Baku hosted its 6th Education UK exhibition on 12 March 2016. For the first time we had just one day event. More than 400 people visited the event. Our direct marketing activities, sending individual invitations to business contacts, also tailored social media promotion, as well as premium class targeted advertising helped us to involve high and medium income families to the exhibition. A few years ago if such kind of event organized in Baku then less parents could show interest, as they didn’t have enough information about the UK education system. Now we had lots of parents who do have sufficient information about A Level, IB qualifications and etc. They visited the exhibition with the purpose to find out proper schools and colleges rather than to learn UK education system, as they already knew their children need further education before they start their degree programs at the top UK universities.

After the exhibition a round table was organized between the exhibitors and local agents. Before the event agents shared most important points they preferred to be discussed at the event. The points include scholarships in light of economic issues, assessment of students, current economic downturn and future of student recruitment in Azerbaijan, individual support in terms of integration to students who join at early ages and etc. It was very productive event as both parts welcomed such format event rather than traditional agent networking event, as after the discussion both parts anyway had time for networking.

In the feedback forms and post-event discussion all parts shared the same thought that we need collaborations of the UK educational institutions, local agents and British Council to keep the UK as number one destination in the market. More comments from the exhibitors are collected in the post-event report. The report also consists of key statistics of the event, exhibitors and visitors feedbacks analysis, marketing activities description and related activities of the exhibition, also a few useful recommendations for the UK educational institutions for further events. We also put a few inspirational photos from the exhibition and sharing some local media links that covered the exhibition before and during the event and some of the links are in English.

Our next exhibition in Baku will be on 22-23 October 2016 and this event is open for all kind of educational institutions from the UK. The registration is already open for the event.