A new QS report, , emphasises that – especially because study abroad is such a large investment – students will definitely put aside their phones to get a tangible sense of what a school or institution can offer them. The report also offers a number of tips and best practices for effective event participation.

Katerina Kederova, Head of Operations at QS and an expert in student recruitment events, explains that:

“Nothing can replace a face-to-face interaction. Higher education is a massive investment and psychologically people want to ‘see’ what they are signing up to, and to whom they are giving their money. It’s the same as with any large spend in life. Most people wouldn’t buy a house on the internet without talking to the person selling it, seeing the property and ideally meeting the people that live there.”

And Aled Owens, Vice President of Business Development & Strategy for QS, notes that,

“I have seen institutions focus heavily on stand-alone web and email content, but candidates tell us that the in-person meeting has actually become more important with the increase of information being delivered to them virtually.”

As much as websites can provide in terms of information, very few can anticipate every question an international student might have about an institution or about how to apply. And as the QS report underlines, students can get frustrated if they aren’t getting everything they need from a school’s website – e.g., when their questions aren’t answered quickly enough, when a site isn’t well designed, or when they can’t easily find the information they’re looking for.

Offering live chats through the institutional website and replying quickly to email queries can go a long way to resolving this kind of frustration. And then there’s the opportunity to send representatives to students’ towns or cities to commit even more to answering questions students may have. Such an investment sends a strong positive signal to students about the institution or school’s credibility and respect for students.

Part of a larger strategy

The best-case scenario when it comes to an overall recruiting effort is one where the institution is delivering a solid digital experience that can ground and amplify the conversations that take place at student fairs or other in-person events.

Advance planning is key and QS highlights the importance of getting the word out on digital channels in advance in order to maximise attendance and interest among prospective students and partners:

“The best results materialise from those institutions who create a buzz on social media and advertise on local platforms and through their own channels, including websites and newsletters.”

Ms Edwards notes that fairs often send out a database of registrants beforehand “which can be harnessed to send a message out,” and that the institution itself should email its own database of prospects prior to the event.

While at the fair, representatives can refer prospects back to the institutional websites and social media channels, or set the stage for other follow-ups, to keep the conversation going long after the event has ended.

Prepare to stand out

Especially as the competition will be intense for the attention of students or partners at an event, paid advertising on digital channels can make a difference in helping a brand to stand out, says QS. Further, they note that the return on investment from an advertising campaign can be significant: “A small amount of ad spend can significantly increase the value you take from an expensive event trip.”

Institutions can also differentiate themselves from the competition with advance research and planning for the dynamics of the local student market. If affordability is an issue, for example, as it is in so many emerging markets, extra promotion of scholarships or work opportunities for visiting students will be a winning strategy. Or if parents are heavily involved in decision making for study abroad, look for ways to assure parents that regular communication with them are integrated into the study abroad experience.

Ms Edwards advises marketing teams to “stay informed about the local conditions of the country you are exhibiting in and what it takes for a student from that country to go and study abroad at your institution.” This includes an awareness of current trends in student visa processing, currency fluctuations, and more.

Consider collaboration

Collaborating with other institutions and schools around events can also be a compelling option in some cases, says QS: “The macro message that multiple schools can drive will often be more enticing than anything an individual school can deliver.” A well-organised collaborative promotion can position a university among a group of quality institutions and can make it much more visible and attractive to students as a result.

The QS report presents several case studies to illustrate the value of collaboration, including one in which Canadian MBA programmes joined together on panels and at events to demonstrate why their campuses – in general – are such attractive places to study. Their message, “There is something for everyone,” summed up the reality that there is a wide diversity of options in terms of where MBA schools are located in Canada, how long programmes run, and what the focus of each programme is. Together the institutions were better placed to convey the message than had they been apart, and so the message reached a broader group of prospects – and had a greater impact – than it would have otherwise.

The opportunity to engage

It makes no sense to go to the expense of sending a representative to another country if that representative isn’t prepared, ready to engage, and able to talk knowledgeably to students about their needs and concerns. Representatives also learn far more about a local market at recruiting events than would otherwise be possible, and they can bring this knowledge home to strengthen the recruitment effort for far longer than the event itself.

Events give skilled representatives the chance to share a laugh or a smile with students and connect with them through real conversations. As an article in the  observes about the value of face-to-face meetings in business, “It’s the intangibles that matter 
 [such as] a level of trust from a casual conversation and a handshake.”

And writing in the , Cornell University’s Vanessa Bohns explains that her research reveals that in-person contacts can be more than 30 times as effective as text-based communication. “We have found,” she says, “that people tend to overestimate the power of their persuasiveness via text-based communication, and underestimate the power of their persuasiveness via face-to-face communication.”

Give students more opportunities to connect with you

While a skilled representative can achieve a great deal at a recruiting event, they can achieve still more if (a) they are able to refer students to a compelling institutional website and (b) they can direct them to testimonials, videos, or live chats with current students or alumni. For more on how to help prospects connect with current students and alumni, please see our recent article Three smart ways to give recruitment marketing a boost.

