With competition for student enrollment at an all-time high, higher education institutions need to stand out from their competition—and this is where marketing comes into play. Adopting the latest marketing strategies and tools has become a top priority for schools looking to become or stay relevant.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a powerful ally in this endeavour. There are now thousands of AI programs and tools offering innovative ways to engage, analyze, and optimize higher education marketing efforts.

Below, we'll walk you through how to use AI for digital marketing in a university setting, highlighting the best AI tools available and providing practical steps to implement them.

AI in Marketing: What Universities Need to Know

AI leverages machine learning algorithms, natural language processing, sentiment analysis, and data analytics to automate tasks, predict trends, and personalize content.

For universities, this means more efficient processes, targeted outreach, and the ability to engage prospective students on a deeper level.

Step-by-Step Guide to Using AI for Marketing in Universities

Step 1: Define Your Marketing Goals

Before implementing AI marketing tools, universities must define their goals.

Are you looking to increase student enrollment? Boost alumni engagement? Improve your university’s online reputation? Reduce the amount of time your team spends on marketing tasks?

Clear objectives will guide your AI marketing strategy and ensure that you select the right tools for your needs.

Step 2: Choose the Right AI Marketing Tools

The market is flooded with AI programs, each designed to serve specific marketing functions. That's why it's important to figure out your goals: so that you can find the right tools to help you get there.

Here are some of the best ways to use AI for university marketing.

Chatbots for Student Engagement

Chatbots like Drift and Intercom can handle inquiries from prospective students, providing instant responses 24/7. These AI-driven bots can answer common questions about admissions, programs, and campus life, freeing up staff time and improving response times.

Example: Georgia State University implemented a chatbot named Pounce, which increased enrollment by 3.3% and reduced summer melt by 21% in its first year.

Creating Content

AI tools like Jasper and Copy.ai can assist in creating engaging copy for your website, social media posts, and email campaigns. These tools analyze trending topics and can even provide AI-generated content based on your input, ensuring your marketing messages resonate with your target audience.

Example: The University of Illinois used CampusReel to curate student-generated videos that showcased campus life. This content was then distributed via targeted AI email campaigns, leading to a 30% increase in prospective student engagement and a 4% increase in applications.

Social Media Management

Managing multiple social media accounts can be overwhelming, but AI-powered marketing tools like Hootsuite Insights and Sprout Social simplify the process. These platforms use AI to schedule posts, analyze performance, and even suggest the best times to post for maximum engagement.

Example: King’s College London used Unibuddy to allow prospective students to chat with current students through social media. This approach helped the university increase its social media engagement, providing prospective students with authentic insights into campus life.

Predictive Analytics for Enrollment Management

Predictive analytics tools like Hostinger and HubSpot can help universities forecast student enrollment trends and tailor their marketing efforts accordingly. These tools analyze historical data to predict future outcomes, allowing for more targeted recruitment strategies.

Example: Trinity Valley Community College used Element451 to identify students who were most likely to accept admission offers. By focusing marketing efforts on these high-probability candidates, the university saw an 18% increase in its Spring 2023 graduating class.

Step 3: Integrate AI into Your Existing Marketing Strategy

Once you’ve chosen your specific AI tools, it’s time to integrate them into your existing marketing strategies. This involves training marketing teams to use the new digital marketing tools effectively, setting up automated processes, and continuously monitoring performance to ensure the tools are delivering the desired results.

Keep in mind that the learning curve may be high here. New tools take time to get used to, so exercising patience and having a well-designed plan is key.

Step 4: Monitor and Optimize Your AI-Driven Campaigns

Any AI marketing tool is only as effective as the data it's fed. In this way, continuous optimization is key to getting the most out of any artificial intelligence program you're using.

Regularly review the performance of your AI-driven campaigns and adjust your strategies based on internal and customer insights.

And remember: AI is constantly evolving. A better or more effective program may be right around the corner (or already exist!) Experiment with different tools and approaches to find what works best for your university, and don't be afraid to transition if you find something that's a better fit.

Step 5: Scale Your Efforts

Scaling your AI efforts involves expanding the reach of successful campaigns, increasing automation, and integrating AI across multiple channels to enhance overall efficiency and effectiveness.

This may sound like a lot, but remember that AI tools are designed to handle large volumes of data and tasks. With the right AI-powered marketing, you can expand your outreach without significantly increasing your workload.

