Real students, real stories: UGC for international recruitment

Why use stock images or paid models when your own students tell the story better? The Garden partnered with Flinders University to create user-generated content showcasing what it's really like to study Business at Flinders as an international student, and turned authenticity into lead volume.

Client: Flinders University
Industry: Education
Solutions: Creative & Content
Services: Video Marketing, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing
Region: Australia

Leads generated in the first three months

3,000+

Of leads qualified against Flinders' benchmarks

35%

The challenge

Flinders Business School wanted advertising assets that would work across Asia, South America, Africa and Australia, markets where attracting students is hardest when they can’t see people like themselves already there. Prospective students trust each other’s experiences more than branded content, so the campaign had to be built from real student voices, not marketing polish.

Our solution

We worked with Flinders to produce a range of videos, blogs and social ads sharing the real stories of its international student cohort: influencer-style video and blog content capturing the study experience first-hand, from course outcomes to campus life. The student-curated approach did double duty, engaging prospects more deeply while giving students from target regions a face they recognised, reassurance that people like them had already chosen this pathway.

The results

The first three months brought in over 3,000 leads, and the quality mattered more than the count: about 35% met Flinders’ qualification benchmarks around funding source and likelihood to study in Australia, a rate that’s genuinely difficult to achieve in markets like India, the Philippines and Pakistan where lead quality is a known challenge.

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