Securing Internal Stakeholder Buy-in for Experiential Student Recruitment Marketing: Managerial Practices in Private Malaysian Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

Experiential student recruitment marketing (ESRM), delivered through open days, campus tours, education fairs, school visits and virtual events, depends on people. Unlike commercial sectors that outsource experiential campaigns to agencies, higher education institutions (HEIs) stage recruitment experiences through their own academic staff, administrative personnel, student ambassadors and senior management. This paper examines how marketing professionals in private Malaysian HEIs and foreign university branch campuses secure the internal participation on which ESRM depends, and how resource conditions shape that task. The study adopts an interpretivist qualitative design. The study conducted semi-structured interviews with marketing, recruitment, admissions, and school liaison professionals from 23 purposively sampled private institutions and analysed transcripts through reflexive thematic analysis supported by NVivo. The findings show that ESRM delivery relies on academic staff for the intellectual and behavioural dimensions of the experience and on current students for its relational dimension, consistent with the part-time marketer concept. Participation is uneven and must be continually earned. Buy-in is complicated in the Malaysian setting by hierarchical organisational cultures that anchor commitment at senior management level, by the multiethnic composition of staff, and by variable contractual expectations regarding marketing participation. Scarce human and financial resources intensify the dependence on goodwill. Marketers who demonstrate the contribution of ESRM to recruitment outcomes, cultivate staff champions and recognise participation secure more reliable engagement. The paper offers practical guidance for institutional leaders on building a marketing-supportive culture and contributes a non-Western account of internal stakeholder engagement to the experiential marketing literature.