Mr Burak Ceylan

The societal typeface of the mesh is now attracting lot who wouldnt otherwise befuddle utilize the network on a symmetric basis for any other purpose. This growing loving element to the internet, vane 2. 0, is also widely recognised as a commercial land for foodstuffing on a large scale to the now approachable millions of pile approximately the world. Seeing as both social media and universities ar very(prenominal) community-based, its only fitting that Victoria University should seek to attract people towards their thriving university community by exploitation innovative next generation market placeing campaigns which take omplete advantage of the internet facilities available. In commit to get to promote expansion the university needs to focus on merchandise their comical selling propositions within social media to prospective s assimilators across several(prenominal) market discussion sections. The process of attracting sstudents to a campus is not an easy one, precisely if these new-age tools atomic number 18 part to their fullest voltage by setting merchandise objectives and detailing strategies, the ex escapeed slay of the wind vane bathroom make the whole of Australia aw be of the numerous offerings of VU when comparison the university to its competitors. The Market SegmentsThe cross market from a broad perspective atomic number 18 of course undergraduate and stigmatise-graduate sstudents who be seeking to further their raisings with a unmarried mans or masters degree. Specificall(a)y, VU targets prospective sstudents of low socioeconomic status. This is evident from their efforts in providing many work-iintegrated-learning programs which assist the hundreds of sstudents who be struggling to make a living tour consistence of working simultaneously. The undergraduate sstudents atomic number 18 ab bring outly made up of white exalted school graduates who stomach only recently received their Victorian Cert ificate of Education (VCE) or equivalent.Mean spot, a study per gradationed on 2008 post-graduate sstudents coincluded that around 30% of bachelor degree graduates proceed to further study immediately, while the rest come back to study a post-graduate degree afterward on in life (Graduate C areers 2012). Its safe to assume based on these figures that many post-graduate sstudents return at a later stage in their lives to participate in post-graduate study. The market segment of post-graduates sstudents arent only comprised of existing bachelor degree sstudents or alumni, they also consist of graduate sstudents from competing universities.VU appears to maintain a firm focus on their website, www. vu. edu. au, on servicing all areas of the student body. The website has sections pertaining to future sstudents, transnational sstudents, latest sstudents and alumni. While the homepage and the offered online portions and testimonials reaffirm the universitys integrity, in that locatio n arent many elements of the website or its hyperlinks which show that VU is implementing social media and new-age trade into their promotional efforts. To sustain a marketing strategy it is necessary to break down the target market into various segments so that its easier to know which segments to market articular in roll uping offerings to. The market segment of the undergraduate student is one with a racy school certificate who is looking to make an advancement in their education as the next stepping stone in building their career. As many undergraduates are young adults whove only recently finished high school, we freighter conclude that many of them belong to Generation Z. Generation Z are often appropriately termed as Ddigital Natives or The Internet Generation beca consumption they spend often of their time on the internet, accessing it through their computers and wide awake devices, al slipway staying connected.This only further highlights the deduction of marketing to them through the use of social media and online advertising as thousands of them lowlife be r all(prenominal)ed ddigitally (The Courier 2011). International sstudents are a market segment which are recognised by the university as valuable, especially when con nervering the significance of ontogeny an international network between sstudents who are Australian citizens and those who are from foreign countries. As of 2008 there were at least 135,000 international sstudents in Melbourne alone with the number growing with each passing year (Dunn etal 2008). there are many universities competing for the patronage of international sstudents. VUs website seems to be focused on providing tumesce-to-do services such as staff visits to over 30 countries, which are personalised on some level, in fix up to attract capability sstudents through partnering institutions. Although its worth noting that this in homunculusation wasnt easy to access, it was hidden beneath several other sub-cate gories of the International Sstudents section.The use of ecommerce to try and reach international sstudents has been initiated in an effective manner, but when contrasting these efforts to competitors we can see that there are many ways in which VU is providing convenience and advice, but not so much delivering their subject field in an interactive way. For instance, The University of Melbournes page on international sstudents has a small calendar operating along the right side of the page which labels upcoming til nowts (with times, dates and addresses) in different countries.A promotional effort which allows sstudents to easy access the information required while not intruding any other elements of the page. Also cleverly placed on the page are two YouTube videos which allow international sstudents to see the realistic lifestyle of a student living in Melbourne, while enticing them towards their facilities. Post-graduates are comprised of sstudents who occupy already received a bachelors degree at either VU or a competing university at some stage in their lives.As mentioned previously, only 30% of existing bachelor sstudents proceed directly to post-graduate studies. This leaves 70% of the market segment outside of the universities and most probably within the workforce, difficult to reach with the contemporary marketing efforts of many universities. Post-graduate sstudents arent a primary focus because its believed that if they were to return to study that theyre likely to return to the facilities which theyre familiar with, which is why servicing current bachelor sstudents is important for VU.The New Era of Social Media Marketing The objectives of the university are to gather and empower sstudents from diverse countries, cultures and differing socioeconomic statuses and provide them with a high whole step education. Marketing objectives of the university reflect these views through their focus on the VU ecommerce drug user find as well as the use o f online advertising. Advancements in analytics and pprogramming have even allowed for conventional methods of advertising to be far more effective when used through different forms of social media.When a business considers conventional forms of advertising, they would tend towards television, radio and newspaper ads. During the period of uprising online web 2. 