Digital Marketing’s Role in Influencing Students’ Decision-Making for Engineering Programmes in Private University

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of digital marketing in influencing students’ decision-making when enrolling in engineering programmes at a private university in Malaysia, with a specific focus on Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation (APU). The research addresses the problem of increasing competition in higher education and the need for universities to understand which digital marketing strategies most effectively influence prospective students’ enrolment decisions. A quantitative research methodology was adopted using a cross-sectional survey design, where data were collected from 148 Malaysian and international engineering students through a structured questionnaire. The study investigated three digital marketing strategies that are social media marketing, content marketing, and online advertising, and their relationship with students’ decision-making using Pearson correlation analysis. The findings reveal that all three digital marketing strategies have a positive and statistically significant relationship with students’ decision-making at the 0.01 significance level. Among the strategies examined, content marketing demonstrated the strongest influence, followed by online advertising and social media marketing. The study concludes that well-structured and informative digital marketing efforts play a crucial role in shaping students’ enrolment decisions and recommends that private universities prioritise content-driven and targeted digital marketing strategies to enhance student recruitment for engineering programmes.