Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study and identify the effective components of higher education marketing and providing a marketing model for Iranian higher education private sector institutions. Design/methodology/approach: This study is a qualitative research. For identifying the effective components of higher education marketing and providing a marketing model the thematic analysis was used. First all the themes related to higher education marketing from the research references were collected and was analyzed by template analysis and thematic network methods. Findings: The results of thematic analysis revealed that there are 2 dominant themes, 13 global themes, 40 organizing themes and 503 basic themes related to higher education marketing. The relationships between these themes are provided as a marketing model for Iranian private sector higher educational institutions. Originality/value: There are few studies of higher education marketing in the Iranian higher education market. This study provides useful information about effective components of higher education marketing and marketing models.