Driving share growth in International PGT markets
Most universities are currently not recovering the full cost of delivering their UG and Masters programmes to domestic students. It’s no surprise therefore that my recent assignments have largely focused on advising my clients how to grow their high margin International student numbers. Helping academics in particular understand what international students find attractive, tailoring programmes and their presentations to meet their needs better than competitive institutions. This summarises how I approach the task.
Project brief / data assembly
Agree desired outcomes, including scale of ambition and volumes.
University provides up to date subject HESA data for every UK university at programme level, including student provenance.
Together with conversion levels, enrolments and revenues by programme and current international recruitment strategy.
And latest 20/80 analysis showing most/least successful programmes or programme variants: which are recruiting, which are not?
Identifying the success drivers
Identify the most successful players in the market, wherever they are on the rankings spectrum, then analyse the reasons for their success.
Degree title: MA, MSc, MBA or ? Entry requirements? Are their programmes titles pre-fixed International? Do they offer integrated work placements exploiting the Graduate Visa route? How many offer multiple start dates? Is London/proximity to London a likely success factor? How do they overcome RG/QS prestige ranking challenge?
Degree content relevance/originality? New programme innovation? Does choice of electives allow personalisation? Industry involvement?
Review quality of their website presentations: plain English? Benefit-led? Academic/student videos? What’s their employment pitch?
Summarise lessons learned: which should be adopted, which not and why?
360° marketing plan
Develop a portfolio invigoration strategy based on the analysis above. This could be just presentational but is more likely to be fundamental.
The goal is to leapfrog current leaders to become the new best-in-class subject programme, not merely to achieve top parity.
Encompassing programme names and structure, start dates, opportunities for new complementary degrees, alongside deletions and consolidation.
Consider offering a 24 month option as default, with year 2 being a professional work placement.
Recommend balance between core and electives in subjects where (international) students clearly value personalisation.
For each programme, re-write the website introduction, based on the most powerful competitive proposition available.
Respecting the academic content, ie without dumbing down, re-write each programme introduction as a key marketing communication designed to be highly attractive to both international and domestic students – ie student benefit-led, not programme feature-led.
Add academic video introductions and some from past students, ensuring that each sync with the programme’s competitive proposition.