Recruiting Intelligence

You are reading an excerpt from our e-book "88 Ways to Recruit International Students" (Click here to read the entire book)

#57. Search Engine Optimization

We are thrilled to announce that our mystery shopper experiment we announced last month is now featured in two videos created by the ICEF Monitor. This is Intead's fifteen minutes of fame-- actually it's not quite that long! If you're curious about how nearly 25% of institutions we surveyed didn't reply to prospective international student inquiries, here is your chance to check out the video explanations. It's summer-- take a break, pour yourself a glass of lemonade and enjoy the two part video series. 

Branding and reach will be a major challenge and opportunity for MOOCS of existing public and non-profit universities.   First of all all, let's clarify that MOOCS are Massive Open Online Courses offered by a variety of for-profit-and non-profit academic institutions. 

You are reading an excerpt from our e-book "88 Ways to Recruit International Students" (Click here to read the entire book)

#59. Create a Wikipedia page in local language

Brand building has been a fascinating topic for me for a long time. We all know of venerable brands in different industries: Coca Cola, IBM, Apple...As so many things, brand building has accelerated in the time of digital marketing-- think of Google, Facebook, Twitter which have become household names in much shorter time periods than traditional brands.  Consider which well known university brands come to mind for you first when you think of universities--- we'll get back to your thoughts later and let's compare notes at the end of the blog. 

Disney/Pixar continues to amaze me with their ability to create fictitious worlds that seem real. The amount of time that their design team spent researching college websites to create the new Monsters University site is considerable. This fictional website is better than many real college websites. Attention to detail is amazing. Real institutions can learn a great deal from the Monsters University site. Even without a monster budget (ha ha) like Disney your institution can emulate the best of this site to enhance viewers' experience with your website.

India is the second largest source country for students who are looking to study abroad (China tops the list).   However, the complexion of the study abroad market in India has changed a lot. Ten years ago, the USA and UK were the top destinations, but now we see Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Singapore, Malaysia, Ireland and other non-traditional destinations like The Netherlands, Sweden, Japan, China and Taiwan all actively wooing Indian students.

How important is response time and turn-around time for your success in international student enrollment?   Let me tell you why I am thinking of response time in marketing. I had two recent experiences that made me focus on the topic.  During a side conversation at a conference with the owner of a for-profit college, he mentioned that they follow up with a phone call within seven minutes of a registration on their web site (almost 24-7). Wow.  Then I needed a garage door repair, signed up on a website for recommendations for repair companies and received three recommendations to fix our garage door problem.  While I picked up the phone, the first repair person from that recommendation list called me.  The follow up happened within 30 seconds.  AMAZING. 

You are reading an excerpt from our e-book "88 Ways to Recruit International Students" (Click here to read the entire book)

#53. Social media