What are the Top 3 Metric Areas you should be tracking? Does your answer match ours?

Former CEO of HP, Carly Fiorina, once said, “the goal is to turn data into information and information into insight.” This is the essence of analytics. It’s exactly why you are (or should be!) taking the time to track traffic on your website and social media engagement. It is all for that valuable insight that can introduce you to the student leads you want and help you understand their needs/motivations.

We know we might sound like a broken record but analytics are important. And we know how difficult it can be to get started. The good news is that it’s not as complicated as you think.

Come meet us in San Diego this weekend (a quick jaunt to the sun!?!) to learn more about metrics, tactics and other international student recruiting approaches from experts in the field at our upcoming International Student Recruitment Bootcamp. It is all about What Works Where.

Have you seen our speaker list? A range of experts, our conference faculty, will be on hand January 29-31. Today is the LAST DAY to take advantage of regular pricing. Spaces are limited and going fast. 

The Bottom Line: The key to successfully tracking analytics is to set up a system that is easy to use and accessible–your dashboard. Just like your car dashboard, a metrics dashboard stores all your “go-to” data in one place. This can help know how your digital marketing is performing. If you take the time to do this regularly, a big IF based on what most of us have time for, you will spend your marketing budget more wisely every year. If nothing else, your bosses will be proud of you for that ;-)

Trying to collect data without setting up a dashboard is like trying to make a recipe you’ve never made before without the ingredients list. You might know where to find one or two of the pieces of data you are looking for, but you need to know how to piece them together to make a tasty meal. Read on for our list of the Top 3 Metrics Areas we think you should be keeping tabs on. This is the kind of data we think should be on your dashboard to support your international student recruitment efforts.

Pro tip: this is one of those posts you’ll want to share with a select few others on your team.

For your top 2016 international student prospects, using Instagram is second nature. These teens and young adults #instadaily like total pros. But, Instagram isn’t just an entertainment or social networking application. Not really. Not any more.

In September 2015, Instagram opened its doors to advertising for all businesses, big and small. That same month, Instagram hit another milestone when it beat out Twitter in active monthly users. Instagram’s website reports 400 million active monthly users. This is big.

So naturally there are big questions that arise with advertising opening up on Instagram. What is Instagram marketing? Should your university be doing it? Short answer: Yes.

Why? This is where your prospects are spending their time. Your digital marketing needs to adjust to the changing social media landscape. Hard to keep up? Hard to staff it? Of course. Want to beat out your competition? Right, of course, again.

Oh, and this from Higher Education Marketing: 48% of U.S. high school seniors were researching universities via Instagram in 2015. BAM!

No whining about how you can't find a way to do it. Let's get down to how to do it.

This week and next, Emily will share our thoughts and tips on why and how.

Over the past two weeks we have shared data and tips on how to stay relevant in the international student recruiting market in Africa. Starting with a broad overview of this market, our first blog post of this series Africa's Competitive Edge (Part I) showed the positive trends and opportunities for recruiting in African countries. Nigeria (Part II) took a closer look at one specific market, and the trends of students studying abroad and how to market to them in this country. In this Part III post, we will explore the international student recruiting landscape and prospects in Kenya.

Touted as the Silicon Valley of Africa, Kenya is one country that has been a focus in recruiting since it graced IIE’s list of top 20 places of origin in the early 2000s. However, steadily since 2003, there has been a decline in the number of Kenyan students studying abroad. Between the 2013/14 and the 2014/15 school years, the number of students coming to the U.S. from Kenya has dropped 4%. Restrictions for students have become tighter and competition from within Africa is becoming fiercer. Still Kenya is the number two sending country of students to the U.S. (3,072) behind Nigeria (9,494).

Kenya is hoping to hold on to the slight economic boost they received at the end of 2015 from their growing agriculture sector. Hopefully, this kind of growth will empower more Kenyans to study abroad. Though the U.S. still beats the UK and Australia in the number of Kenyan students they are able to recruit, universities in the U.S. may still struggle to provide affordable options for Kenyan students, especially as the number of advanced study options in other African countries continues to grow.

Bottom Line: Schools outside of the African continent will need to use local connections and targeted digital marketing to attract Kenyan students to specific academic programs. Emily has some tips on how to do that and which programs might be most attractive in this valuable market. And she'll tell you why that beautful picture above represents great job opportunities for the right graduates...

This week we want to compare your university education to roasting a chicken. No, really.

We want you to consider a lesson learned in the grocery industry about marketing. What in the world would your international student recruiting plans have to do with roast chicken you ask? Perhaps not quite as much of a stretch as you might think.

Here at Intead, we are always looking at what industry does, how it markets, what it tracks. And we apply those lessons to academia. It keeps us on our toes.

Bottom Line: Supermarkets learned a while back that advertising focused on cooked meals attracts customers better than showing raw ingredients. For university enrollment, focusing on jobs and outcomes is critical in today’s academic marketing. The message resonates with students and parents alike. So you might want to rethink all those images of happy students on the quad, or engaged in classrooms. The ascending career needs to be present, and perhaps even dominant, in your advertising.

We will be discussing these approaches to academic marketing at the upcoming AIRC and ICEF conferences in December. Are you going? We’d love to meet you face-to-face instead of keyboard to screen! There are still a few slots left for our 3rd annual ICEF Pre-conference Global Marketing Seminar for Education Institutions.

More on using outcomes in your marketing below.

LinkedIn dominates online professional relationship building. LinkedIn creates and retains connections, provides transparency into professional backgrounds and accomplishments.  Professional recruiting is heavily influenced by LinkedIn.  An now LinkedIn is starting to build a direct connection to universities, alumni and even university rankings.  What does that mean for your activities as university administrators, admission officers and alumni offices?

What happens when a prospective international student uses Facebook and Twitter to signify her interest in, and hopefully to learn more about, various institutions in the English speaking world? We, at Intead, recently conducted another mystery shopper experiment with institutions in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. As has happened in previous mystery shopper experiments, we were not surprised, yet still disappointed by the dismal rate of response by institutions in these countries. One country proved exceptional in their universities’ ability to respond quickly and effectively. You might be surprised to learn the big winner of this experiment.

In our ongoing effort to share the latest in social media marketing we begin this two part series on WeChat. We are eager to share this exciting Chinese social media platform that is quickly becoming popular throughout the world. And yes, you can create posts in Chinese and English.

This past summer, the Chinese student organizations of the Big Ten universities  hosted meet-ups in Beijing and Shanghai. During the events, 600 interested Chinese students and parents went to the Shanghai Kempinski Hotel and the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. Learn more about these events and how you can use Meet Ups for your university.

Graeme Menzies, Director of Marketing Communications & Social Media at The University of British Columbia, joins Michael Waxman-Lenz, Intead CEO and co-founder, to share his vast knowledge of marketing and social media in the higher education realm. Higher education professionals seeking to improve their marketing, communications and social media strategies will gain a great deal of insight through Mr. Menzies discussion.