Promotional Strategy for Appalachian State University ...

[Pages:17]Promotional Strategy for Appalachian State University International Student Recruiting Plan

Casey Penn April Danyluk Danyelle Mitchell David Saide Danai Sakutukwa Sophie Xue Xu

1

Introduction

The promotional strategy for Appalachian State University (AppState) is based on a specific marketing mix of personal selling, publicity, advertising and sales promotion targeting international students. The marketing mix will be highly reflective of AppState's brand, mission and goals by way of promoting sustainability, highly ranked programs and campus internationalization. The promotional strategy operates within the current budget and recruiting timeline for international students based both domestically and abroad.

According to AppState's data on international students, 75% of international students arrive directly from abroad while 25% transfer from domestic schools. The promotional strategy focuses on the international market, but also distinguishes strategies for recruitment of domestic international students. The rationale for each strategy is presented in the following paragraphs according to the different segmented target markets.

Brand

Brand is very important in trying to effectively communicate to the masses the general mission and objectives of an organization. The brand of AppState should be clearly communicated through the different platforms of media communication and publications. In every form of publication, it should be clearly identifiable that AppState is a highly ranked university focused on sustainability that fosters a tight knit community. It would also be helpful to highlight the programs that international students are attracted to such as sciences & business, and the unique program offerings at AppState like Music Therapy, Appropriate Technology, Fermentation Science, Nutrition, and Risk and Insurance Management.

Personal Selling

According to the client representative, the most successful international student recruitment strategy for AppState has been personal selling. Personally meeting with prospective students and word of mouth promotion are effective ways to build a student's interest and trust in AppState. This strategy can be accomplished by utilizing faculty, students, and alumni to promote the school, and also by self promoting through technology resources like Skype and Google+ Hangouts. Personal selling can also take place through recruitment trips and campus outreach programs.

2

Utilize Faculty, Students, Alumni and Technology

Encouraging and training international alumni to recruit for AppState once they return to their home country is a powerful personal selling strategy. Before current international students finish their degrees, AppState admissions should promote voluntary student recruitment training programs for the students. These trainings should occur twice a year in both November and May in conjunction with the end of each semester. Trainings could include techniques for engaging an audience, preparing concise presentations, and personal storytelling. Alumni should also be provided with brochures and flyers to distribute to their former home institutions and high schools. As an incentive these trainings could include food and a completion certificate (Appendix A) that students can include in their resumes or portfolios.

A similar strategy for personal selling should be used with faculty who travel abroad. AppState should maintain close communication with traveling faculty and provide them with relevant promotional materials. The international recruitment office could politely and graciously encourage them to promote the institution to prospective students whenever possible. Faculty are critical ambassadors for the institution that should be consistently engaged by the recruitment office.

The current Holland Fellows Program carried out through the business department at AppState is another untapped resource for international student recruitment. Every year the highly competitive Holland Fellows Program takes 12 students to Shanghai and Hong Kong for a three week comparative business study with Fudan University students. There is potential to work with the program's faculty to incorporate AppState personal selling into a deliverable for the selected students.

For extra academic credit a group of Fellows could hold a small event at the partner universities to recruit students to AppState's degree programs. Since the fellows are filtered through the application process and they study a variety of majors, they are well positioned to represent the institution. The fellows could provide personalized information and a facetoface connection for the international students interested in studying in America. Once Holland Fellows return to AppState, they could work further with AppState admissions to follow up with the prospective students and maintain personal contact. This student initiated personal selling can be accomplished at no cost to AppState and the extra academic credit for the Holland Fellows could serve as incentive to enhance their academic accolades.

AppState admissions should also continue to utilize Skype presentations for EducationUSA offices. In addition to being virtually no cost to AppState, these presentations have proven to have a high rate of return. AppState should aim to give at least one skype presentation per month at the following EducationUSA centers: Hanoi, Beijing, Kathmandu, Bangkok, Islamabad, New Delhi, Riyadh, Seoul, Kuala Lampur, Jakarta, Hong Kong, and Mumbai.

3

Another free and effective resource for recruiting students virtually is Google+ Hangouts. Google+ is the second largest social media platform available on the web, and its sites rank highest in search engine optimization among social media platforms1. AppState should work toward incorporating Google+ into the personal selling strategy with the help of the new student work study hire mentioned in the publicity section below.