Using AI for Social Media Posts

You already know that social media is an important platform for engaging prospective students, alumni, and the broader university community. Important, but also time-consuming.

AI tools can help you take back your valuable time by streamlining your approach tosocial media marketing. From content creation to performance analysis, here are some of our favourite ways to utilize AI.

Automating Content Creation

Tools like BuzzSumo and Lately can generate social media content based on trending topics, hashtags, and keywords. These tools ensure that your posts are relevant and engaging, increasing the likelihood of likes, shares, and comments.

Example: Lately uses AI to analyze long-form content, such as blog posts or speeches, and create multiple social media posts that are optimized for engagement.

Scheduling and Optimization

AI-powered social media management tools like Buffer and Later can schedule posts at optimal times, ensuring maximum visibility. These tools analyze when your audience is most active and adjust your posting schedule accordingly.

Example: Buffer allows universities to schedule posts across multiple platforms, ensuring a consistent online presence without the need for manual posting.

Analyzing Performance

AI tools like Brandwatch and Sprinklr provide in-depth analysis of your social media performance. These platforms track engagement metrics, audience sentiment, and the effectiveness of different content types, helping universities refine their social media strategies.

Example:Brandwatch offers sentiment analysis, allowing universities to gauge how their social media posts are being received by the audience.

AI in Email Marketing

Email remains one of the most effective marketing channels for higher education institutes. From personalizing email content to optimizing send times, AI tools can take your email marketing to the next level.

Personalization

Tools like Mailchimp, Marketo, and Zapier use AI to personalize email content based on recipient behavior, preferences, and demographics. This ensures that each email resonates with the recipient, leading to higher open and click-through rates.

Example: Marketo can segment email lists and create personalized email sequences that target different groups of prospective students, such as high school seniors or transfer students.

Optimizing Send Times

AI tools can analyze recipient behavior to determine the best times to send emails. Tools like Brevo and ActiveCampaign use machine learning to optimize send times, ensuring your emails are opened and read.

Example:Brevo offers a "best time" feature that automatically sends emails when recipients are most likely to open them, increasing engagement.

A/B Testing and Campaign Optimization

AI tools like Optimizely and VWO can automate A/B testing for email campaigns, allowing you to experiment with different subject lines, content, and layouts to determine what works best.

Example:Optimizely can run multiple A/B tests simultaneously, providing insights into which email variations drive the most engagement.

Leveraging AI Tools for Content Marketing

AI tools can streamline marketing content, content creation, curation, and distribution, ensuring your university’s content reaches the right audience.

Content Creation

AI writing tools like WordHero can help you create and streamline content that resonates with your university's target audience. From web pages to blog posts, these tools analyze trending topics and audience preferences to generate content ideas and drafts.

Example: WordHero uses AI to analyze social media conversations and generate content ideas based on what’s trending in higher education.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is non-negotiable if you want your university to rank highly in search engine results. AI SEO tools like Surfer SEO and Moz can analyze your website content and suggest optimizations to improve your SEO ranking.

Example: Surfer SEO provides real-time content analysis and optimization tips. It takes into account similar competing content that has ranked well to help you create assets that rank higher on search engines.

Distribution and Promotion

AI marketing applications like Outbrain and Taboola can automate distribution, ensuring your university’s content reaches a wider audience. These tools use AI to recommend your content to users who are most likely to be interested, making your efforts more targeted. The result is often increased visibility and engagement.

Example:Outbrain uses AI to place content recommendations on popular websites, driving traffic back to your university’s website.

Measuring the Impact of AI in University Marketing

To truly understand the impact of AI technologies on your marketing efforts, you'll need to track and measure your performance. One of the perks of AI tools is that they can offer advanced analytics that provide insights into the marketing efforts you're making, such as:

Tracking ROI

AI tools like HubSpot and Google Analytics can track the return on investment (ROI) of your marketing campaigns. These tools analyze data from multiple sources, providing a comprehensive view of your marketing efforts.

Example: HubSpot offers detailed ROI reports that show how much revenue is generated from different marketing campaigns, helping universities allocate their budgets more effectively.

Performance Analysis

Measurement tools like Kissmetrics and Mixpanel offer in-depth performance analysis, tracking user behavior across different channels. These insights help universities understand which strategies are working and where improvements can be made for more effective marketing campaigns.

