It’s almost impossible to write a book on AI in marketing. It changes too fast.
I know because I have tried. So far, I’ve revised the chapter on AI twice, and it’s out of date again.
Turns out that while it’s going to be hard to keep up with the new features that OpenAI, Google and others announce, there are a number of underlying trends that you can prepare for.
Quality vs. Quick
In past years, especially since Covid, we have seen prospective students seek out more first-person perspectives from fellow students and connecting with them – as is shown by the success of
platforms like Unibuddy, Goin’ and CampusConnect.
People are still best assured by other people. And with AI generated content spreading, I believe content that’s relatable and human will only stand out more in years to come. You won’t regret the effort you put into publishing stories about your actual students.
Sometimes, however, people just want a quick answer.
- “How can I access that building with a wheelchair?”
- “What’s the application deadline?”
This is where AI can potentially shine. Especially when the stakes aren’t too high.
Data quality
However, AI powered chatbots aren’t 100% reliable, even if their responses sound very confident.
Google’s AI Overviews are grappling with this – like in this example where it recommends to eat at least one small rock per day – the answer was sourced from satirical website The Onion.
If your website has outdated pages lurking in the background, human visitors might not even find them – but they can become the source of a wrong AI reply, from a tool like Perplexity. So the real challenge is in making sure your website data – and whatever else you publicly publish – is clean and correct.
AI is going to lead to change user behaviour – but it’s not going to be a quick fix for content creators. On the one hand, you can stand out by publishing relatable, human content.
On the other, AI search places higher demands on accurate inputs.
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