Domestic Recruitment

Personal selling strategies should also be used to recruit international students domestically. For example, taking current AppState international students to local community colleges and/or language school college fairs will give interested students a chance to gain information from someone with whom they directly identify. As incentive for international students to come along, AppState could provide them with free travel, paid lunches and approved time off from classes. These trips would provide the international students with opportunities to see other parts of North Carolina and give them valuable professional experience. Domestic recruitments trips should be required to feature at least two international students, and those students should also be staying in their own hotel rooms.

Several visits to current language school partners such as English Language Schools, Interlink, American Language Academy, and New Mind, and visits with up to 34 North Carolina Community Colleges (Appendix B) that work with international students should take place in January, March, September and October. A visit to Charlotte, NC should be planned due to English Language School's and Central Piedmont Community College's location in the city. Central Piedmont Community College is the 2year institution with the largest international student population in the state (approximately 5,000 students). Additionally, a trip to Greensboro, NC would allow a visits to both Interlink and American Language Academy in one trip. Five additional colleges are within a 70 mile radius and make for a worthwhile visit. Finally, a trip to Raleigh would allow a visit to New Mind and Wake Technical Community College, two schools with either an AppState partnership or strong support for international students.

Visits to three international schools in North Carolina and Georgia should also planned for 2015. Heritage Hall International School in Henderson, NC is approximately two hours from AppState. It is an independent private school serving K12. The school website highlights individualized education, unique curriculum, and a closeknit community all of which mirror the AppState vision and culture. The website also claims that their students "...attend, or plan to attend...all Carolina universities".2 A site visit and presentation highlighting the similarities

1 Taza, Phillipe. Google+ For Student Recruitment.

2

4

between Heritage Hall's and AppState's environment has recruitment potential. Given the proximity to AppState, follow up visits are also recommended.

An overnight domestic recruiting trip to Georgia should also planned for the year. The target schools are Riverwood International Charter School in Sandy Springs, GA and Atlanta International School in Altanta, GA. Riverwood is a specific school of interest because previous students have applied to and been accepted by AppState. Both schools have strong academics and English language training, and their students are well prepared for college coursework.

International Recruitment

As international travel is the largest portion of the budget and plays an important role in international student recruitment, a 16 day Asia/South Asia recruitment trip should be designed to meet the demands of the Admissions Office. Late February/early March is a good time for the AppState Admissions Office to travel because it is after the Chinese New Year holidays and during the AppState Spring break. This trip would send one recruitment staff member to visit China, Thailand, South Korea and Vietnam from February 27 March 14, 2015. A recent fare search on Travelocity revealed a cost of under $4000 for all the flights included in the recruitment trip (Appendix C). An additional $3500 has been allotted to cover hotels, food, incountry transportation, and other miscellaneous items needed.

In order to make this trip a success, it is necessary to network and build relationships with high schools and EducationUSA centers before embarking on the trip. A clear schedule should be set for each destination and promotional materials should accompany the recruiter. Preparation for the international recruitment trip would be an ongoing task leading up to the departure date in order to ensure the success of the recruitment trip.

Below are suggested places to visit with some contact sources to reach out to:

Seoul: Seoul Arts High School, Daeil Foreign Language High School, Gwha Girls Foreign Language High School, Seoul International School (Michael Colaianni, Head of Schools), Dwight School (Kevin Skeoch, Head of School), Yongsan International School of Seoul (Dave Baniszewski, High School Principal), Seoul Foreign High School (Stuart Kent, Principal)

Chengdu: Chengdu Shude High School, Chengdu Shishi High School, Chengdu No.7 High School, Chengdu International School, QSI International School in Chengdu (Director James Pilton), Kunming International Academy (1 hour flight from Chengdu, alumni faculty contact)

5

Bangkok: Burapha University, Triam Udom Suksa School, Suankularb Wittayalai School, International School Bangkok (Principal Phillip Bradley) Hanoi: Van An Chu High School, United Nations International School in Hanoi (UNIS Principal Pete Kennedy), Duy Tan University (1 hour flight from Hanoi), Conordia International School in Hanoi (Principal Patrick Frerking), Hanoi International School (Head of Secondary School David Miles)

Campus Outreach

Throughout the academic year, excluding July, August, and December, the AppState admissions office should collaborate with the Office of International Education and Development (OIED) to host monthly campus outreach activities. These events should take place on campus and be designed to engage current international students with activities such as coffee socials, language exchange, cultural competency trainings, and visits to local sites of interest. Students could be contacted through email and flyers could be posted around campus to promote the monthly events. As specified in the budget, each event would be allotted up to $100 each for necessities such as food and travel.

