Studybritish.com is our exclusive platform for generating student enquiries. Members of Studybritish.com benefit from being on the most focussed website for study in the UK in the region, with an optimised profile in the right language.
The annual membership package includes:
- Fully optimised and translated profile
- A managed £1000 PPC campaign to generate enquiries
- Additional managed PPC campaigns at cost price
- Social media links and regular articles
- Monthly reports
- A ‘Shout Package’ (2 weeks online & real world marketing) to promote your visit/event in-market
- Follow up / conversion provided in-market by Levant Education Study Abroad
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
While most UK schools and universities are now investing in some form of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on search engines and social media platforms nationally, PPC for international student recruitment is still relatively under-utilised, due to complications such as language and cultural differences.
Where it is attempted, advertisers often target the wrong platforms, or use keywords/phrases better suited to an English speaking audience. There are clear competitive advantages for those who do some research, harness local knowledge and prepare accordingly, as well as cost effectiveness and ROI benefits.
For many years international marketing managers have committed serious budget to attending fairs, unsure of how they were promoted and usually feeling like the students attending are either at a very early stage in their research about study abroad, or actually interested in something related but a million miles from studying in the UK.
For example, many students attend fairs in Turkey because they see advertising about work & travel programs, scholarships or competitions to win prizes. Exhibitors pay a fortune to meet the random results of such marketing.
With most pre-purchase research carried out online these days, PPC advertising offers a much more targeted way to reach students – and you only pay when the student has shown an interest. Anyone searching for ‘work and travel’ will be safely guided to a suitable site, while a student searching for ‘UK master in Engineering’ or ‘language course London’ for example, can be directed to the right information.
In sales, we always prefer qualified leads, and the beauty of PPC advertising is that the leads, or prospective students, qualify themselves!
The main challenges for international student recruitment concern linguistics and specific market knowledge. Not only does the landing page designed to catch the students need to contain the relevant information in the right language, the PPC advertising needs to use the right combination of keywords and phrases that enhance conversions and beat the competing advertisers.
Before you even get to designing a PPC campaign, you need to be sure you will be using the right platforms. In Turkey, 91% of searches are carried out on google.com.tr in the Turkish language. Facebook is widely used, as is Twitter and Linked In. In Azerbaijan different platforms are effective in different combinations. A well-managed campaign will pay attention to bidding strategies, budgets and scheduling to enhance the conversion rates of any campaign.
You may be very familiar with the keywords that students are using to search your university domestically, but for successful PPC campaigns in Turkey, for example, local assistance is invaluable both for campaign design and lead conversion. Simply translating your existing content or campaigns, and not taking into account cultural subtleties and up-to-date searching patterns, will harm results. And without in-market conversion support, the whole campaign will have been a waste of time and budget.
Click here for an example of a landing page in Turkish, or here for Azerbaijan, on our targeted site for UK education enquiries, Studybritish.com.
Universities
Language Schools