For additional background, please see:

• “Three smart ways to give recruitment marketing a boost”
• “Pleased to meet you: The business case for face-to-face”

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But while virtual communication is certainly efficient – not to mention convenient and inexpensive – research shows that overreliance on it can hamper the achievement of important long-term business goals. Face-to-face meetings may require a greater investment of time and money in the short term, but they are powerful catalysts for establishing, deepening, and maintaining key business relationships.

It starts in your brain

Face-to-face meetings stimulate our brains in ways virtual meetings cannot. Researchers from Beijing Normal University found that because it allows participants to read each others’ facial expressions and body language, and because participants can actually see how involved and invested others are in the conversation.

This non-verbal language can dramatically affect the result of the meeting or conversation. Researchers from MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory, in observing hundreds of groups interacting face-to-face for business, found that:

“Usually we can completely ignore the content of discussions and use only the visible social signals to predict the outcome of a negotiation or a sales pitch [and] the quality of group decision making.”

The relatively intense eye contact present in face-to-face meetings also helps participants to build trust and connection – crucial foundations for successful long-term relationships.

Trust fuels results

In the context of international education, trust is a key consideration for educators, agents, and students. Study abroad is a big decision and a significant investment, so students need to be sure they can trust the information given to them about schools.

Recruiting international students similarly involves a complex set of decisions and processes, and relies on strong working relationships between trusted partners, including educators and agents. Such trust and personal connection can be difficult to establish though virtual and/or digital means alone.

Take, for example, a Crowne Plaza study of 2,000 business people worldwide that found , because such contact delivers benefits not achievable by other means.

Nearly half of the business people surveyed believed they had lost a contract or client due to insufficient face-to-face meetings, and 81% said face-to-face meetings have the edge on virtual meetings when it comes to building strong client relationships.

The respondents considered “starting a new business relationship, finalising a deal, and negotiating contracts” the areas where in-person contact matters the most.

Mixing face-to-face with virtual

While business travel for face-to-face meeting time is important, most institutions and businesses will have budgetary constraints limiting how often this can happen. The good news is that quality beats quantity when it comes to in-person meeting time. For many, this means that while virtual channels – email, Skype, video conferencing, webinars, social media, and others – may compose the largest proportion of contacts over time, well-chosen face-to-face meetings (e.g., via a FAM tour or attending an education conference or student fair) will be a critical step in driving business results.

In 2010, The Maritz Institute and Cornell University’s Center for Hospitality Research published a study called The Future of Meetings: The Case for Face-to-Face, which found that the best uses of face-to-face meetings are:

1. To capture attention, especially when new ideas or particularly important ideas are being presented. People participating in a face-to-face meeting cannot multi-task the way they might in a virtual meeting, so they are more likely to be focused on the agenda and goals.
2. To inspire a positive emotional climate and a real sense of connection.
3. To build human networks and relationships. For example, business executives participating in a Forbes Insight research study said the most important benefit of face-to-face meetings was the opportunity to “build stronger, more meaningful business relationships.”

In the context of educator-agent relationships, face-to-face meetings might therefore be most important:

• When first deciding whether or not to work together;
• When familiarising agents with the campus and key benefits of studying at a school;
• As a routine check-in opportunity or reward perk when agents are clearly demonstrating they are consistently placing students who are a good match for the school, to keep the positive energy and momentum going in the relationship.

The relative infrequency of such in-person meetings relative to all the other virtual communication that goes on between an agent and the school they represent can make these meetings all the more special and productive. A school’s commitment to investing in them – whether on campus, at an industry event, at the agency itself, or on-site at an education fair with students – shows the agent they are valued partners in the school’s recruitment efforts. The personal connection they help to establish is then more likely to carry over to routine virtual communication, and to make the latter more productive as well.

Make it worth it

A face-to-face meeting is a special and important opportunity that calls for careful preparation, planning, and follow-up. Making the most of in-person contacts can be an invaluable way to distinguish yourself, and your institution or agency, in a crowded field.

In a previous șÚÁÏčÙÍű Monitor article, we noted how an audience member attending a seminar on FAM tours spoke up to share her memories of a tour organised by a university: “She remembered everything about the tour, from the beautiful basket of local food every participant received to red carpet treatment with a photographer capturing it all 
 and she summarised, ‘They take such good care of their visitors.’”

As even this single example reflects, face-to-face meetings, wherever and however they occur, present a unique opportunity to create the connections that fuel lasting business results and that create competitive advantage in the marketplace.

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A recent study from the International Association of Language Centres (IALC) found that agents consider FAM tours to be one of the best ways of establishing and strengthening relationships with an institution or school; for responding agents, these tours were second only to meeting at a networking conference or workshop.

Why is the FAM tour such an important tool? There are three main reasons:

1. Agents get a real sense of the institution they are representing – not the institution on paper or the web, but the people and passion behind it, from school staff and professors to current students. This allows the agent to speak about the school with much more authority and credibility to prospective students and parents.
2. Institutions can convey to agents just what it is that makes them special – sometimes the only way of doing that is to show, rather than tell. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, brands are pressed to show how they are different than other choices, and what makes them the best in certain areas. The FAM tour allows institutions to demonstrate their difference to agents, who are then equipped to pass it on to students.
3. Related to both of these first two factors, agents who attend well-executed FAM tours gain first-hand knowledge of an institution, and this provides the foundation for them to be confident and accurate in representing an institution – and better able to determine which students would be well-suited to apply to the institution.

