The international student experience begins long before students arrive in a new country and walk on to campus. It takes shape when the student is still far away and considering a shortlist of schools. Institutions that provide stellar encouragement and support during this period are building trust and satisfaction even before students are enrolled.

Brand image is built over multiple touchpoints

If you have ever bought a pair of jeans, a digital device, or any other product online, you know how rewarding it is when a brand creates anticipation and excitement before your purchase. You know the satisfaction of getting an immediate response to your questions and reassurance that should you need to make a return, there is a fair process for doing so.

Once you鈥檝e made your purchase, you look for email updates on your order, estimated delivery dates, tracking information, and notifications about any delays. You grow more eager when you go to your inbox and there鈥檚 a message with an anticipatory subject line, e.g., 鈥淵our stunning new jeans are on their way!鈥�

When the package arrives, you are delighted to see your purchase wrapped beautifully in tissue paper, contained in a sleek, branded box, or accompanied by a personalised note. In fact, 鈥渦nboxing鈥� videos 鈥� where purchasers ooh and ahh as they open their packages 鈥� are so popular that they often go viral on social channels. They are also perfect examples of the power of word-of-mouth marketing.

Clearly, a great deal of brand engagement happens before consumers ever try on or try out their purchase. Online brands that provide great service and communications before and directly after a purchase encourage a positive consumer mindset that inspires satisfaction right from the get-go.

Jeans and headsets are one thing. Study abroad is another 鈥� and it is much, much more
of an investment. Yet many schools miss the opportunity to deliver gold-standard service to prospects still deciding where to go and to keep inspiring confidence after students have applied.

Study abroad begins at home

When designing pre-enrolment student support, imagine a prospect sitting in a living room chatting with family and friends about institutions on their shortlist. Parents are naturally worried and determined to make a good choice. After all, they care deeply about their children鈥檚 happiness and safety and often make the financial investment in study abroad. Friends may also be considering foreign schools or universities, and so there is vigorous debate about the pros and cons of various options.

That living-room discussion touches on all the typical considerations: rankings, affordability, quality, location, visas, programmes, work opportunities, possible scholarships, etc. But also: Which institutions have great websites? Which institutions make it easy for students to contact them?

You can imagine parents poring over emails from institutions to compare pros and cons. And they aren鈥檛 just looking for information. They notice if the tone is professional and friendly, and they notice when an admissions staff member offers to talk personally to them about a programme. They like impressive percentages about post-graduation employment rates. If parents aren鈥檛 proficient in English or another language of study, they appreciate an o聣 er to have information and answers translated into their first language 鈥� which is becoming much easier to do with AI tools, and which is just beginning to happen at some institutions.

Students, meanwhile, look for prompts to speak with student ambassadors, offers to connect with the career services team, and housing assistance. They like links leading to virtual tours of campus facilities and 鈥渄ay-in-the-life鈥� videos of students having fun at orientation and graduation ceremonies, attending lectures, enjoying meals with friends, and interacting with industry professionals as part of their programme.

If those students and parents were looking at communications from your school or university, would they be impressed? Would your email and website strategies truly represent what it is like to study on your campus? If not, it鈥檚 time for a review and rethink.

Keep it going

Congratulations! The prospect you鈥檝e been handling with great care has decided to apply! Ahh, all that effort was worth it. But that鈥檚 not where it ends.

Kasper Baars, head of university partnerships at Uni-Life, notes: 鈥淔or many institutions, the post-application phase is where things go quiet. Students go dark. Engagement drops. And teams shift their focus to the next cycle. But this silent stretch is actually one of the most critical moments in the entire journey.鈥�

Mr Baars continues: 鈥淭he admissions process isn鈥檛 just about checking boxes and verifying documents; it鈥檚 about sustaining momentum, building trust, and reassuring students that they鈥檝e made the right choice.鈥�

As students wait for a visa decision, your institution could:

• Provide one-on-one guidance about accommodation, academic expectations, study tips, course structure, reading lists, etc.;
• Guarantee late admission in the event of visa decision delays;
• Deliver virtual tutorials for students who may need language support;
• Create virtual meet-ups with other international student applicants to start creating community.

Roll out that welcome mat

When new students arrive on campus, arrange for airport greetings and transportation to ensure their first impression of your country and school is incredible. When students tuck in for bed on their first night, you can be sure they are messaging with family and friends at home and posting photos and videos before they go to sleep.

For additional background, please see:

• “Five key steps to driving ROI from your student ambassador programme“
• “黑料官网 Podcast: Beyond the offer letter: The services that drive international student success“
• “How likely are students to recommend your institution?“

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Respondents to a new survey of senior HE marketing staff used terms like 鈥渟erious,鈥� 鈥渋nstitutional,鈥� 鈥渃onservative,鈥� and 鈥渙bsolete鈥� to describe university brands. Nearly three in four (72%) said they believed that university brands could not be counted among the world’s most exciting brand identities. “Higher education marketers know what good looks like,” says the survey report. “[They] understand brand. But too often, they see universities falling short, stuck in legacy behaviours, risk-averse in tone, or focused more on internal politics than audience resonance.”

Those observations come from , primarily in the UK but with contributions from Egypt, Germany, Spain, and the US as well. The survey was jointly carried out in June 2025 by HE marketing consultancy Education Marketer and brand specialists Firehaus.

The survey findings are fascinating for the gaps they reveal between marketing and branding expertise within higher education institutions聽and actual practice within the sector.

For example, 81% of respondents said students should be involved in brand development, but only 23% engage students in that work. And while 75% said improving the university website is a priority, only 39% reported progress.

