CRICOS Experts / Recruitment

Marketing that will not be contradicted on arrival

Every claim will be tested by somebody who moved countries for it.

Promotional material for international students is read as a commitment rather than as advertising, because the reader is making an irreversible and expensive decision on the strength of it. Claims about outcomes, employment, pathways and migration are the ones that cause the most damage when they turn out to be optimistic.

Migration claims deserve specific caution. A provider is not the authority on immigration outcomes, settings change, and a statement that a course leads to a particular status may be wrong by the time a student completes. Providers are generally restricted in what they may say about this, and the safe position is to describe the course and direct students to the official source.

Employment claims should be capable of support from the provider's own data. If graduate outcomes are quoted, they should be the provider's actual outcomes with the basis stated, not sector figures presented as though they were.

The practical review is to read the material as a person deciding whether to spend a substantial sum and move their life, and to ask of each claim what evidence exists. Anything that cannot be supported should come out, and it is much cheaper to remove it than to defend it.

The other material worth reviewing is what is shown to students in their own language. Translated marketing is frequently produced by the agent rather than the provider, and the translation can carry claims the English original does not. Having a fluent colleague read the translated version is a simple check that providers almost never perform.