The Effectiveness of Marketing Communication Instruments in the Context of Higher Education Recruitment

The literature reveals that Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) use marketing as an essential method for their strategies to increase enrollment. It is possible to observe that marketing education, the marketing mix and marketing communication instruments are utilized more and more to achieve brand recognition and to attract more students to various of programs. This research focuses on identifying the marketing communication instruments used by students when searching for programs in an HEI and which marketing communication instruments are the most effective ones for HEI. Moreover, the results of the survey are presented as applied in one university in Linz - Austria, to students for both bachelor and master’s degrees. The Researcher initially undertook an analysis of literature for Higher Education Institutions, the marketing communications mix and tools that are applied in different institutions. Then, a survey was undertaken through the Unipark platform to collect data for the study. Finally, the quantitative results were analysed with the SPSS program to identify which marketing communications tools are more effective, and whether there was a significant different between the MCI used by graduate and by post graduate students.