How to Conquer the Biggest Higher Ed Marketing Challenges in 2025
February 6th, 2026 by
Key Insights
- Student Search Behavior Is Changing, and Marketing Must Follow: Shifting demographics, alternative education pathways, and AI-driven search are changing how prospective students discover and evaluate institutions. Universities must align their strategies with search behavior that now spans AI tools, social platforms, and traditional search engines.
- AI Search and Social Discovery Drive Visibility: AI Overviews and social search are redefining online visibility. Traditional SEO alone is no longer enough. Institutions need clear, authoritative content that performs across AI-powered and engagement-driven platforms.
- Tracking the Right Metrics Is Essential: As clicks become less reliable signals, understanding cost per inquiry (CPI), cost per enrolled student, and channel performance is critical for optimizing budgets and improving enrollment outcomes.
Nearly 50% of prospective students now use AI tools at least weekly, and 79% say they read Google AI Overviews when researching academic programs.
Search behavior isn’t just changing. It’s fragmenting across search engines, social platforms, and AI-powered tools, forcing universities to rethink how they show up and stay visible.
As traditional student populations decline and digital marketing evolves, higher education institutions face growing pressure to adapt their recruitment strategies to meet prospective students where they actually search. From shifting discovery behaviors to the rise of alternative education pathways, academic leaders are navigating an increasingly complex and competitive landscape.
The biggest challenges in higher ed marketing today aren’t tied to a single channel or tactic. They require institutions to redefine how they connect with an audience that is more diverse, digitally savvy, and selective than ever before.
To better understand these shifts, Search Influence partnered with UPCEA to conduct AI Search in Higher Education: How Prospects Search in 2025, a national study of 760 adult learners exploring professional and academic programs. The research offers critical insight into how prospective students use search engines, social platforms, university websites, and AI tools throughout the decision-making process.
In this blog, we’ll break down the most pressing higher ed marketing challenges in 2026 and share practical, research-backed strategies to help your institution:
- Strengthen student engagement
- Refine its digital approach
- Compete more effectively in a rapidly evolving search environment
Higher Ed Marketing Challenges
AI’s impact on behavior and the search landscape
The students of tomorrow are already using AI today. And for many, it’s now a routine part of how they search for and evaluate academic options.
Search Influence’s AI Search in Higher Education research found that 79% of prospective students read Google AI Overviews, and 56% are more likely to trust institutions cited by AI.
This shift is influencing the student journey well before application, shaping how prospects explore programs, compare institutions, and narrow their choices.
AI chatbots, search assistants, and generative search experiences are increasingly embedded in the consideration process, acting as filters between prospective students and institutional websites.
In many cases, students now get answers directly within search results without clicking through to a university website, a behavior known as zero-click search. AI Overviews frequently summarize program information, admissions details, and outcomes on the results page itself, especially for non-branded and early-stage research queries. This means visibility increasingly depends on being cited and trusted by AI systems, not just driving traffic to a landing page.
As AI becomes more integrated into everyday search behavior, students expect universities to provide clear, accessible information that AI systems can surface accurately, not just compelling messaging once they arrive on a website.
How to overcome this challenge
As AI reshapes how content is discovered and summarized, higher education marketers must refine their content strategies to support both human decision-making and AI-driven retrieval.
Universities will stand out by developing clear, in-depth, and well-structured content that AI systems can confidently reference and prospective students can trust. Research-backed program pages, detailed FAQs, and content that directly answers common search questions improve the likelihood of being surfaced in AI Overviews and other generative search experiences.
Targeting specific, intent-driven queries, such as program outcomes, career pathways, and admissions considerations, helps institutions remain visible across traditional search, AI-powered results, and emerging discovery channels.
Incorporating interactive elements such as webinars, virtual tours, and downloadable guides creates engagement opportunities that go beyond AI summaries, encouraging prospective students to take the next step once initial discovery happens elsewhere.
Institutions that adapt their content and SEO strategies with AI search in mind will be better positioned to maintain visibility, build trust, and connect with future students as search behavior continues to evolve.
Social search
Social search is redefining how prospective students discover and engage with universities, and it plays a dual role in modern visibility: how people search and how AI systems understand and trust brands.
Search Influence’s AI Search in Higher Education research shows that prospective students’ search behavior is increasingly diversified when researching programs:
- 84% use search engines
- 61% use YouTube
- 50% use AI tools
Social platforms sit squarely within this ecosystem. Prospective students now use platforms like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn as search engines in their own right, entering queries, scanning results, and comparing options through video, comments, and creator content.
Instead of typing formal queries and clicking ranked links, students search social platforms with intent-driven phrases, looking for campus tours, student perspectives, program outcomes, and day-to-day academic experiences. Discovery happens through scrolling, watching, and evaluating content in context, often before a university website ever enters the picture.
Unlike Google’s algorithm, which relies heavily on structured SEO signals, social search is driven by engagement. Visibility is determined by watch time, shares, comments, and interaction, making discovery harder to influence through traditional optimization alone.
This behavior matters beyond student engagement. AI-powered search engines increasingly pull context and authority signals from social platforms. Social content helps AI systems validate what an institution offers and which queries it should be connected to in generative search results.
Higher ed marketers must transform existing content into social-native, program-focused formats that support discovery and credibility. Simply having a website is no longer enough.
How to overcome this challenge
To succeed in social search, universities must treat social platforms as extensions of their search and content strategy, not just promotional channels.
