In our latest instalment of the Marketing Expert Series, we are honoured to feature Mr. Neoh Soon Ken, a distinguished leader with over two decades of experience in marketing, brand management, and business leadership within the education sector. Mr. Neoh’s journey began in the film and video production industry before a serendipitous encounter led him to academia. Since 2004, he has been instrumental in shaping both higher education and K-12 private education landscapes in Malaysia. Currently serving as the Chief Marketing Officer at Kingsgate International School in Kuala Lumpur, Mr. Neoh specialises in greenfield and turnaround projects, consistently driving successful educational initiatives. His unwavering commitment to education stems from a belief in its unique ability to foster growth beyond the classroom, offering unparalleled intrinsic gratification.

Thank you for the kind introduction. After a brief stint in the film and video production industry more than 21 years ago, I went into the education industry in 2004 after a chance meeting with the founding Head of the Mass Communication School of KDU Penang during a film festival who was looking a member to join the founding academic team of the school. 

I specialise in greenfield and turnaround projects (which I find both painful but gratifying at the same time) and have been involved in many successful education projects throughout my career; each with its own storied rewarding memory and milestones. 

The education space has always been my calling and centre of gravity. It is in my opinion, the only business in the world which allows you to see your product grow even after it leaves your care and provides you with the immense intrinsic gratification and pride that no other business in the world can provide.

From my perspective, I think it is always important for a marketer to be always focused on three things when it comes to marketing: 

1. The absolute unique value propositions of your brand & product,
2. The customers whom your brand & product will appeal to, what do they want from your product and from there;
3. Focus on using the best and most effective strategy and media vehicle to deliver your campaign to the product targeted audience. 

The above sounds simple but any marketing head worth his or her salt will tell you it is so difficult to do. Despite its many shapes and evolutions, marketing is an applied skill which is transferable to market any brand or product; our challenge as a marketer will always be to do it right and effectively with the resources that have been given to us. If one can get the focus and balance right, positive results will most of the time – follow.

For me, it is important to:

1. Have a clearly defined goal. 
2. Do your homework in finding out what’s the right thing to do for your goal and what you would like to achieve. Be it your KPIs, brand, campaigns, human resource development and so forth. 
3. Always focus on doing the right thing and what works for your set goal. Be true to it. 
4. Always remember that no idea is eternally a bad idea in marketing. If one spends a long enough time being a marketer, one will know that there is a time and place for everything. A strategy that does not work for now might work if used in another market and environment in the future. Always be Open! 
5. If you know what’s right, be brave enough to believe in it, fight for it and defend it. 

When setting and driving the above, it is important that you be as objective as possible during the due diligence process. This is as speaking from experience, there will be times when there will be a different opinion between what you believe and know is the right goal to achieve and strategy to deploy and what the other parties in same organisation think; be it from the very top i.e. the owners or board, your peers and etc. 

If you are a marketing leader in today’s business world, you rarely get enough time to do what’s right to achieve what you need to achieve. Marketers today compete in a red ocean business environment where targets and KPIs are ever shifting with corresponding budgets and goal time frames forever shrinking. We are in the result business and the numbers in whichever form, matter

What I have learned throughout the years in leading and managing teams is that Leadership is a Trait and Management is a Skill. Both are needed in leading teams to achieve the goals of the business and as such, one needs to put in effort and time in both areas to excel in it. 

As a leader, it is important to recognise that no matter how good you are at your job; you are only as good as your team is. As the old saying goes, you are only as fast as the slowest member in your team. Some of today’s leaders and managers unfortunately do not spend enough time and effort to improve themselves every year to be a better leader and manager. A lot are also parachuted into the role without going through what we say, a proper leadership pipeline process which would have provided them with the skill to be good at both roles. It is time that the owners of today’s companies allocate more time and resources into developing that part of their human resource plan.

Simple, to have an open mindset when approaching innovation and especially when being thrust with innovation. It is important to stay with and ahead of the curve whenever possible especially in marketing as your target market and audience also moves with the trend. 

