Search for Dubai students takes to the airwaves

Radio advertising is now a key component of student recruitment for universities in Dubai.

With 53 universities in the emirate, competition for students is fierce and many are turning to the airwaves to reach a wider audience.
Powered by automated translation

DUBAI // Dubai universities are stepping up recruitment efforts now high school exam results are out - and many are turning to the airwaves to reach a wider audience.

With 53 universities in the emirate, competition for students is fierce.

Farhanah Raza, the marketing and public relations manager at Murdoch University's Dubai campus, said radio was one of the most expensive advertising mediums and commonly takes up 25 to 30 per cent of the marketing budget.

"As a university, it's important for us to cover a wide range of audiences, including parents, young school leavers and business professionals," she said.

The university maintains a presence on English, Hindi and Arabic channels to reach the widest audience possible.

"In addition to advertising, we run live campaigns, whereby DJs endorse our scholarships and the student experience. We also ensure that our faculty are regular features on [stations such as] Dubai Eye, so consumers know about us before meeting us."

Ms Raza said the university would always supplement advertising with a live campaign and that even with the rise of social media, radio was still a priority.

"This is much more important than a simple brand campaign," she added. "It is extremely important to have a radio presence as almost everyone listens to the radio and it's very easy to use social media tactics to drive people towards the radio. Both have to work together for impact.

"Social media is still growing and the objectives for the use of each differ. Neither can be compared."

Naheed Malik, the head of marketing at the University of Wollongong in Dubai, said this year about 20 per cent of their marketing budget would be spent on radio advertising.

"Radio is truly mass media," she said. "Everyone listens to the radio at some point in the day and if you cover radio channels that cater to different target audiences, it's good value for dirhams invested."

Ms Malik said a variety of channels was crucial in reaching out to a wide audience, advertising a range of things, from scholarships to courses.

"We usually cover different languages and demographics, so we'll do Virgin for undergraduates and 99.3 for postgraduates, a Hindi channel to cover the south Asian potential students, an Arabic and, at times even radio channels in Persian, and Russian," she said.

Dr Kathy O'Sullivan, the head of English programmes at the Canadian University in Dubai, hopes to be the beneficiary of the university's current radio campaign, which advertises its new degree in English translation.

"From my experience, students listen to the radio and are more interested in the internet more than they watch TV," she said. "Many seem to listen to radio chat and advice shows."

Spencer Semple, the university's promotion manager, said that while Facebook and Twitter had increasingly been used in the last year, radio remained a powerful tool, with as many as seven stations covered at any one time.

"Radio has been a great tool for us because we find that the station demographics are clear-cut, and it offers a very good return on marketing investment in this region," he said. "For marketing a new programme we first take into consideration the target demographics, then from there we usually lay out our plan."

Manipal University's Dubai campus has always invested in radio advertising, said its marketing manager, Vaibhav Anand, but this year they have become more creative, asking the local Indian radio station, Radio Spice, to broadcast from campus too.

In Dubai, Manipal competes with two other large Indian branch campuses, Bits Pilani and Amity. They are advertising courses for the coming academic year across four stations, including Virgin and Indian stations, accounting for about 15 per cent of its budget.

"On the Indian channels we know that's where our target audience is but with the likes of Virgin, that's where the youth are spending their time," Mr Anand said. "It's a very effective medium to reach a large target audience."