Global flex: driving institutional reputation in diverse international markets

When it comes to managing and evaluating reputation, it can often feel like a difficult area to analyse. There are sophisticated brand tracker formulas and algorithms that will try and give you a sense of how visible and discoverable your institution is across various online platforms, but this can be a somewhat tactical veneer on top of the typical marketing and sales activities that so many of our institutions invest in to get a foothold in global markets. It’s far more important, we believe, to try and establish a reputation benchmark for your institution – and then build your brand house upwards – by investing in the foundational power of good conversations!

This would typically be in the form of a stakeholder consultation programme, often facilitated by an agency partner or consultant like me, to ensure a truly independent capture and analysis of more candid feedback (qualitative and quantitative) from a range of important audiences.

The first step we undertake is a stakeholder mappingexercise. That may sound obvious and perhaps unnecessary but we are constantly surprised at the absence of a comprehensive and coherent map of stakeholder connections in our institutions, with so many of those relationships and responsibilities highly devolved across the institution, baked into institutional memory, wrapped-up in individual contacts and goodwill, and very rarely joined-up, categorised, and cross-checked to ensure a representative community of stakeholders whose voices really matter in shaping the perception and the reputation of your institution.

There are the obvious ‘friends’ that many institutions will quickly engage. Staff or agent contacts in the region. Alumni. Institutional partners like the British Council. But as we start that mapping exercise, how methodical are we to ensure that we’re also reaching out to:

• partner or pathway colleges
• research partners and collaborators
• professional bodies and networks (e.g. The IC Global, CASE, learned societies)
• global partners (e.g. Santander)
• graduate employers in the region
• business and industry bodies (e.g. Chamber of Commerce)
• embassies, ambassadors and cultural attachés
• destination marketing (tourism) or inward investment delegations
• student parents or sponsors
• donors and honorary graduates
• our online or short course students
• other (comparator) institutions already in that market?

Not only can these stakeholders give us valuable and sometimes alternative perspectives and intelligence, but through the process of engaging them in consultation exercises we also build (or in some cases rebuild) connections, forge new relationships and goodwill, discover quick-wins for funding or partnerships, and identify dynamic opportunities to piggyback on stakeholders’ initiatives, events, campaigns, and conferences to give us a head-start in our efforts to increase our visibility by leveraging those contacts for endorsement, credibility, or a friendly introduction.

Once you’ve completed your mapping exercise, planning and designing the conversations we want to have is key to ensuring a robust and rich ‘perception audit’ that delivers measurable results.

Both qualifying and open questions that will draw rich qualitative feedback – as well as quantitative data and perceptions scores (on a scale of values) – are key and these can cover a lot of ground from identifying strengths and weaknesses, to exposing misperceptions and brand gaps, as well as capturing perceptions relative to competitors and establishing priority interests and issues, audience by audience. You can also test the credibility and resonance of your current marketing and sales activities too.

Capturing these responses can build an invaluable baseline – a snapshot of your institutional perception – that is nuanced and coloured differently across a cross-section of stakeholders – giving you quantitative data and themes to reflect on and then address with a carefully calibrated set of targets – and perhaps a shortlist of key audiences that you wish to prioritise engagement with.

So, if that’s the theory, how do we then ensure we can engage our international stakeholders to participate in this outreach work amid competing pressures on their time, spiralling international travel costs, and the differing dynamics of a diverse and dispersed community of contacts?

Creating a blended programme of engagement opportunities which offers choice for the participants and efficiency for the facilitators (and for your institutional budget) is the way forward – often bringing in an independent figure to lead what is a thorough, inclusive, and time-intensive project but one that will be so insightful and illuminating, whether it affirms or challenges your assumptions, your objectives, or your starting proposition.

Channels and formats of consultation available to us include:

Between all the opinions, perceptions, and scores that we capture in our consultations, there is also a wealth of rich language that we can curate which our stakeholders use to describe our institution, our brand proposition, and our relative strengths and characteristics. Harnessing this vocabulary, we can establish a diverse and nuanced messaging framework with the ‘golden threads’ and themes that articulate an authentic, externally-validated brand narrative for our institution.

From this colourful tapestry of language, we can develop an incisive and compelling brand narrative that will be utilised with confidence and consistency by our institutional representatives when they engage with these different audiences in our new markets. This also provides a wonderful opportunity to playback the language of our stakeholders into our brand presentation and create a connection, build consensus, and achieve a sense of shared ownership for our brand which ensures that our most important stakeholders are invested in our success and, ultimately, sustain our reputation in that market.

Complementary to these consultations, is a sharp programme of desk research to understand the market, and your competitors, more deeply.

This can include competitor analysis which looks at how your competitors present themselves in the marketplace, who they are working with, where they are investing their marketing budget, and where they have established, strong and sustainable links with key partners, but should also incorporate an appreciation of the economic and political priorities and pressures in the market where you’re looking to operate. Examining R&D priorities, key economic themes and drivers, skills gaps and industry priorities can all help to calibrate the narrative and brand proposition for your institution.

And once you have refined your brand narrative and your positioning within that new market, you may then wish to consider additional investment in marketing and communications campaigns and collateral to build your brand visibility and generate leads.