Polytechnic expert talks about the effective promotion of the University in the international market in a pandemic at the All-Russian Forum

SPbPU expert made a presentation on effective promotion of the university in the international market under pandemic conditions at the scientific and practical conference «Export of Russian Education: Challenges and Achievements.» The event was held within the forum of employees of international departments of higher education organizations on the basis of the RUDN.

During the conference, 38 reports were presented by the leading experts on global trends and modern challenges of the export of education. Maria BOCHAROVA, Director of the Center for International Recruitment and Communications of SPbPU, shared the experience of Polytechnic University in organizing educational services promotion in the international higher education market, including in the pandemic.

For the last years, Polytechnic University has been one of the leaders in exports of education, but in 2020-2021 it was rather difficult to keep the number of foreign students at the university because of the coronavirus pandemic, said Maria BOCHAROVA. Nevertheless, we maintain a stable position in the international higher education market. These recruitment results are achieved due to the serious and complex work both in marketing and close interaction of all departments involved in the recruitment, admission, and support of international students.

The coronavirus pandemic has made significant changes in both the recruitment procedure for international applicants and in the process of attracting them to the university. In the current environment, Polytechnic’s marketing strategy emphasizes online promotion technologies, maximizing awareness of target audiences, and integrating marketing tools and communications. The University implements a whole pool of online marketing tools and online activities, which include the development and administration of websites, comprehensive work in leading English-language social networks, interaction with international educational portals, use of contextual advertising, webinars, and many others.

The results that we are getting, without further ado, show that Polytechnic has successfully adapted to the new realities. The targeted 2021 advertising campaign gave us about 450 requests for training from potential international applicants. We also decided to re-test contextual advertising and received more than 30 completed applications for training from foreign nationals. Great popularity among foreigners enjoy webinars that we have together with colleagues from international services and institutions on the official English-language page of Polytechnic in Facebook — since the admission campaign we organized 24 webinars, which together were watched by about 25 thousand users, commented Maria BOCHAROVA. In addition, we are actively developing our cooperation with recruiters and diplomatic services. For example, as a result of conducting a webinar together with Rossotrudnichestvo in Lebanon, we reached more than 8,500 Facebook users.

The presentation of the SPbPU expert was met with great interest by the rest of the conference participants. All those present agreed that the materials presented at the All-Russian Forum will further contribute to the international competitiveness of Russian education in the eyes of foreign talented applicants.

Prepared by the SPbPU International Office