0 trends, the internet has arguably become a greater medium for advertising than all other forms of conventional marketing. The amount of advertising content on the internet has drastically increased over recent years with many of the worlds most powerful and influential companies organism focused on online marketing as it has become a science of its own with many ingenious and original new ways of marketing a result or service (Klever 2009).One of the more interesting ideas is behavioral targeting. Its a marketing concept as old as the widespread popularity of social media. Behavioural targeting is an idea which has been integrated into several social media forms, namely Facebook. It describes a medium in which the user doesnt have their browser experience interrupted by intrusive pop-up advertisements, but rather the advertisements flow neatly with the rest of the pages content.The most important aspect of behavioral targeting is that the consumers own browsing actions influence the types of advertisements on the page. Modern solar day website coding has been developed to the extent that the ads are a part of the integral user experience rather than a frustrating component for all(prenominal) consumer (Klever, 2009). An example in Facebooks efforts at implementing behavioral targeting are in the ads along the side of the page. All of these ads are catered to the individual.When users on Facebook label their interests on their indite page, or if they click the Like button on pages or comment on group pages or photos, each one of those actions are linked in the backend of the website to a catego ry. Advertisements from each of the users favoured categories are past automatically associated with the individual consumer and then appear alongside the page every time they log onto their Facebook newsfeed. At scale, Facebook and its partnered advertising companies have been able to provide accuracy in ad targeting by interpreting the raw selective information gathered while their millions of users are active.With a click-through rate much higher than many competitors who are using dated forms of online advertising (pop-ups and whatnot), Facebook and other ssimilar forms of social media (Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn) can effectively attend to VU to target the market segments who are seeking to pursue undergraduate and graduate(prenominal) studies (Constine 2012). Engaging the social web creates a bridge between customers and businesses, whereby customers geld away from mere content consumption and towards collaborating with a social media form towards the business promotion s which they offer.Analytics have even found in 2009 that more than 60% of the entire worldwide online community are using social networks and earlier browse on websites with a social element to them (Evans 2010). Another form of conventional marketing dominant in the web scene is the use of roving ads within social applications on the phones of consumers all around the world. strike the market rather abruptly, the use of marketing within ssmartphone applications has taken the mobile market by storm. The worlds largest tech company, Apple Inc. has innovated the mobile phone industriousness with their products, the iPhone and iPad. Apple is the only tech company to date with a military rank of $1 trillion US dollars. And the majority of their revenue comes from sales of their iPhone product (Burrows 2012). With the mobile market saturated with the tech giants product and their offering of mobile applications (apps), the app market has become a bazaar of its own for marketers to g ather data and sell advertising space within gaming, lifestyle, educational and entertainment apps (Sorensen 2011).This is in so far another new-age way for VU to market their graduate offerings and highlight their information sessions. educational apps are used by many high school sstudents on electronic devices and are heavily encouraged to do so by their teachers and schools. Studies have even shown that mobile ads have on average a 13 times higher click-through rate than desktop ads (Constine 2012). Through the use of mobile ads within education apps, the high school student (or high school graduate) looking to study at a university can be reached and persuaded towards VUs many helpful services.Given all of this information, it shows that mobile advertising is a very cost-efficient approach to fulfilling VUs marketing objectives. The Innovations of Next Generation Marketing There are also more innovative methods of online marketing. To the surprise of many, the grasp of content marketing is enormous. Aside from Facebook there are many famous blogging websites, YouTube carry and podcasts which are all examples of how good quality content posted in peak hours can attract thousands of followers to a business or to individual bloggers (Nguyen 2012).Its since been proven that the idea of viral marketing, which is content discharge viral and spreading infectiously tthroughout the internet, lies in content marketing within a social media interface. By producing a well-received marketing campaign, many businesses have profited well from strategies based on the network effect. The network effect explains that the value of each consumer is proportional to the number of other consumers theyre able to connect with (Darell 2012).VUs representatives can post content on student blog websites, YouTube imparts and podcast websites in order to show what the university offers that its competitors dont. By empathising with sstudents and the concerns of the market segment s, a clear pathway can be drawn towards VU while also entertaining the student body and prospective sstudents in the process by posting material catered for them. exhibit that VU understands the problems encountered by current and prospective sstudents and then proceeding to demonstrate how the university can help is the key to assist these social media marketing efforts in going viral.The goal of this would be to keep sstudents coming to those websites in the thousands and shape a more positive reputation for the university. Melbourne University, one of VUs competitors, is already reaping the benefits of implementing a YouTube channel into their marketing strategy. Through observation alone, one can see that VU has a number of authorised student Facebook pages. But even while being a member of most of them myself, I dont see Facebook ads catered to myself, a current bachelors degree student.If the university were to invest in this form of promotion then each time myself and other current undergraduates login, we would see a VU ad with potential post-graduate offerings every so often, but theyre simply never present. The underlying return key is that the only social media bearing that the university has is just for current sstudents. It would be favourite(a) if VU were to have a sthronger social media presence which has the ability to span out and attract other potential future sstudents rather than provide more accessibility for current ones.And even current online facilities, such as their official website, is cluttered with so many sub-categories that it makes it difficult for anyone to navigate. The potential in social media to market the university to possible sstudents is great but it continues to go untapped. Recommendations/Conclusions More social media services and innovations are becoming popular among rising numbers of web users all over the globe. Effective marketing campaigns on the internet have the potential to reach millions of worldwide use rs and match advertisements to their individual needs.Unconventional and creative ways of marketing are also becoming more popular with creating marketing strategies via the use of new website services which allow users to premote themselves or their businesses while developing followings on their pages. VU has its target markets set out in front of them and they have the resources to keep up to date with social media trends by exercising the marketing expertise of many of their academic staff and even their sstudents. But this expertise lies largely unused as reflected in the contents of the universitys website.Not only would it be wise for VU to make further attempts of using web 2. 0 marketing to their advantage, but VU has the power to set the university apart as an innovator in the field of promoting the use of social media as a regular part in their marketing plans. They can innovate by creating a presence across several new and uprising social websites in order to demonstra te a new-age train of thought in applying inventive methods of creating consciousness of the many services which VU offers to undergraduates, post-graduates and international sstudents alike.