Recruiting Intelligence

Last week we helped dissect the TikTok ad platform. If you took anything away from that read, we bet you learned that:

• Its popularity among Gen Z is undeniable (76% use it!).  
• Branded and search-based advertising on TikTok is possible (hello Brand Takeover and Search Ads Toggle!).
• Surprisingly, TikTok targeting leaves something to be desired. Proceed with a partner who knows how to make an impact.
  

But for all of that, we didn’t even touch on content creation. And with this platform, that’s the crux of it all. 

Opportunities to Meet In Person 

The Intead team is gearing up for some amazing presentations and we hope you can join us. 

• AIRC Annual Conference – we’ll be offering our full day digital marketing workshop here in Phoenix, Dec 6-9, 2023 
• ICEF North America Workshop in Miami, Dec 11-13, 2023 

Let us know if you’ll come share a cup of coffee and a conversation about all things global and digital (info@intead.com) 

Back to the matter of Tik Tok content. On the one hand, institutions have professional brands to uphold, yet the audience engaging on TikTok demands a more organic, playful view of said brand. It’s a marketing balancing act to say the least. And then there’s the matter of targeting capabilities, which on TikTok are more or less hamstrung. (Wait a minute – what?! If this surprises you, then you may be behind on your reading. Important to catch up with last week’s post. Here's the link again. We promise it will be worth 5 minutes of your time. TikTok may be famous for its algorithm, not so much for its audience segmentation.)

TikTok thrives on the art of brevity and entertainment. Your content must engage and convey your message within seconds, 9-15 is optimal. And to do that you must not only know what it is you want to say, you must know what it is your audience wants to receive. While that’s true of any marketing channel, it’s do or die here. Understanding the unique language and rhythm of this platform is paramount. More bluntly, if your ad isn’t a video that is short, sweet, and entertaining, don’t bother.

Today we offer pro tips for doing just that. Read on to learn how to make your content feel native to TikTok’s seemingly all-knowing algorithm so you can maximize the impact of your ad spend. This post is a short read, and one you won’t want to miss.

Is TikTok effective for student recruitment advertising? An increasingly common head scratching good question.

Without giving it too much thought, you might assume, “Of course it is.” After all, isn’t TikTok the one surefire spot to find every Gen Z-er and their Gen Alpha sibs? 

Opportunities to Meet In Person 

The Intead team is gearing up for some amazing presentations and we hope you can join us. 

• AIRC Annual Conference – we’ll be offering our full day digital marketing workshop here in Phoenix, Dec 6-9, 2023 
• ICEF North America Workshop in Miami, Dec 11-13, 2023 

Let us know if you’ll come share a cup of coffee and a conversation about all things global and digital (info@intead.com) 

Continuing with the Tao of Tik Tok, statistics like these are telling:

• 76% of Gen Z say they use TikTok, surpassing even YouTube with a 71% Gen Z saturation rate, and Instagram at 66%. (source: YPulse)
• As of July 2023, TikTok had 122 million users in the US alone, followed by 100 million in Indonesia, 83 million in Brazil, 63 million in Mexico, 45 million in Vietnam. (source: Statista)
• As of November 2022, Douyin (China’s TikTok) had over 700 million active users, more than one-third of whom are under the age of 26. (source: Value Planet, Diesel Smart Numbers) Note: Douyin’s interactive format is the same as Tik Tok (same company), but the advertising platform in China is entirely separate from the platform for the rest of the world.
• The number of TikTok users are projected to grow to 955+ million by 2025. (source: Statista)
• 25% of the TikTok audience is under 20 years old, as are many of your prospective students. (source: Exploding Topics)
• 68% of TikTok users find its advertising content unique and different from all other platforms – a good thing if you want your brand to stand out. (source: TikTok)

Yet, there’s more to consider. For instance, unlike its organic For You feed, TikTok’s ad capabilities are, for now, more rudimentary, meaning you have to target a much broader audience on TikTok than you do, say, on Meta’s platform (Facebook and Instagram). There are simply less ways to find specific audiences on TikTok forcing you to cast a very wide net with your media buy. As a result, you reach more but less targeted eyeballs, which of course costs you. Not ideal. And then there’s the challenge of producing content that blends in seamlessly with the authentic, user-generated content. More on that in part 2.

