Electronic Marketing Plan for the International Office, SCU

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: 2 (B), Southern Cross University, Lismore (Marketing), course: Electronic Marketing, language: English, abstract: The Internet has changed the way the world disseminates information since the introduction of the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1995. It became a global medium for the distribution and exchange of information among the users. Especially for Universities, competing for attention of international students, it is a crucial tool to reflect their programs and services offered in a highly competitive environment of thousands of Universities worldwide. As prospective students tend to inform themselves primarily over the Internet, the quality of the presentation in combination with different techniques and technologies determines the success or failure of getting international students. This report presents an Internet Marketing Plan for improving the existing website of the International Office, Southern Cross University (SCU), Lismore, New South Wales, Australia. The International Office's website's objective is to reflect their services and the programs offered by the SCU in the best way. As the environmental analysis shows, they are acting in a highly competitive environment with 47 Australian institutions for higher education with an increasing demand on the part of international students, representing an increase of 17.5 percent in 2001 with increasing tendency since 1992. A reason for this is that study abroad experience is nowadays a 'required' experience for a successful career. The SWOT analysis shows, that the website is not using their whole competencies as the information displayed does not take into consideration the needs of international students. Additional lacking or not updated information confuses and often frustrates the International Offices target market: The potential international student. Therefore, objectives are to improve the website and to increase enrolments of international students at SCU from 7 per cent up to 10 per cent in 2005. Underlying goals for those objectives are to create a more informative and importantly up to date site, to offer a forum for feedback from students, as well as a system for identifying how often the site is used and to reinforce corporate identity with the SCU homepage. The improved site will service students throughout their experience with the University, developing a long-term relationship with the office staff, students, and prospective Universities.