will need to be sensitive to the possibility of varying net price strategies depending upon the region of the world from which a university is trying to attract more international students. Finally, universities, and their specific academic programs, need to know that persistence is required.  If your university is not a household name in a particular region of the country where you are recruiting, it will take time to develop a steady stream of applicants. This is another example why a thorough competitive analysis is necessary. Without this, universities may spend a great deal of time and money with unrealistic hopes of enrolling more international undergraduate students.

At the bottom line, colleges and universities attempting to enroll more international students must keep in mind the 4P’s, but to see them through the lenses of risk reduction and of recruitment as a form of courtship.

Donald Hossler a member of the Edu Alliance Group Advisory Council is an emeritus professor of educational leadership and policy studies at Indiana University Bloomington (IUB). He currently serves as a Senior Scholar at the Center for Enrollment Research, Policy and Practice in the Rossier School of Education, at the University of Southern California. Hossler has also served as vice chancellor for student enrollment services, executive associate dean of the School of Education, and the executive director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

Hossler’s areas of specialization include college choice, student persistence, student financial aid policy, and enrollment management. Hossler has received career achievement awards for his research, scholarship, and service from the American College Personnel Association, the Association for Institutional Research, the College Board, and the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. He recently received the Sonneborn Award for Outstanding Research and Teaching from IUB and was named a Provost Professor.

Edu Alliance Group, Inc. (EAG) is an education consulting firm located in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, and Bloomington, Indiana, USA. We assist higher education institutions worldwide on a variety of mission-critical projects. Our consultants have accomplished university/college leaders who share the benefit of their experience to diagnose and solve challenges.

EAG has provided consulting and successful solutions for higher education institutions in Australia, Egypt, Georgia, India, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Nigeria, Uganda,  United Arab Emirates, and the United States.

Edu Alliance offers higher education institutions consulting services worldwide. If you like to know more about how Edu Alliance can best serve you, please contact Dean Hoke at dean.hoke@edualliancegroup.com 

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Middle East marketers needs to get their head out of the sand!

Who will take the lead in effectively using social networking systems?

The MENA region (“Middle East and North Africa”) and in particular the UAE has on the most part, embraced social networks such as Facebook and Twitter recently. According to Facebook there are over 17.3 million users in the MENA region of which 50% use English, 25% use French and 25% use Arabic. The data indicated the majority of new users communicate in Arabic and this trend is expected to continue. Twitter in the Middle East and Africa now has nearly 5 million users It is clear all the social networking groups are experiencing significant growth including LinkedIn and Foursquare, but it seems marketers in the region are not taking advantage of these important tools.

Reporter Ben Flanagan of the National in his story “Marketing Lacks Social Media Skills’” interviews Mohamed Parham al Awadhi, the Emirati co-founder of the Wild Peeta restaurant in Dubai, who states “advertising and media agencies have been slow to evolve and recognize the new ways in which people are communicating.” “Media consultants in the region have “no idea” how to use tools such as Twitter and Foursquare for marketing,” “The “fusion” a shawarma restaurant, which is in talks with possible franchisees over expansion plans, is highly active on Twitter and was one of the UAE’s first businesses to use Foursquare, a social networking application in which users “check in” to broadcast location to peers. Mr. al Awadhi said his company has built its brand “without spending a dime” on marketing.

“The problem with advertising agencies, especially the large established ones, is that they are very slow to evolve. There’s no need for their involvement because they have no idea how to do it (social networking). We don’t need them.”

“Wild Peeta have done really well, but for a larger brand you need a full strategy,” said Rayan Karaky, the MENA region general manager for digital operations at the communications network Publicis Groupe Media.

“If Wild Peeta came to me today and said ‘can you handle our social media?’ I’d say don’t waste your money.” Mr. Karaky said that while location-based sites such as Foursquare had “big potential”, it was too early to tell if such services would become successful marketing tools in the region.

But Yousef Tuqan, the chief executive of Flip Media, one of the largest digital marketing agencies in the Middle East, said Mr. al Awadhi made a “fair comment”. “The problem with social media [in the Middle East] is that everyone is talking about it, but few are actually doing it,” Mr. Tuqan said. “The people who are doing social media the best are the people who are doing it themselves.”

Mr. al Awadhi said his company was looking to expand its use of “location-based” services such as Foursquare and the similar Facebook Places application. The company was also studying Layar, an “augmented reality” mobile application.

It was also among the first companies in the Middle East to have an official Foursquare promotion, he said. The promotion grants the “mayor” of Wild Peeta, or the Foursquare user who had amassed the most “check ins” while at the restaurant, a free daily drink.

From my own personal experiences as a user of multiple networking platforms including Foursquare, the MENA region has yet to take advantage by building their brands to millions of users. In particular I believe the use of Foursquare has great possibilities in driving business and building loyalty.

Starbucks in America recognizes Foursquare users and “mayors” by providing discounts and free drinks, yet in the UAE they seem unaware of Foursquare existent. Example I am a “mayor” in four Starbucks in Abu Dhabi and according to the check in statistics I have been in there stories over 100 times in a four-month period (I really need slow down on the venti Latte’s). Assuming I spend 25 AED ($6.83) per purchase I have spent 2,500 AED ($683) in four months. Now in the world of coffee shops or even restaurant business this is a loyal customer. You want them to continue to frequent the store or encourage others to go to Starbucks instead of a competitor. The use of applications like Foursquare tells the store who are your customers, how often they visit and in turn, send them special discounts as a thank you.

Middle East marketers needs to get their head out of the sand (forgive the pun) and find effective ways to communicate with social media users. Social network marketing will soon be a part of the everyday plan, but the companies who are the first to be innovative and daring with the marketing dollars should reap a highest rewards.