Side note: there is a reason Meta’s media platforms are producing so much ad revenue. Meta has built the most user-friendly advertising management system (better than Google as a very close second). Marketers love these tools for their ability to design, launch, track, and optimize campaigns.

Still, we know you’re curious about how marketers can use TikTok. And your instincts tell you to give it a try. We’re right there with you. In fact, we’re having a lot of fun creating and playing around on its ad platform for a few of our clients even as we write this post. Stay tuned for our campaign learnings and results in a future post.

So, let’s talk all things TikTok advertising. Read on to understand how TikTok ad targeting works and what pitfalls to be aware of to make the most of this social media platform. 

Students and digital media, right? TikTok rules! Oh, and Instagram. But, email is dead. Search is dead. Facebook is dead. (Pro tip: these all still have value to you). 

Now entering the social media platform arena: Threads. 

So, the questions on your team’s mind: Is now the right time to add Threads as a tactical element to our student recruiting strategy? How hard could it be? Is there any value here? Is our audience here? 

Opportunities to meet in person:

The Intead team is gearing up for some amazing presentations and we hope you can join us. 

• CIEE 76th Annual Conference in Paris, Nov 8-10, 2023 
• PIE News Live in Boston, Nov 13-15, 2023 
• AIRC Annual Conference – we’ll be offering our full day digital marketing workshop here in Phoenix, Dec 6-9, 2023 
• ICEF North America Workshop in Miami, Dec 10-13, 2023 

Let us know if you’ll come share a cup of coffee and a conversation about all things global and digital (info@intead.com) 

The short answer to the Threads question: As of now, fall 2023, the Intead team leans toward the more measured wait-and-see approach. It’s early yet.  

There’s plenty of time to integrate this new platform should it fully take off. And there are more than a few social media users who really hope it does, especially in the midst of the chaos of Twitter, err, we mean X.  

What we know about Threads so far: 

• It aims to take X head-on, and with the full weight of Meta behind it, we give it a fighting chance. 
• More than 100 million users joined Threads within the first 5 days of its launch, making it the fastest-growing app in history. Proof that people were waiting for it. And further proof that Meta is a powerful force. 
• Yet, some wonder if that was a false start. Its user base promptly plummeted by over 80% in less than a month post-launch. And this is something we can’t ignore. 

Still, we know some social media mavens on your team are debating if now is the right time to integrate Threads into your social media arsenal. Is this one of those first-mover advantage things? After all, effective lead generation and brand strategy require you to stay up-to-date and constantly try new approaches. We get it and encourage you to read on to better understand if Threads is something your student marketing strategy needs right now. 

The last time we wrote about Instagram marketing was in 2016. A lot has changed since then. But not everything. It resolutely remains a visual communication tool. But is it still relevant? (It is.) Aren’t kids these days on TikTok? (Yes, that’s true, too.)

Here are the facts: 57% of Americans aged 12 to 17 use Instagram each week, and 63% use TikTok according to Forrester. Just as important are the 48% of 30-49 year-olds and 29% of 50-64 year-olds – many of whom are your prospective parents – who use the platform. Anyone still wondering if it’s relevant for student recruitment and enrollment? Didn’t think so.

If your institution is only doing organic posts to Instagram, or your Instagram paid campaigns haven’t reaped the return you’d hoped, read on for a look at how your team can use this platform to boost enrollment. This post will be beneficial for those ideating and managing your campaigns. That means, pass it on to others on your team responsible for this stuff if that's not you.

As with any social platform, there are two ways to work it: the free way or the pay-to-play way. We’ll take a look at both.

Let’s start with a cool stat: Google searches for “Influencer marketing" grew 1500% in the last three years. In 2019, the term "Marketing influencer" was searched 70,000 times a month! This according to Savica Dimitrieska and Tanja Efremova in their article, “The Effectiveness of the Influencer Marketing” published through Southwest University in Bulgaria.