Throughout my entire lifetime in education marketing, we have gone through several important paradigm shifts and innovations in the way we develop our marketing and creative strategies. When I first started out, the key importance was on variation of media vehicle selection. Then it went to data analytics and digital marketing. Today, the must have innovation in your strategy has to be the usage of artificial intelligence or AI in the deployment of your marketing campaign. It is important to always stay abreast of innovation. If you are not in the AI game, then you are not in the game at all and will have no chance of winning.

I am happy and proud to have had a blessed and progressive career. As I have often said when asked; throughout my life, I have either been part of building something or rebuilding something and have had successes that I am proud of in every project and stage of my career. 

From playing a key role in building one of the most well-known communication schools in the northern region of Malaysia, to achieving a record number of enrolments and revenue for the overall business unit, to assisting in starting up two Tier 1 brand international schools, breaking known enrolments records and to turning around a greenfield international school; each project has been a dream. It has yielded many gratifying and measurable achievements of which some still stand till today. 

To sum it up, if your name is still brought up in a positive light by your former bosses, peers and team long after you have left a project or company, it shows that you have done something right in your time there. Wherever you are, always strive to make a difference.

Presenting an award as one of the Judges of the advertising + marketing magazine’s Agency of the Year Awards during the awards gala dinner in 2022.

From a marketer’s perspective – mindset. Quite often as marketing and brand leaders, one can be caught being too traditional in the way we approach a campaign strategy. 

Marketing budgets have been shrinking year by year and thus, a marketing leader must truly know how to think out of the box when it comes to the resources deployed for a marketing campaign. 

It is important to be brave enough to phase out a particular media strategy if the data and results show that it is no longer effective. As marketers, we cannot afford to be caught up in nostalgia. But having said that, it is also important to not be caught trend chasing. Allocate time and resources to what works. As the old adage goes; if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. However, if it is, then be brave enough to embrace what works today. No strategy is eternally correct and wrong in the marketing world.

The coming of AI has definitely added a new needed perspective in the way current marketing and recruitment campaigns are developed and executed today. For the education industry, it has helped greatly when used in the execution of creative strategies especially from a digital perspective, assisting in the creation of more effective audience targeting techniques and enhancing personalised customer experience and feedback in campaign deliveries.

Today, the audience’s attention spans are becoming shorter and shorter. As such, it is imperative that the digital strategies devised today be in line with this audience idiosyncrasy. The usage of AI has made marketing campaigns more creative today but in terms of the main fundamentals of its creation and deployment, one can use an evergreen marketing philosophy that stands till today and especially so in the digital audience era – KISS aka. Keep It Short and Sweet.

Only one word – FOCUS. Be aware that they are both different audiences with different psychographic profiles and media consumption habits. Be personalised according to their needs. One size will never fit all when it comes to this.

Celebrating the success of SJIIM with VVIPs, esteemed guests, partners, parents, staff and students during St. Joseph’s Institution International School Malaysia’s official Opening Ceremony.

From a student’s perspective it has always been consistent regardless of whether you are operating in the Private Higher Education Industry or the K12 Private or International School Industry. 

The brand recognition, student experience, quality of facilities and peer influence. These 4 things have always been consistent.

The important elements to look at would be:

1. The overall standing of brand (if the institution has a good history – milk it).
2. The quality of the teaching faculty and delivery.
3. The education and career trajectory of the institution alumni.
4. The institution’s financial standing and its ability to flex its muscle and commitment in terms of quality facilities and continuous improvement of resources. 

Recently there has been much emphasis on the history and stability of the institution’s ownership which is fair considering that the direction of the school often follows the ethos and direction of its owners. This is especially so in the K12 industry where the parents play almost the ultimate role in the purchase cycle decision making process.

This is where data analytics, consumer feedback and artificial intelligence in information gathering comes into play as it enables the brand and its marketers to connect to its targeted market more efficiently. The tools are there; we just have to use it the right way.

