Last week I had a chance to go to a marketing conference focusing on Post Graduate recruitment and marketing. At the end of the day, there was a panel of current Post Graduate students and they fielded questions from the floor. One thing became very clear – international Post Graduate students knew before they started on their Undergrad qualifications that they needed postgraduate study; their career aspirations, and knowledge of the labour market meant it was a necessity. In contrast, the domestic Post Graduate students had, to some extent, fallen into the course – often they stayed at the same institution where they studied the UG course, and it sounded like they ended up doing a Post Graduate course as there was nothing better for them to be doing.
Quite a contrast – made me think about marketing teams, and whether they should be doing more work on the easy conversions – those suffering from inertia, not quite sure what to do, current students happy to stay on, OR whether they should focus their efforts on converting International students who know they need a Post Graduate qualification – there may be fewer of them, but engage and interact successfully, and it could be quite a comprehensive conversion sell.
Both have their merits, but it became clear that a lot of Post Graduate recruitment efforts are leaving marketing ££ on the table – neither engaging with those who know that they NEED Post Graduate qualifications, nor trying to mop-up current students who could be persuaded to stay at their current University.
