ENROLLMENT MARKETING IN THE PANDEMIC

As AI becomes a bigger part of the student search process, there's an important question every enrollment marketing team should be asking: What is AI saying about your institution?

As more students begin their search with AI, enrollment marketing is changing in a fundamental way. Success is no longer just about attracting students to your website. It's about making sure AI can confidently understand and recommend your institution before a student ever clicks a link.

When prospective students use AI tools to research colleges and programs, they expect accurate, personalized answers. Those answers depend on how well AI understands your institution.

AI doesn't browse your website the way a prospective student does. Students click from page to page, compare programs, watch videos, and piece together the information they need. AI takes a different approach. It retrieves, evaluates, and assembles information to answer a specific question.

If your AI visibility strategy begins and ends with your website, you're only seeing part of the picture. When a prospective student asks ChatGPT or another AI tool about colleges, universities, or career training programs, the response isn't built from a single webpage. AI assembles information from a wide range of sources to determine which institutions best answer the question.

If an institution offers the right program but AI cannot make the connection, does that program exist for the student?