Institutions should focus on creating educational social content, such as:
- Instagram Reels or TikTok videos that clearly explain academic programs, career outcomes, or student experiences
- Short-form student testimonial videos that speak directly to institutional value, flexibility, and real-world impact
- YouTube videos that provide deeper program overviews, faculty insights, or recorded info sessions
- LinkedIn articles that discuss industry trends, academic expertise, or workforce alignment related to your institution and target programs
By approaching social media as a strategic input into AI-driven search, higher ed marketers can improve discoverability, strengthen brand credibility, and support enrollment goals across an increasingly fragmented search landscape.
Tracking key metrics for performance
Tracking key metrics is essential for ensuring the success of higher education marketing efforts, yet many colleges and universities still struggle to measure the true impact of their campaigns.
UPCEA and Search Influence collaborated on the Higher Ed Marketing Metrics Research Study: What Gets Measured Gets Managed to address this challenge.
This study highlights a critical issue: While most marketing teams can identify the source of inquiries, far fewer track the actual cost per inquiry (CPI) or cost per enrolled student — two essential metrics for assessing marketing efficiency.
In fact, while nearly 73% of marketing units track the source of inquiries for online and professional education programs, only 46% track CPI, and just 43% monitor the cost per enrolled student. Even more concerning, 17% do not track any of these key performance indicators at all.
Understanding CPI and cost per enrolled student provides significant benefits for colleges and universities looking to optimize their campus recruitment efforts.
Tracking these metrics allows marketing teams to assess whether they are generating an appropriate volume of prospects and determine if those inquiries are converting into actual enrollments. More importantly, it enables data-driven decision-making by showing where budget optimizations can improve efficiency.
For example, if one marketing channel consistently delivers high CPI but low conversion rates, adjustments can be made to targeting, messaging, or spend allocation to maximize future results. Tracking these metrics provides a foundation for deeper analysis, helping universities evaluate lead quality, conversion ratios, and the overall effectiveness of different marketing channels.
How to overcome this challenge
By prioritizing CPI and cost per enrolled student, higher education marketing teams can make informed adjustments to their strategies, ensuring that resources are directed toward the highest-performing channels. This approach improves campaign performance and allows institutions to better understand how their marketing investments drive student engagement.
Changing demographic and enrollment landscape in higher education
The higher education landscape is shifting dramatically, and the long-anticipated demographic cliff is here. As the number of “college-aged” students declines, institutions historically relying on traditional undergraduate enrollments must rethink their approach.
To stay competitive, higher education institutions must expand their focus beyond recent high school graduates and embrace a broader audience — adult learners, career changers, and professionals seeking skills-based education.
The move away from traditional education pathways
The traditional four-year degree is no longer the only, or even the preferred, pathway for many modern learners.
Rising tuition costs, evolving workforce demands, and a desire for flexibility are driving students toward microcredentials, online degrees, and non-credit-to-credit pathways that allow them to tailor their education to their career goals.
The workforce is evolving too quickly for rigid, 120-credit degree programs to keep up.
As Aaron Brower highlights in From Degrees to Microcredentials: Higher Education Must Evolve to Embrace the Modern Economy, this shift isn’t just about cost; it’s about relevance.
Instead, students are adopting a “mix-and-match” approach to learning, combining traditional coursework with certifications, industry-recognized credentials, and skill-based training. This shift is forcing schools and universities to adapt their higher education marketing and university marketing strategies to ensure they reach and engage today’s learners.
Prospective students are looking for technology-driven solutions that allow them to engage with coursework without sacrificing work, family, or other commitments. Institutions must emphasize the benefits of flexible learning options to attract more students.
This means adapting marketing communications to highlight the value of alternative education pathways, including non-credit programs that can stack into degrees, online learning that fits busy schedules, and credentials that provide immediate career impact.
How to overcome this challenge
For campuses to thrive in this new landscape, institutions need to evolve their messaging to focus on lead generation and long-term student engagement. Universities that successfully communicate the advantages of non-traditional education will attract more students and position themselves as forward-thinking leaders in an era where lifelong learning is essential.
The Importance of Upskilling Your Team With AI SEO
To overcome today’s higher ed marketing challenges, institutions must upskill their teams with a clear understanding of AI SEO.
AI SEO isn’t a passing trend or a niche tactic. It’s the new operating environment for search.
As AI-powered systems increasingly determine which content is surfaced, cited, and trusted, marketers need to understand how content is interpreted by people and machines.
New technology can feel intimidating, but adapting to AI SEO is no different than learning any other essential marketing tool. Working in marketing today without understanding AI SEO is like working at Office Depot without knowing how to use the Xerox machine. It’s simply part of the job now.
For many institutions, the fastest path forward is partnering with an AI SEO agencythat recognizes how search is evolving and how higher ed audiences behave.
Contact Our Award-Winning Higher Ed Marketing Agency
From understanding AI’s impact on search and social discovery to navigating changing demographics and tracking the right performance metrics, higher education marketers are being asked to do more in an increasingly complex environment.
That’s where Search Influence comes in. We help colleges and universities adapt with research-backed strategies.
Of all these challenges, AI search may be the steepest climb. Search behavior is shifting faster than most institutions can track, and visibility now depends on how AI systems interpret, summarize, and trust your content.
Consider our AI Search in Higher Education research study the climbing gear you need. It offers practical insight to help you navigate this shift with clarity and confidence.
Download the AI Search in Higher Education study to understand how prospective students use search engines, AI tools, social platforms, and university websites.
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