Example: Kissmetrics tracks user interactions across multiple touchpoints, providing insights into the customer journey and helping universities optimize their marketing strategies to improve engagement and conversion rates.

Identifying Areas for Improvement

AI-driven analytics tools like Tableau and Power BI can help you visualize data and identify market trends that may not be immediately apparent. By leveraging these insights, your university marketing team can refine their strategies. This may include focusing on areas that need improvement and/or scaling successful campaigns.

Example:Tableau offers powerful customer data analysis and visualization capabilities, enabling universities to create detailed dashboards that track marketing performance metrics in real-time. This allows for quick adjustments and ongoing optimization of marketing efforts.

Future Marketing Trends: The Role of AI in Higher Education

The AI in education market is forecasted to grow from $2.5 billion to $88.2 billion by 2032, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 43.3%. This explosive growth highlights the increasing adoption of AI technologies across educational institutions, including universities.

Universities that stay ahead of the curve by adopting new AI tools and strategies will have a competitive edge in attracting and retaining students.

AI-Powered Personalization

According to a study by Salesforce, 84% of customers (including students) say being treated like a person, not a number, is very important to winning their business. This kind of personalization is increasingly desired, and AI is key to achieving this at scale.

While there's already a significant amount of personalization that can be accomplished with AI, the level is expected to grow in the coming years.

Universities will be able to deliver highly targeted content and experiences based on real-time data provided by AI marketing platforms. It's expected that this will better target prospective students, ensuring they receive the information and support they need when looking at potential schools.

Advanced Predictive Analytics

The use of predictive analytics in AI-driven marketing is becoming more prevalent, with WebFX saying that 26% of organizations currently utilize AI to assist with marketing and sales. Universities are tapping into these capabilities to forecast enrollment trends and tailor their recruitment strategies more effectively.

These predictive analytics will become even more powerful as AI algorithms improve.

It's suggested that universities will be able to predict not only which students are likely to enroll but also which marketing channels and messages are most effective for different segments of their audience. This will enable a more precise and efficient allocation of marketing resources.

AI in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

Virtual reality is already starting to break into the higher education marketing scene, but its impact is only expected to grow. By 2025, the global market for VR and AR in education is projected to reach $12.6 billion, highlighting the growing interest in these immersive experiences.

These technologies can/will provide immersive campus tours, interactive learning experiences, and more!

Institutes are looking at ways to give prospective students a deeper connection to the university before they even set foot on campus.

Ethical Considerations in AI Marketing

As AI becomes more prevalent in marketing, ethical considerations have cropped up. This includes ensuring data privacy, avoiding bias in AI algorithms, and maintaining transparency in AI-driven decision-making processes.

Forbes found that 76% of consumers (including prospective students) expect companies to take a stand on data ethics, particularly in the use of AI. Universities will need to consider these expectations as they implement AI-driven marketing strategies.

Those who prioritize ethical AI practices will build trust with their audience and set themselves apart as leaders in responsible marketing.

Embrace AI for a Competitive Edge in University Marketing

From chatbots that engage prospective students to predictive analytics that inform enrollment strategies, AI is revolutionizing how universities connect with their audiences.

By understanding how to use AI for marketing, choosing the right tools, and continuously optimizing your strategies, your university can stay ahead of the competition and achieve its marketing goals.

Ready to take your university’s marketing to the next level?

Visit Noetic Marketer's Digital Marketing for Higher Education page to learn more about how we can help you streamline your marketing strategy.

Who We Are

Noetic Marketer is a full-service digital marketing agency with roots in Ottawa and the GTA. We specialize in creating and optimizing digital marketing campaigns for higher education, e-commerce, professional services, and contractors.

Over the past few years, our team has developed and implemented complete digital marketing solutions for professional service providers across North America.

Our services include digital strategy consultations, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, social media advertising, content marketing, website design, email marketing, CRM implementation, and conversion rate optimization.

About the Author

With a keen eye for detail and a deep understanding of people's motivations, Jess brings her unique perspective and expertise to every project she takes on at Noetic.

With over ten years of copywriting experience, Jess is passionate about distilling complex concepts into engaging, accessible, and SEO-friendly content that resonates. Her mission is to craft written words and content strategy that brings your vision to life.

When she's not working on a project, Jess loves to explore the great outdoors, volunteer with animals, spend time with family, and game to her heart's content.

How To Use AI For Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide for Universities