Is iTunes U the next essential step in University marketing?

The word that appears to be on most education marketing professionals lips at the moment is iTunes U. Whether you're a lover of it or slightly cautious of it, it's hard to sit on the fence - everyone's got a view! Also it can hardly be ignored as iTunes U has now come of age generating  global downloads 250 million this year.

Also there are some great success stories. For example; Open University's iTunes U channel is hugely popular. and it was the first institution to break the 20 million downloads threshold.  They point their success to providing content linked to current and popular OU courses. The channel allows students to incorporate content into their studies and others around the world can also tap into shared resources for free.

Reaching students internationally - one size doesn't fit all...

One question I get asked a lot is what's the best way to reach all our prospective students online?

This question isn't easily answered. In terms of reaching students around the world a "one size fits all" approach is never going to be the way of best reaching people. Higher education marketing teams need to be sensitive about local trends and subtle differences in technology adoption within key regions.

For example Asia is a key area targeted by western universities. The region's growing population and increasing economic wealth makes it an ideal target for student recruitment.What higher education recruiters need to ensure they bear in mind however, is that a single advertising strategy leveraging digital and other marketing platforms across the region will simply not reap results.

For example India is still dominated by print as a mass medium therefore relying on digital advertising to drive student recruitment alone would be doomed to failure.However, in Singapore video content usage is rocketing and a recruitment strategy that does not harness this fact is likely to be lacking in impact.

A large part of prospective students' time is often spent utilising social media, but again a "one size fits all" approach, could lead to disaster. Facebook is the most visited social network in the world so no international marketing strategy with social media at its heart can ignore the network.There are regional differences, however to bear in mind. We can see that Orkut is the dominant social media platform in India but new platforms such as voice social network Bubbly is growing rapidly.

Don't forget the niche market differences in order to maximise your recruitment strategy's success!