From online learning to digital fundraising, school leaders are accustomed to integrating technology into their organizations. As operations and services continue to develop, digital marketing will expand its reach.
Implementing digital marketing campaigns can be tricky, but online tactics provide great opportunities for tracking, testing, and evolving along with your organization’s priorities. Taking your digital marketing efforts a step further is possible with artificial intelligence (AI), but getting started can be overwhelming.
In this article, we’ll demystify AI and share some benefits of testing the digital waters.
What is artificial intelligence?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is any computer-based system that performs tasks or carries out functions that normally require human intelligence and critical thinking. AI can apply to tasks such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and more.
There are several types of AI and we use a variety of them in our normal day-to-day tasks. If you’ve ever used facial recognition to unlock your phone, then you’ve experienced the power of AI.
(Although we often define marketing as how schools develop their messages and carry out integrated strategies that promote values and nurture constituent relations, commitment, and investment. This means that marketing includes your website, your social media, your email outreach, and more.)
Why is artificial intelligence helpful for marketing?
As most school leaders know, the days of advertising your school or event in the newspaper have ended. According to a 2022 Statista Global Consumer survey, 55% of respondents ranked search engines as their number one source. But for schools, word of mouth marketing is still the biggest driver of how people find schools.
Other popular resources include online reviews, website searches, and published videos. All the online searching and browsing generates a huge amount of data that can streamline your marketing efforts.
AI can help guide campaigns by predicting which advertising will be the most effective. This means your marketing budget can go further and generate a greater return on investment.
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What are the benefits of using AI for private school marketing?
- AI makes it easier for people to find you and navigate your information. The buying power of millennials and Gen Z is increasing. It’s important that you connect with them because they are the parents of your next generation of students. And both generations are extremely digitally savvy. This means your digital marketing needs to keep pace with an increasingly digitally literate customer base.
Customers prefer quick answers, easy solutions, and complete information. AI can analyze user search patterns and needs to identify areas for improvement while making informed suggestions to users. AI can also generate personalized service and organization recommendations from both an owned and paid marketing perspective and through earned search engine recognition.
- AI shortens your marketing to-do list through automation. The many types of AI can help reduce your to do list by automating important aspects of your marketing efforts. AI tools can publish various targeted ads across different platforms, which increases efficiency. Logic-based AI tools can also help your organization set up nurture campaigns that run themselves, either through email or by texting your prospects.
For example, SEMrush has great AI search engine optimization (SEO) tools for identifying keyword opportunities to rank higher. Jasper.ai is a good tool for using AI to create content.
- AI connects your existing customers to the information they need with chatbot. Chatbot is a computer program designed to simulate conversation with human users, especially over the internet. Marketers can take advantage of AI-powered chatbots to act as front-line customer service so your constituents can more easily find the information they need and quickly get answers to basic questions. This can also be a valuable tool for the retention and engagement of current families and other other school community members.
According to a McKinsey 2021 survey, over 86% of companies are integrating artificial intelligence to predict sales and improve marketing campaigns. Whether you are looking to increase the conversion of your fundraising, elevate your enrollment, or simply improve your level of customer service, adding artificial intelligence to your marketing efforts can yield significant results.
