MH: It’s been a really exciting year. We’ve added some new workshops, some new divisions – ICEF Media, which does video production for international education clients.

“What we were seeing was a lot of educators that wanted to recruit international students, but they didn’t have the expertise”

But perhaps the most exciting development for me personally is we’ve added ICEF educator development advisory services. One of the things we saw was when clients came to an ICEF workshop, we’d ask if they were going to register for the following year and they’d say they didn’t see a return on investment. They’d say ‘we met with agents, we signed some contracts, but we just didn’t see any students’. And you’d drill down on that and you’d say: did you train the agents, did you visit them in country, did you do any material distribution? Those things that seem really rudimentary from a marketing perspective. And the answers came back as no, no, no, no, no.

So what we were seeing was there were a lot of educators that wanted to recruit international students, but they didn’t have the expertise. So we’re putting together packages – whether it’s a peer program called Coach at our event that pairs first timers with more experienced educators, or ICEF Mentor, which is basically a market readiness package, where we work together to identify educators’ strengths and weaknesses. We’ve been getting really good feedback on that.

The PIE: And tell me about the agent training you’ve launched.

MH: Yes, we’ve got agent training rolling out across different markets. We launched the Irish course, which is for agent training, plus of course the Canada course, the US course, the China course.

I think it’s really important on both sides that people are professional and know how to work together and maintain those relationships. When there’s a disconnect in the levels of sophistication or knowledge or experience, that can lead to conflict or to poor results. So both training the educators and making sure the agents are really up to par is a focus that we wanted to bring.

“When there’s a disconnect in the levels of sophistication or knowledge, that can lead to conflict”

The PIE: Do you think people are moving more towards agent certification as a way to discern which agents are reputable?

MH: Yes, and in some countries more than others. The US especially, they’re new to working with agents, it’s more conservative; the UK, Australia, Canada, have been in the game a lot longer and know how to approach that. For a newcomer working with agents, having that certification in place is especially important. I always advocate doing your own reference checks as well, but more and more we see clients looking for that. In an industry as big as ours, it’s important to have as many quality assurance measures as possible.

Another thing about the training course is that it’s a professional development opportunity. That’s my feeling about the agent training: it’s not just about the certification; it’s really a commitment to doing their job in a more professional way.

The PIE: The US is really beginning to open up to agent use – are you seeing that too?

MH: In the US, it’s really a case of haves and have nots. You have programs that have really significant brands behind them – it’s the same anywhere in the world – that had 1,000 international students and that’s gone up to 5,000.

“In the US, it’s really a case of haves and have nots”

You also see so many of these programs that have anywhere between 10 and 150 international students and they want to get to 10% or 20% [of their student cohort]. They’re really realistic goals, but they don’t have these international brands, they don’t have a huge marketing budget. Those are the institutions that I think really benefit from the agent channel. Because while working with agents requires effort – it requires communication, it’s not a completely passive recruitment channel – it is very much a cost effective one.

We’ve seen some real success stories, seeing US institutions really grow their international student enrolment and diversify that beyond China and India.

The PIE: You’ve spoken in the past about the fact that universities tend to sell themselves on the same things – how can they set themselves apart?

MH: There’s a really ubiquitous presentation of institutions as having a quality education with a quality curriculum and a strong faculty. Universities take themselves very seriously – they’re places of higher education, and so they’re often very academically focused. But often that’s not what students are asking about – they can find that out through a ranking or an online search.

They want to know: are they going to be safe, are they going to be able to make friends, is their language ability going to be ok? And I think often when marketers try to convey that, senior leadership say ‘you’re conveying our institution as a non-academic institution’.

Some institutions don’t realise the importance of lifestyle elements such as safety, being able to have fun, having good accommodation, but those are absolutely huge drivers of choice. Others have done a really great job of developing that on their campus – they have really great student support, a fantastic orientation program – but aren’t necessarily sharing that from a marketing perspective.

The PIE: So do you think that focusing on education quality alone can undermine institutions’ marketing efforts?

“It’s a simple formula, but people miss pieces of it”

MH: Yes – if we look at emerging markets like Russia and Taiwan, those are markets where institutions really need to do a mix, because they have to answer that quality question more. But if it’s an institution in the UK or Australia, the perception of quality is already there. So I think those countries really need to be focusing on the lifestyle factors more and the support they have for international students around the academic program.

We see small institutions that have put those things together and see exponential growth in the number of international students. It’s a simple formula, but people miss pieces of it.

The PIE: Can you give an example of a destination or an institution that’s really missing out because of that?

MH: We’ve seen a rise, for example, in places like Japan as a destination for inbound mobility, and the reason is there are scholarships available there, there’s the ability to be introduced to Japanese companies and get work experience. The Japanese government, in their goal to attract 300,000 international students, they’re looking at really using that ability to work and the affordable education. That’s a prime example.

Now I don’t think Japan’s branding themselves to say they have that, so there’s a disconnect. If more students knew that Japan is offering this for international students, I really think that those recruitment efforts would go through the roof. So they realise what students want, but they’re not communicating it.

The PIE: How should an institution convey its branding message, then?

MH: The quote that I love about branding: it is not what you say you are, your brand is what people say you are when you’re not in the room. I’m from X university and I can say we’re the most academic university in the world. If I really am, that’s great, but really, what is it that makes your institution special? Is it that you live in an amazing place where students are surfing on the weekends? That might be a real differentiator for you.

Really ask your students: what makes us special? If they say ‘I have the most amazing professors in the world, I’m networking with top students’ – OK, that’s your brand, you’re a top academic institution. But if it’s like ‘I absolutely love it here, the staff are so friendly, I’m having a great time, I’m having these cultural activities outside of my class,’ then that’s your brand.

“Your brand is what people say you are when you’re not in the room”

It’s very hard to define your brand; you shape and direct it and you can do things to modify it and make it better, but your brand is what your students say it is. There’s a huge disconnect with what [staff are] saying about their institution and with what students are saying about their institution.

The PIE: How did you put that theory into practice when you worked in the university sector?

MH: It was back in 2010 when I was working at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia, Canada. There were some federal policies that were starting to help international education, but we were a small destination in a small city and we seized on quite quickly that lifestyle was very important to our brand.

So we gave 12 students GoPro cameras and asked them to film two weeks of their life. The students came back and they had these wonderful experiences – they’re skiing, they’re snowmobiling, they’re hanging out with their friends in cafes – and we cut those down into two minute videos. And then we pushed those out on social media and on our website.

I think it’s a good example of the destination focus. It was two weeks of my experience, my memories, my adventures. It was very well received and I think it gets to that authenticity of what life is like. And while quality and rankings and those things are very important, we all just want to enjoy what we do.