How do FAM tours work?

FAM tours can be organised by institutions and schools, associations, governments – or third-party tour organisers under contract. They typically include seminars, staff presentations, campus and surrounding tours, and socio-cultural activities. They are often scheduled in conjunction with major workshops or conferences for which large numbers of qualified agents are already travelling to a given country or region.

Shoko Morimoto and Christina Thatcher, both of , gave a compelling seminar on FAM tours at the 2015 English UK Marketing Conference last February. Their session was inspired by a seminar the year before from noted author and speaker and they drew from Mr Ramm’s ideas, and their own experience, to illustrate the role of FAM tours in the agent-educator relationship via stages likened to a romantic relationship.

The first stage is when the agent and institution first connect, often at a networking event, and get the sense that they like each other. The second, “Dating,” is where the FAM tour shows up alongside follow-up contacts via email, telephone, or social media, and a school representative visiting the agent in their office. Ideally, “engagement” and “marriage” (contracts, long-term partnership) follow – with a “family” (the agent sending students to the school) following.

The life cycle of the agent-educator relationship. Source: Shoko Morimoto and Christina Thatcher

Running a successful FAM

Ms Morimoto and Ms Thatcher offered these tips for organising a successful FAM tour:

Six to nine months before:

• Arrange the tour around a fun local event/time of year.
• See if other schools want to participate, to promote the destination as a whole.
• Design a quality experience – it doesn’t make sense to try to do it as cheaply as possible, since you want agents to feel special and excited to represent your institution. This could involve a gala dinner, nice accommodations, special activities, etc.
• See if your local tourism board or association wants to support the initiative, via sending a representative to attend, providing gifts, etc. They emphasised how much gestures like these can make agents feel like VIPs.
• In the draft itinerary, make sure enough time is allotted to touring agents through the city or town and surrounding area.

Six months before:

• Advertise the FAM tour via the school website, social media, emails, etc.

Two months before:

• Make sure all the details fall into place, including not only flight and arrival info but also whether agents have special dietary restrictions. This is the time to make sure everything is set for success.
• Make a FAM tour handbook for agents and send it out to participants to orient them beforehand to what they can expect.
• Buy small gifts for agents to provide a tasteful (and easy to pack!) souvenir of the visit.
• Plan publicity opportunities to capture as wide an audience as possible.

For agents and students, too

At a joint presentation at the 2014 Annual Conference of the Canadian Bureau for International Education (CBIE), ZiPing Feng of Thompson Rivers University () and Geoff Wilmshurst from also highlighted the important role of FAM tours in education marketing and recruitment.

Mr Feng noted that TRU invites both new and current agents with whom they already have relationships to come on FAM tours. With new agents, he stressed the importance of having the agents experience the destination, as much as the school or campus – especially if the school is in a relatively unknown town or city. It reassures new agents about where exactly they would be sending students if they worked with the school in question.

A recent FAM tour at Thompson Rivers University

For current agents, Mr Feng noted that the purpose of a FAM tour is to reward agents who are performing well and provide them with an incentive for continuing to represent the university so well. This kind of FAM tour also provides agents with the most up-to-date programme information, further strengthens their knowledge of the institution and working relationships with staff, and reinforces their commitment to representing the university.

TRU also hosts FAMs for prospective students, especially those in pathway programmes, to provide a preview as to what life as a student at Thompson Rivers would be like. An audience member at the CBIE seminar described a recent FAM tour for 80 students which yielded several new applications shortly after.

Mr Wilmshurst added that in his opinion, FAM tours are one of the best marketing investments an institution or school can make.

Focus on experience, and focus on making it special

The discussion during the CBIE seminar turned to the question of the main goal of a FAM tour. Mr Feng answered: “Have them see what they cannot see any other way, what a brochure or website cannot provide: an experience.” Audience members agreed, and noted how many agents tell them that what they need more of to be supported is not “details,” but more of a “feeling” about a school and destination.

Running through both the Morimoto/Thatcher presentation at English UK and the Feng/Wilmshurst seminar at CBIE was a common theme: to make the FAM tour worth the investment, and to have it be deemed a success by participants, it has to be done with great care and generosity.

As Mr Feng was speaking about Thompson Rivers’ approach to FAM tours, a member of the audience spoke up about having been on a TRU FAM tour several years ago. She remembered everything about the tour, from the beautiful basket of local food every participant received to red carpet treatment with a photographer capturing it all. She summarised: “They take such good care of their visitors.”

And that’s really the point. The FAM tour is a school’s chance to jump out of all the brochures and competing websites and stand out as a truly special, exciting place to be. Making FAM tour participants feel special – as honoured VIPs visiting your institution or school – is a critical step toward that goal.

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