How to attract Russian-speaking applicants to a University

Nowadays, universities in Turkey and the UAE have become a great opportunity for applicants from Russia who previously planned to study in European countries and are now facing restrictions in their choice of an educational institution.?

In this case, our objective was to attract as many Russian-speaking students as possible to the university in Istanbul. Unfortunately, we cannot disclose the name of the university due to the NDA, but we are happy to share the algorithm of our work, the tools used and the results.

Client?

One of Turkey's most prestigious universities.

Goal

To attract as many applicants from Russia and the CIS as possible.

Solution

1. Marketing strategy development;
2. Advertising channels definition;
3. Creation of a landing page;
4. Setting up, running, and maintaining advertising campaigns in the following channels: Yandex. Direct, targeting advertising in VK, Telegram Ads;?
5. Analytics and increase the effectiveness of advertising campaigns;
6. Influencer Marketing: selecting bloggers, developing and launching campaigns.

Details

Landing page

After analyzing the competitors and developing a marketing strategy, we created a landing page on Tilda with a detailed description of the advantages of the university and the opportunities it offers to Russian-speaking students. We built in conversion application forms. We chose Tilda - a block website builder - as the perfect tool for the quick creation and launch of a landing page. The created one is easily integrated with third-party services: lead forms, CRM, chat rooms, etc.

The context and targeting ads

The following step was to set up contextual advertising in Yandex.Direct and targeted advertising in the VK. For contextual advertising, in addition to direct requests such as "Study at a university in Turkey," we also worked through the requests and set up ads for Russians who were looking for information about education in Europe.

To set up the targeting ads, we clearly defined several segments of our target audience. Then we prepared interesting creatives in the form of banners and videos.

Influencer marketing

For influencer marketing, we chose popular bloggers whose audience was as similar as possible to our target audience. These were primarily young people aged 16-25 and a second segment consisted of parents of university applicants.

Then we launched several campaigns. We organized tours to the university for our chosen bloggers. So several Influencers came to Istanbul and did a detailed review of the university for their social media followers. They showed the campuses, dormitories, told about the history of the university, the programs of study, the conditions of receiving a scholarship, etc. They interacted with faculty and students of the university and even conducted live broadcasts, where they answered subscribers' questions about their studies. This allowed us to significantly increase interest in the university among the Russian-speaking audience in a short period of time.

Analytics

During the advertising campaigns we monitored the performance of each advertising channel on a daily basis and evaluated in real-time which key messages worked better, which banners brought higher conversions, etc. And then, based on the data, we optimized our advertising budget in the most cost-effective way.?

At the end of each advertising campaign, we provided the client with a detailed report indicating the sources of traffic, the cost of each request in individual channels, and the overall results for each channel.

Result

As a result, all pre-set KPIs were achieved. The university exceeded the plan for the number of applications for admission, while the number of applicants from Russia and CIS countries?increased by 2.5 times.