Flipping the script for international postgraduate recruitment
How we helped Loughborough University’s School of Social Sciences and Humanities to define more audience-focussed course propositions to support international postgraduate recruitment.
Context
There’s a conundrum facing anyone responsible for international postgraduate recruitment: why would someone choose your particular university, faculty and course over the hundreds of other options available to them?
At first glance the answer might seem obvious.
Talking to current students and staff, and working as part of the institution yourself, it’s evident that students value the experience you’re giving them. They love the interdisciplinary nature of the course, the expertise of the teaching staff, the diverse and inclusive culture, and the opportunities you’re providing access to. And of course there’s your rankings. Everyone agrees that there’s something distinctive and differentiating about what’s on offer.
The problem with this is it’s very much inside the box thinking. It’s about you, not about them. When you view the world from their perspective, you don’t actually look all that different from anywhere else. Everyone is saying pretty much the same thing. And with the challenges of international postgraduate recruitment showing no signs of letting up, that’s not a good prospect.
Objective
The School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Loughborough University approached us to help them resolve their particular version of this conundrum. Our task was to provide an objective outsider perspective, challenging their thinking to create a more compelling set of individual course propositions for Geography & Environment, Communications & Media, and English.
By doing so, our goal was to set the internal marketing team and course leads up for success: able to shape their own website course pages and other recruitment and outreach activities.
Approach
We knew we needed to help the School team to flip the script. That meant not starting with each course and its characteristics, but with a much bigger and more realistic question: what needs do prospective international postgrads have which Loughborough can be associated next to in their minds?
Insight
We began by mining existing sources of data for insight, including category reports from the likes of IDP Connect, and Loughborough University’s own postgraduate applicant survey. We then ran focus groups with existing international postgraduate students at departmental level, to really drill down into the motivations behind them wanting to undertake further study, how they went about choosing an institution, and why they ultimately selected Loughborough.
Having established those objective Category Entry Points, we went on to analyse how well the course offerings being communicated for Geography & Environment, Communications & Media, and English stacked up against these needs, not only at Loughborough but for their closest competitors. This exercise enabled us to identify a number of potential opportunities; in other words particular Category Entry Points which competitors weren’t associating themselves with strongly.
Refining the proposition
Having identified potential areas where Loughborough could carve out a more distinctive and competitive profile, we undertook a series of workshops with staff and professional services people from each department.
Sharing the insight and comparing with their own understanding of what their students were looking for.
Debating the areas of opportunity and how credibly the department could substantiate their ability to deliver on those particular needs.
Collaborating on writing a course-level proposition per team which pulled all of the thinking together, framed first and foremost in terms of audience need and then each course’s point of distinction versus competitors.
Outcome
The result of the process was a clearly articulated set of propositions which better articulated the strength of individual courses and gave the team greater confidence in communicating these. Over subsequent weeks the internal marketing team flowed these through into course level pages and brochures, while they also formed the basis for consistent messaging staff could refer to on international visits.
Dr Allan Watson, Director of Postgraduate Studies, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, said: “Working with Firehaus helped us to better see how prospective students make their postgraduate choices, and how we can better leverage our strengths and USPs to offer a unique and highly attractive offering in a crowded postgraduate market space.”