The following graph highlights similar gaps between important aspects of brand behaviour (that is, the ways in which a strong brand should “think and act”) and the extent to which institutions are actually implementing those aspects.

“There鈥檚 broad agreement that universities should act with consistency, express a clear and differentiated position, and engage audiences through emotionally resonant storytelling,” says the report. “These are behaviours grounded in well-established brand thinking, but they remain far from the norm in practice … In a competitive environment, good brand behaviours are not optional extras. They are the building blocks of distinctiveness and long-term value. If consistency, differentiation and emotional resonance are widely agreed upon, their absence in delivery is not a creative issue. It is a strategic risk.”

Mind the gap

When asked what gets in the way of more effective brand development, the survey respondents cited a number of issues, as illustrated in the following chart. Note that among the top responses are things like “Branding is seen as marketing’s job only,” or “Risk aversion,” “Siloed departments,” and “Internal politics.”

Each of these responses reflects structural issues within institutions that constrain the development and execution of a more distinct or robust strategy. As one respondent, a senior marketer at a UK institution, put it, “We start off bold and dilute because of decision by committee. It鈥檚 embedded in the culture.”

The report adds that, “The real challenge is that brand in HE is still too often treated as communication rather than behaviour. Institutions need to embed their brand strategy into daily decision-making and interactions to build relevance, trust, and loyalty over time.”

The report authors sum up the situation like so: “The barriers HE marketers face are not marketing problems. They are organisational ones. Risk aversion, internal politics, and structural silos are not things that better campaigns can fix. Brand strength comes from alignment, clarity, and leadership commitment. Where those things are missing, brand-building will always stall. Institutions need to stop treating the brand as cosmetic and start treating it as core infrastructure. That shift begins at the top.”

Scale of opportunity

The survey asked respondents what they would do with their branding if they had no barriers or constraints.

The responding marketers said they would reposition their institutions with greater humanity, clarity, and with a greater focus on students. “They described brands that are less formal, less stuffy, and more aspirational, empathetic, and student-centred,” notes the report.

That student focus came through loud and clear at this stage of the survey, with marketers indicating they wanted to make much greater use of the student voice, and even to let students lead brand development. 鈥淪tart with the students,鈥� said one respondent, 鈥渢heir needs, wants, aspirations.鈥�

Others saw an opportunity to build more dynamic and lively institutional brands, which the report characterises as: “Distinct, emotionally engaging, and unapologetically true to their purpose. The opportunity isn鈥檛 to invent more. It鈥檚 to express better.”

“The raw ingredients for great branding are already present in universities: rich stories, social impact, diverse communities, world-class research and bold ideas,” add the authors. “What is often missing is the strategic coherence and creative confidence to bring them together. Institutions that build their brands around what they can say and who they can be will cut through.”

For additional background, please see:

• “Can you spot the difference? The search for a distinct education brand“
• “Emotion-based branding strategy connects feelings to actions“

The post What is holding back brand strategy in higher education marketing? appeared first on 黑料官网 Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.

— Goethe

The US-based public relations agency MSLGROUP has a nice summary post of the 22nd Annual AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education in Chicago. The piece has a number of important observations from the AMA symposium, including two that really jumped out for us.

First, the changing role of marketing in higher education and, in particular, an increasing shift from tactical to strategic concerns. “Gone are the days of a client service model within marketing or as one speaker dubbed ‘an in-house Kinko鈥檚’ pumping out marketing collateral, logos and taglines like an unstoppable machine. Rather, today鈥檚 marketers are driving transformative change within their organizations and leading strategic communications through rebranding efforts.”

This recalls an excellent article last year on that we highly recommend. “” poses five key strategic challenges for educational marketers with respect to brand, goals, risk tolerance, and the role of marketing within educational institutions. For example, “If you can鈥檛 articulate and prove what makes your institution ‘excellent,’ clearly and succinctly, you鈥檒l never be able to develop an effective marketing plan.”

MLSGROUP’s AMA summary also speaks to the importance of boldness in marketing strategy. “One of the bright spots I noticed at the conference was hearing about the schools that have taken big risks and reaped bigger rewards due to their marketing campaigns. This was particularly evident in discussions around [a successful real-world example focused on] one-to-one marketing in student search.

Building a highly-customized communications approach with students to pull them in to participate in a dialogue rather than push out content led to an increased response rate, lowered costs and data-driven decision-making. The campaign incorporated video and personalized prospective student URLs that evoked humor, organizational personality and ‘edginess’ and was worth the risk. As stated [by one panelist], 鈥榳hat do you have to lose?鈥�”

Please see the complete post from MLSGROUP on the MLS Chicago blog: “Higher Education Marketers Are Changing the Game.”

Sources: MLSGROUP,

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Well this blog post from bestcollegesonline.com will tie it all together for you with their summary of “20 Cool Trends in College Marketing”. The post features some good real-world examples and useful stats for a range of marketing tactics and strategies, including the following.

• The now-famous YouTube clip of a day in the life of Macalester College President Brian Rosenberg.

• The use of QR codes in Highbury College Portsmouth’s .

• The extensive archive of crowdsourced photos in the .

• Prominent that tie back to Facebook’s Places product.

• Interesting statistical models for predicting student retention rates.

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The article is framed around concepts in higher education marketing but they apply nicely to all education sectors and we’ve adapted them here for the sake of a quick summary.

1. Educational institutions will become increasingly differentiated
2. Investment in education marketing will increase
3. More marketing talent will be attracted from outside the education sector
4. The use of CRM techniques and systems will become more widespread
5. There will be greater attention to measuring marketing effectiveness and ROI

Read the complete article on the .

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