Think YouTubers and TikTokers – content creators who are generating significant followings and translating that work into cash as they promote various products.

The question is: can this concept work for academia?

Our answer: yes, IF you can achieve true authenticity. If not, no. Full stop.

Academic administrators around the globe may be leaving a gap in their marketing strategy: the power of an influencer, but in the case of education, we are really talking about brand ambassadors who have influence with your target audience. In our view, true influencer marketing, which is growing globally, is a risky bet for the education market. But the concept, if adapted, has merit.

What we are saying is, recognize that you are not marketing alcohol, luxury vacations, apparel, or cosmetics and adjust the concept of “influencer marketing” accordingly. If that is unclear, give us a call.

When it comes to advertising and building trust, gone are the days of faceless testimonials and promotional brochures promising the ultimate educational experience. Generation Z values the opinions of social media influencers and bases their decisions on whether people they can relate to on YouTube give it a thumbs up or down.

A note of caution: marketing today is lightning fast and fickle. Your campus can be in the limelight one second, and culture canceled the next. 

Read on for a few more relevant stats and perspective on how to make brand ambassador marketing part of your approach to student recruitment.

You don’t need to be a CMO to know that there’s more to attracting students than coming up with a pithy headline for your Instagram ads and postcard mailers.

And yet, what we often see are institutions full of creative minds doing the same marketing initiatives year after year, not really realizing how they appear to their target audiences.

At the end of the day you want your institution to stand out in a field of sameness, ubiquitous blather, and endless repeats of campus images and smiling students with backpacks and laptops. You want to highlight your institution’s differentiators and deliver the right message to a targeted audience at the right time.

But we get it — whether it’s lack of budget, time, or most likely, both, swapping out last year’s campaign photos, shuffling around your headlines, and hitting a few buttons in Facebook Ads Manager are sometimes the only levers that are in scope. And establishing a feedback loop of performance analysis for continuous campaign iteration and optimization? An even more distant goal state.

So, before you reach for that updated “smiling student with backpack” image to juice your Fall 2021 recruitment campaigns, turn your attention to today’s post: 3 recruitment marketing ideas to help you reach students where they are right now.

We’re talking specifics on topics, audience, tone, and dissemination channels for campaigns that can set your institution apart and attract and nurture those high-quality leads you’re looking for. And what would an Intead blog post be without an insight on  how to use your data better?

Throw these ideas to your creative team and see if something valuable emerges from the brainstorm session. Something that truly fits your institution. 

Read on.

Remember Farmville? This one game grew to $200M USD in revenue! Now, not so much.

Remember Google Vine as short-form video? Kinda faded away with the advent of Instagram video.

So now, we consider TikTok and wonder, how long will this one last? This one is sophisticated and is already valued at more than $1B USD. This new marketing channel is powerful as long as you have the creative talent to use it.

The rule is: creative content rules. Period.

And the reason we are talking about it is that your target audience is spending a bunch of time there right now. The image above is captured from my 17-year-old niece's TikTok account. She is a content creator there and she and her friends have a great deal of fun (and spend way too much time) in and on TikTok. 

So, about TikTok...in May, we wrote about the growth of Chinese EdTech and what opportunities that presented. As of last year, Chinese startups received over 50 percent of all global capital invested in EdTech. This year, of the top six EdTech unicorns—private companies worth more than $1 billion—all but one was Chinese.

With the largest population in the world, China is automatically the greatest educational market. With a population of over 1.4 billion, there’s a market of more than 283 million students. With 17 million new babies born a year in China, this pattern isn’t slowing down.

Outside of the educational realm, tech is still booming in China, and one platform from China is now the most valuable startup in the world. What might this have to do with connecting you to those potential students in China—or anywhere for that matter?

Read on…

A lot of big news has come out of Iran this past year. With the finalization of a nuclear weapons agreement, U.S. and European sanctions have been lifted in Iran and political relations are improving, meaning there is more opportunity for recruiting international students from Iran. The numbers are looking promising for U.S. institutions.