Publicity

Publicity is one of the more attractive options of the promotional strategy because it is, for the most part, free. The lone cost in achieving publicity is time investment. When aiming to create effective publicity it is important to consider the following things: target audience, platform and goal. With these factors in mind, the following publicity strategy, which can be used for attracting both domestic international students and those abroad, should be implemented.

Appalachian State Website and Social Media

The websites and social media sites of universities that do well at attracting international students are frequently updated, attractive and offer useful information to students. It is pertinent to use these tactics in order to successfully attract the target market. AppState's international student website and social media pages should be improved to provide necessary information for prospective students and the current international student body population. Improvements can be achieved with the assistance of a current student that has a high capacity for social media, video editing and web development.

6

In early January, the admissions office should hire a qualified and skilled workstudy student that can spend up to 10 hours per week on website improvement and social media maintenance. Throughout the months of JanMay, his or her job would be to film and upload personal interviews or stories from current international students, make the website more appealing, relevant and brand centered, update social media sites with interesting content, and include a Quicklink on the AppState home page to make the international site more accessible. A sample social media calendar has been included in the appendix (Appendix D).

The use of social media could connect with potential students and create a participatory space for those students to learn about AppState. Students are using social media now more than ever to talk about their experiences at a university. Evidence suggests that students are not finding the information they need through university social media sites and that many are unaware of their university's social media accounts.3 This clearly indicates that there is a need for universities to make apparent their presence on social media to attract a larger audience.

Social media sites can also be used to conduct contests to encourage current international students to post about their experiences on campus and encourage prospective students to apply and tell friends about AppState. For instance, there can be a photo/video contest for platforms like instagram, so current students have an opportunity to showcase their experience. A potential incentive or reward for the contest can be a feature on the international student website. A monthly contest schedule has been included in the appendix (Appendix E). Also, utilizing specific dates and times, such as International Education week, in combination with the photo contest can help garner interest in the sites. Using and/or creating key phrases, trending topics and "hashtags" about international students, education and AppState would be helpful in attracting interested international students to the sites. An example of this would be #internationalAppState . It is important that these sites are easy and efficient to use, and that they direct inquiries to the official international student page on AppState's website.

In order to monitor the efficacy of AppState's website and social media sites, there are a number of free online resources that should be considered to measure and analyze the sites. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn all have free analytic tools available that provide indepth explanations of site traffic. In addition, there are some free tools available to measure traffic for the school's website. This website introduces and explains how to use web analytic tools: .

Sponsored Publications

3 "University Recruitment: one fifth of students say that social media doesn't work" lmedia

7

As previously disclosed by our client, there is interest in utilizing sponsored publications in order to place a spotlight on Appalachian State and attract more international students to the school. In order to achieve this objective, AppState should actively seek to be publicized through English Language Schools. Publicizing through English Language Schools a very prominent source for international students to get information on English programs and university admissions, it is free of charge, and it is a good source to seek publication to achieve the goal of increased visibility. AppState should maintain consistent contact with this partner and ensure that the information reflected through this platform is up to date and relevant.

Advertisement

As AppState seeks to further internationalize the campus, advertisement is an important medium for establishing brand recognition which will aid in recruiting international students. Advertisement should primarily be based on AppState's branding guidelines which highlight campus sustainability, academic prestige, high rankings and Boone, North Carolina's tightknit supportive community.

International Advertisement

Print material to be created include brochures and flyers that will be sent to interested students, EducationUSA centers (Hanoi, Beijing, Kathmandu, Bangkok, Islamabad and New Delhi), high schools (Kunming No.1, Woodstock School, Ullens School, International School of Islamabad) and partner universities abroad (Northeastern University, Duy Tan University). Placement of advertisements will be strategic and in departments or offices that most strongly relate to college counseling and AppState's highly ranked academic programs (Business, Education, Sustainable Development). Continual presence of AppState's flyers at new or existing partner schools and centers will allow brand recognition to increase abroad. The international printing budget is $1000.00 and will primarily be used for updating and producing flyers and brochures. An additional $1200.00 is budgeted for mailing materials to interested students and centers. International postage is calculated by USPS Global Express envelopes ($45$50) for interested students and USPS Priority International Express envelopes ($3540) for schools and centers.

Domestic Advertisement

8

 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download