Immensely. If we roll back the years to when I was schooling, in those days – for one to be studying overseas after high school; you either have to be rich or super intelligent to get a scholarship or a little bit of both in order to pursue your undergraduate degree overseas. This was also the case for the international school education industry when it still had a local student quota system in place. 

Today, much more scholarships are available across all sectors of the industry as the market opened up locally and became much more competitive. Parents today are also more open to alternative and private forms of education and do not mind investing a significant portion of their income in their children’s education. There are many platforms that can be used nowadays to promote these benefits besides conventional media vehicle mixes as we see the rise and rise of digital education and scholarship directories besides the usage of KOL influencers now to spread the message across different targeted markets.

Everything. Data analytics and consumer behaviour studies should be at the forefront in the conceptualisation process of any marketing campaign. It is not the be all and end all, but it certainly helps to point your campaign in the right direction from the beginning to prevent any wastage of precious budget and time resources. In marketing, budget and time is our eternal enemy as we are rarely given enough of it.

With the man himself – Tan Sri Tony Fernandes, Chairman of the Board of Governors of Epsom College in Malaysia during the Founding Staff’s induction dinner before the official first day of school.

In terms of education marketing, it will have a major part to play in the pre-enrolment ‘shopping process’ of the consumer’s purchasing cycle as compared to traditional above and below the line marketing vehicles, it tends to have a wider spread, lower cost and more reliable efficiency tracking. 

However, it will never replace the role of a traditional physical marketing and point of sales person needed at the end of the purchasing cycle as consumers of the education industry will almost never make an enrollment decision based on what they see online alone. There will always be a need to see the product physically i.e. Campus visitations etc. before a decision can be ultimately made.

Never lose focus on what’s important in enhancing the brand and its deliverables. Nothing beats a good product and satisfied customer advocacy when it comes to the education industry. Once you have that, be unconventional and be brave in taking risks with the creative strategy of your campaign. You have to stand out. 

For the past 2-3 years there has been a significant rise in the tendency of students and parents to prefer information being transmitted to them via social media platforms in the forms of short video reels. As we move into the 4th industrial revolution, it will not be long before there will be a tantamount shift towards the usage of AI in developing new education-based information push platforms that will be used to feed tailored-made information according to the consumer’s needs. That would indeed be something unimaginable 20 years ago.

Always be true to yourself. Trust what the data tells you, your instincts and experience to do what’s right for your marketing plan. Unlike in other professions, in our line of work, it is unfortunate that everyone who is not even an experienced person in marketing, will try to give their opinion of what marketing should do (I have never heard anyone say that to a finance and IT person haha). Never disregard any opinions or ideas but ultimately always be brave in doing what you know is best.

The pleasure is mine. I can always be contacted via email at skneoh@hotmail.com or my LinkedIn page.

Mr. Neoh Soon Ken’s extensive experience in marketing and brand management within the education sector underscores the critical role that strategic marketing plays in shaping institutions’ growth and reputation. Having successfully led greenfield and turnaround projects, he has witnessed firsthand how the education landscape is transforming, particularly with the rapid integration of digital marketing. From student recruitment to institutional branding, digital strategies now serve as a cornerstone for engagement, leveraging data-driven insights, AI-powered marketing tools, and personalised content to reach prospective students more effectively.

As education becomes increasingly competitive, institutions must embrace innovative marketing techniques such as SEO-driven content, social media storytelling, and targeted digital advertising to stand out. Mr. Neoh’s expertise highlights the importance of adapting to these trends while maintaining a strong brand identity that resonates with students, parents, and stakeholders. His commitment to innovation and strategic thinking continues to make a significant impact on the education sector, helping institutions navigate challenges and seize opportunities in an ever-evolving digital era. As the industry moves forward, leaders like Mr. Neoh will remain instrumental in shaping the future of education through transformative marketing strategies and student-centric approaches.

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