There are a number of digital marketing avenues independent schools should explore to assist with recruiting international students. While in-person travel, virtual fairs, and leveraging education consultants are tried and true and should remain part of your comprehensive strategy, improving your digital marketing footprint is critical to building a pipeline of quality prospects. Here’s how your school can get started on building an international digital marketing presence.

Invest in Paid Profiles & Directory Sites

Leverage Lists

Although purchasing email lists is generally not recommended for schools according to ISM, an exception to this rule is EMA's Student Prospect list, which provides a list of candidates who are in the process of applying to independent schools and have opted-in to receiving communications. This includes the ability to purchase information of international students who are looking for boarding schools in the US. While this can be a good option for schools looking to increase and/or diversify their international enrollment, it is essential to have an email marketing strategy in place to  maximize your  investment by turning alias emails into actual leads. See below for more information about  developing an email marketing campaign.

Implement Targeted Paid Search Ads

Many schools reserve paid advertising to target prospective families domestically, but these strategies can be equally effective in reaching international families, especially when used to  complement in-person travel or relationships with consultants in-country. While you can easily spend thousands of dollars per month to reach international audiences, here are 7 steps to achieving results through international PPC advertising without breaking your budget:

• Determine Your Target Geographies - Paid advertising is more effective when there is some level of brand recognition among your audience, so we recommend choosing cities where your admissions team is traveling or where you have established relationships with consultants and agents. You should also leverage Google Analytics to determine where the top sources of international website traffic are coming from. Start by targeting 5-6 key metro areas rather than blanketing countries as a whole. 
• Apply Household Income Parameters - Use household income exclusions to narrow your audience and target full-pay families. We recommend targeting the top 10% of users in each market, which is as narrow as Google allows. You may also consider removing the “Unknown” segment. These users, whose income level Google does not have enough information to identify, typically make up anywhere from 25%-35% of clicks and conversions on a given campaign. 
• Start Small - While it may be tempting to start with a large budget for maximum impact across as many countries as possible, this can be an inefficient way to spend your ad dollars. You can achieve strong results, and a lower overall cost per lead by starting with a media budget of as little as $200-$300/month ($7-$10/day).
• Conduct Keyword Research & Develop Copy - First and foremost, create a media plan to keep track of your ad copy and keywords, as well as your target audience and budget. This can be its own spreadsheet, or can be incorporated into your larger strategic marketing plan. To develop keywords, leverage Google Search Console to see what terms users are searching to get to your website. Google Trends is a  free keyword research tool that you can use to compare the relative popularity of searches in a specific geography.  When bidding internationally, consider narrowing the keywords based on your location (e.g., “boarding schools near Chicago” or  “boarding schools in Massachusetts”) rather than bidding more broadly on “boarding schools in the US”.  When drafting ad copy, make sure that it speaks to your unique selling points for international students and highlights your admissions goals, and that it  also aligns with your keywords and landing page text and for optimal performance.
• Create A Conversion Strategy - Start by defining specific, measurable goals for your campaigns that align with your admissions objectives (e.g., generating  landing page form completions). Use Google Tag Manager to deploy tags to track form submissions, button clicks, or other goals, and create Google Ads conversions and set up events in GA4  to track these actions and measure success. 
• Use A Dedicated Landing Page - Directing paid advertising to a dedicated landing page with a unique, trackable inquiry form not only allows you to capture leads, but also attribute them to your international campaigns and calculate ROI. Furthermore, a landing  page provides an opportunity to deliver content that speaks specifically to an international audience. This may include details about your residential life program, ESL/ELL programs, statistics about your student demographics/diversity, and college outcomes (or secondary school outcomes for junior boarding). If applicable, include testimonials from students in the target countries, and highlight your proximity to major cities for international flights and weekend activities.
• Nurture Leads Through Email Marketing - A common mistake schools make is treating paid advertising leads exactly like website inquiries. These leads will require multiple additional touchpoints to work their way into the admissions funnel. We recommend nurturing leads through an email marketing campaign that includes an immediate personal thank you confirmation, followed by a scheduled drip of 5-7 emails with high-level calls to action (attend a virtual event, apply, etc.)  to move leads through the funnel.  Learn more about building an email marketing strategy for your school here. 

Build a Paid Presence on Social Media

With the exception of the need for keyword research, all of the steps outlined above for PPC campaigns apply to social media ads. Because families are not using social media to search directly for schools, a key to running successful international paid social campaigns is limiting the audience size by applying the right parameters to deliver your messaging only to your target demographic. For Meta ads, consider the following settings to narrow your audience:

• Target “parents with teenagers (ages 13-17)”. Targeting  “parents of preteens (9-12)” may also be useful for junior boarding schools.
• Layer in private school/boarding school interests.
• Disable Advantage+ Placements and Custom Audiences. While this claims to increase ad performance, it will deliver ads to users outside of your target audience and is not a good use of your budget.  
• Additionally, make sure Advantage+ Creative Text Generation is disabled. This relatively new feature may become more reliable and useful for creating copy in the future, but we recommend staying away from it for now, as it can produce irrelevant or off-brand messaging.  

Lastly, make sure you append UTM parameters  to the landing page URLs of  your social campaigns. These snippets of text pass through to Google Analytics, allowing you to see which sources and campaigns led to traffic and form submissions, or other meaningful actions.

Supplementing traditional in-person admissions marketing with one or more of the digital strategies above can bolster your school’s international recruitment by allowing you to reach diverse global markets more effectively and efficiently. If you need help creating an integrated marketing strategy for enrollment or development, reach out to Enroll Media Group, a data-driven digital marketing agency for schools.