Bottom Line: Iran’s number of university students is growing. But the number of slots available in Iranian universities is extremely limited. Resourceful Iranian students are looking beyond their borders in growing numbers. Iranian institutions want to ensure their smartest students devote their talents to Iranian ventures at home rather than abroad. There is a move to foster university partnerships where students receive only part of their education abroad. European institutions have been quick to jump on this trend and you might want to consider doing the same. But, if you are going to break into this market, you’ll want to focus on graduate level STEM programs and you’ll want to get to know the culture before you devote your resources.

Meet Us In Newport & Miami: Heading to the NAFSA Region XI conference in Newport, RI next week?  We’ll be presenting our latest recruiting insights. We'll also be in Miami this December at the AIRC and ICEF conferences with digital marketing presentations and workshops. We’d love to meet you and discuss the challenges you face in your work. Please be in touch if you'll be at any of these events--we'd love to meet you!

Read on for more perspective and some interesting stats about international student recruiting in Iran…

This year marked the 5th birthday of WeChat. Trust us, they had a lot to celebrate!

In April of 2015, it was reported that WeChat’s monthly users were second only to WhatsApp and far ahead of similar apps like Viber, Line or SnapChat. We should also mention (in case you don’t already know) that WeChat is almost exclusively used in China. Social media marketing staff take note!

If you look only to the usage rates of their Chinese users, WeChat beats other messaging apps by a wide margin. In 2015, WeChat was ahead of competitors by 25%. And most of their users? The young audiences, the prospective students, we are all trying to reach! If you haven’t been on WeChat in the past, it is no longer something you can ignore.

Just in case you haven’t heard of it (because you’ve been living in Antarctica or something), and you’ll want to hear about it if you want to recruit in China, WeChat is a messaging app. Back in 2014, we featured a two-part blog series on WeChat (Part 1 and Part 2). We hope you are using those resources. In June, eMarketer released a report on WeChat’s Chinese user base and how these users engage with the app. So, today we have more. 

Bottom Line: Get on WeChat. Chinese users make up nearly 93% (~700 million) of all WeChat users and its popularity surpasses any other similar Chinese messaging app. The app is becoming more and more integrated into daily life as WeChaters link their bank accounts to use the app for online shopping. Marketing on WeChat only promises to get more effective as time goes on. Pro tip: the stats in this post may help you justify increasing your international student recruiting budget if China is a primary target recruiting source for your institution. 

Meet Us In Newport & Miami: Heading to the NAFSA Region XI conference in Newport, RI (Oct. 18-20)?  We’ll be presenting our latest recruiting insights. And in December we will be in Miami at the AIRC and ICEF conferences with digital marketing presentations and workshops. We’d love to meet you and discuss the challenges you face in your work. Please be in touch if you'll be at any of these events.

Back to WeChat; read on...

We have another valuable digital marketing tool available to help you with your international student recruitment plans. Some of the statistics might be a little surprising on the surface. And we all know that statistics, on the surface, are not always what they seem.

For instance, did you know that based on Hootsuite user data, 74% of Facebook’s user base has some level of higher education while only 24% of Instagram’s user base claims that? Think about that for a second or two. How could that possibly be the case?

Our conclusion: Instagram users don’t feel the need to report their university level on their profiles. It’s just not that kind of platform. So while the statistic remains accurate, the story the data tells requires a bit more thought. Instagram users are not less intelligent. Seriously, some of our best friends are Instagram users. And we think they are quite smart! (Shhhh, we have to say that. They subscribe to this blog 😉).

With today’s blog, Emily used a Hootsuite report to develop a comparison of some of the global social media platforms by age of users, education level and global location among other key stats. The information is both thought provoking and helpful as you roll out your student recruitment social media/digital marketing strategy in key regions.

Be sure to tune in next week as well. We will share more information on virtual communities focusing on messaging apps like WeChat, WhatsApp, and even SnapChat.

Meet Us in Denver @NAFSA 2016: Learn from our latest research on how current global economic and political events impact students’ plans to study abroad. Schedule a time to chat with us during the conference.

Please read on for the link to our downloadable Virtual Communities Worksheet…