Want to recruit more students from South America but not having much success?

Samir Zaveri is probably the world's expert on this market, and he'll be sharing his insights at English UK's Marketing Conference in London next month.

Mr Zaveri is President and CEO of BMI Media, which has been organising student recruitment fairs in South America for 20 years. He says there has been a huge spike in demand for international education courses in Brazil during the last couple of years, partly caused by the country hosting the World Cup and the Olympics, and partly because Brazil has been less affected by economic problems than some other nations.

So how can UK centres recruit more of these students? Mr Zaveri has plenty to tell the marketing conference, but he says schools are tending to send out plenty of emails, and are often trying to make contact with agents via their professional associations. He suggests it's worth making personal contact with agents, for instance at student recruitment fairs in the region.

"The thing is, when the associations were set up they had 95 per cent of the biggest agencies. Now there are over 450 agencies, it's closer to 18 per cent. They still represent the biggest ones but not in different cities, and that's one of the things I want to talk about.

"Because Brazil is such a big market, our cities are almost the size of a country in terms of market, and I'm going to identify eight or nine major markets in Brazil and say a little about each city. And Rio is so big it effectively behaves like two markets."

Find out more about the English UK Marketing Conference 2015, including the provisional programme and bookings, held at the Thistle Marble Arch Hotel on Friday 6 February.