Higher Education Institutions Embracing Digital & Social Media Marketing: A Case of Top 25 Universities in Asia & Africa

Abstract

At the age of the digital world, higher education institutions (HEIs) are challenged to be creative in reaching out and keeping in touch with their stakeholders and target markets that are mostly the young generation. Businesses and institutions like HEIs should be innovative in attracting customers/students using digital and social media marketing. They have to embrace fully digital and social media marketing in realizing their target market and staying connected with them. This research focused on identifying the common digital and social media marketing utilized by the top 25 universities in Asia and Africa, it also assessed the level of adoption of digital technology. Findings revealed that the majority of the top 25 universities in Asia and Africa use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube for their digital and social media marketing and they differ in terms of the purposes of its usage and the level of adoption of digital technology. It shows that the collective responses by using digital and social marketing for HEIs are to market their programs and to give information about events and research of the HEIs. However, the majority of the top 25 universities in Asia had already reached fully digital and they use it for visionary production and design for the adoption of digital technology. Furthermore, most of the HEIs are using website design and interface as an essential factor on how to present themselves to their potential students.