Rob Harris: Smart marketing essential to draw foreign students

Current efforts by New Zealand school and tertiary providers to attract more foreign students seem to be using methods that just don't 'wash' in an international marketplace.

Too often, in international education, what is in fact after-sales service is being picked over and worried about as if it were real marketing. I point the finger at boards of trustees and their tertiary equivalents for not stepping in when a policy decision is being made to get serious about foreign student enrolments.

This is not to say that pastoral care policies and home stay standards are unimportant. They are, but their administration should be placed in the hands of guidance counsellors, leaving the international officer to concentrate on marketing.

This may (shock, horror) mean appointing someone to the marketing role who is not a teacher. But I see it as entirely within the governance role of trustees, especially as they are likely to have business experience and connections, to oversee and direct a major initiative like an internationalisation programme.

Left to the principal, you will too often see an international officer selected from the staff room. A 15-year social studies teacher, who once spent two weeks in France and who is in need of a spell from the chalk face, may not have the skills and aptitudes to be an effective export marketer. And let's face it, export education is a marketplace and a very competitive one at that.

Let's look at some things international student recruiters should be doing:

First, you are selling a service - and for deferred delivery at that. Without a physical product to distract the customer, the documentation and support materials should receive more than the usual attention.

Quoting in New Zealand dollars shouts "it is going to be difficult to buy from me". In China the main foreign exchange provider, the Bank of China doesn't have NZ currency on offer so to pay your fees the Chinese student's RMB must be converted to US dollars and then to NZ dollars.

These two conversions plus service fees are cost additions that help consign New Zealand to the 'too hard' basket. Open a US dollar bank account, quote in US dollars and sell your expected receipts forward.

Many Asian currencies suffer from movement restrictions and uncertainties and who has a clue what the NZ dollar is worth? Every savvy Asian student knows what a US dollar is worth though. The perception of cost is important too, as on paper a quote in NZ dollars is a higher numerical figure than the same quote in US currency.

Websites are a powerful selling tool but remember the information is being interpreted in the home country with all the cultural filters in place. One major tertiary provider fills the international student pictures page of their website with smiling students bottle-feeding lambs.

It also suggests that a guide to NZ costs can be gained from the cost of a Big Mac and admission to a rugby international. Rugby, to soccer-mad Asians?

This approach invites the conclusion that students coming here are on a playway field trip. Asian students' parents often call the shots on choice of study destination, so it's better to fill 'social' pages with photos of proud parents attending graduations and attentive students listening to learn. Western teachers in clean, uncrowded classrooms.

In short, the 'social' pages are nothing of the sort. They are just as much part of your selling strategy as the pricelist.

Talking of prices, any retailer (and that's what you are) should be aware of 'price points' for their product. Look at baked beans in a New World supermarket. They are available at different price points from single-serve cans to catering packs with sizes in between.

Like beans, the price paid by an international student depends on how much they want to buy. Airfares are a constant but beyond that the cost depends on course length. A one-year post grad diploma costs less than a four-year bachelor's degree and so on.

In China, family incomes are increasing rapidly. This, coupled with the appreciation of the Renminbi, means that a one-year post graduate diploma that was financially out of the question when the student was a freshman, may be do-able three years later when he/she is a junior. Segment the market and sell to each as a unique group, not forgetting price as a factor.

It is a truism that the easiest customer to sell to is the qualified prospect. That is a person who in the period leading up to the buying decision has been sensitised (qualified) to buy from you. You can't start qualifying your prospects too early and New Zealand's current reliance on education trade fairs is not cost effective in my view.

I would go as far as to say that if a market has an education fair it is already too mature and hotly contested for a relative newbie provider like New Zealand. In China, the mature and 'over fished' markets are in the south and central east.

We should be looking more to the emerging markets in the northeast (Dongbei) region and the emerging western provinces and autonomous regions like Mongolia. There are plenty of tertiary institutions to choose from. I counted 43 in the Dongbei alone that had schools of mathematics. Add in the medical colleges and foreign language universities and the total would be well over 55 in just three provinces.

New Zealand does not have the resources or recognition value enjoyed by other provider countries, so we must be smarter. Individual NZ schools and tertiary providers must develop ongoing relationships with individual institutions in target markets like China - don't leave it to a national body. It will take repeated visits and you will drink a lot of green tea, but it will be worth it in the long run.

* Rob Harris spent twelve years with the Dairy Board followed by three with a knitwear exporter. He taught for two years in China and worked for eight years in education administration.