How Does Digital Marketing Leverage AI?

Marketers are preparing for the challenges of the coming year, with artificial intelligence (AI) taking center stage alongside machine learning and the decline of third-party cookies, particularly in the realm of search engine optimization. According to a Search Engine Journal survey, 18% of respondents consider machine learning and AI to be more impactful than Google updates, highlighting a significant industry shift.

AI is widely utilized in chatbots, and many marketers have begun to integrate this technology into their strategies. Currently, 28% of businesses are employing AI across their marketing operations, with 31% implementing it for the first time this year.

AI not only facilitates customer interactions but also enhances data-driven decision-making. Its capacity to process vast amounts of information, learn, solve problems, and recognize speech through AI systems plays a crucial role in this process, known as data annotation.

Capabilities of AI in Marketing:

  • Sales forecasting
  • Social media analytics
  • Pattern recognition and anomaly detection
  • Product recommendations
  • Visual search capabilities
  • Voice recognition technology
  • Data filtering and generation
  • Consumer segmentation
  • Dynamic pricing strategies

Maximizing Marketing Results with AI

Since marketing heavily revolves around understanding customers—identifying demographics and analyzing buying behavior—AI is proving to be a game changer. A McKinsey report illustrates that AI has positively impacted marketing efforts across 400 cases in 19 different industries. Notably, customer-facing businesses are reaping the most benefits, with AI enabling them to recommend products based on customer data.

So, which AI applications can enhance your marketing initiatives?

1. Data Analysis

Experiencing declining revenue can be alarming for any business. Instead of resorting to budget cuts, investing in data analytics can provide insights that prevent such drastic measures. For instance, The Economist successfully utilized AI-driven programmatic advertising to analyze customer data, segment audiences, and identify reading preferences. This approach helped attract 3.6 million new readers and yielded a remarkable campaign ROI of 10:1.

  • Moveo.ai: A conversational AI platform for building chatbots and virtual assistants.
  • Lityx: A machine learning platform designed for predictive model deployment.
  • Heap: A customer analytics tool offering real-time insights into user interactions.

2. Chatbots

Who hasn’t encountered the convenience of shopping with the help of chatbots recently?

Today, many retail and eCommerce brands have adopted chatbots. These intelligent systems leverage artificial intelligence and natural language processing (NLP) to mimic customer conversations, whether through text or voice. NLP is a subset of AI focused on enabling computers to comprehend human language by analyzing how people communicate.

Businesses employ chatbots for various sales and marketing purposes, including:

  • Gaining deeper insights into customer behavior
  • Enhancing user engagement
  • Tailoring personalized experiences for users
  • Qualifying leads and guiding them through the sales funnel
  • Facilitating product or service sales

Thus, chatbots serve more than just a conversational function on websites; they actively engage with visitors, transforming them into essential tools for sales and marketing efforts.

  1. AIGo - provides a conversational AI platform tailored for enterprises.
  2. Atlassian - the developer behind popular collaboration tools, including the Stride chatbot.
  3. Bold360 - delivers AI-driven customer engagement solutions for businesses.
  4. Drift - a conversational marketing and sales platform that connects businesses with potential customers through chat.
  5. H2O.ai - offers AI-powered solutions for businesses, featuring its Driverless AI chatbot.
  6. IBM Watson - a pioneer in AI technology and chatbots, providing a comprehensive suite of AI solutions, including the Watson Assistant.
  7. MobileMonkey - a chatbot platform for Facebook Messenger, enabling businesses to engage with customers effectively.
  8. Tidio - a highly-rated platform designed for small and medium-sized businesses to enhance sales through exceptional customer service, helping convert visitors into paying customers.

3. Email Marketing

Email marketing continues to yield impressive ROI, with projections indicating revenue will reach $11 billion by the end of 2023. AI can streamline the process by analyzing data, personalizing campaigns, and automating tasks.

  • Phrasee: Optimizes subject lines to enhance open and conversion rates.
  • Optimal: Adjusts content based on monitored user behavior.
  • Seventh Sense: Sends emails at optimal times based on user engagement patterns.

4. Content Strategy

Many believe that creating content is simple, with the ability to quickly generate numerous articles and visually engaging pieces. However, the reality is quite different.

While AI may not fully replace human creativity and insights, it can significantly reduce the burden on content marketers by removing much of the guesswork. Content strategy applications leverage AI and machine learning to understand consumer searches, aligning them with your content creation efforts to craft strategies that captivate interest and drive traffic. This allows teams to scale their content production while focusing on impactful strategies.

Some notable AI-powered content strategy tools include:

  • MarketMuse – Provides SEO recommendations and insights that enhance content marketing strategies.
  • BrightEdge – Offers tools for content creation and performance measurement, aimed at increasing traffic and engagement.
  • HubSpot – Suggests topic clusters based on relevance and competition, enabling efficient content strategy development.

5. Content Creation

Some AI-powered tools do more than just devise content strategies; they also produce optimized content. This is particularly beneficial for eCommerce brands that need to create and update numerous product pages, as even the most prolific content creators have their limits.

While many content creation tools can help scale production, it's essential to use them selectively. There’s ongoing debate regarding AI-generated content—it can be efficient, but it may not always be the best approach.

Firstly, Google classifies auto-generated content as spam. The leading search engine can differentiate between human-created and AI-generated content.

Additionally, a human-written piece by an AI tool doesn't automatically ensure high quality; experience and expertise are crucial. Some AI-powered content creation tools leverage advanced technology to generate valuable articles.

The key takeaway is that you don’t need tools that produce low-quality content; you should focus on creating high-quality material. Choose your AI tools wisely. For instance, premium tools like Acrolinx can "read" your content to ensure it aligns with your brand’s tone, style, and language standards. Meanwhile, Concured automates content auditing, topic research, and generates data-driven content briefs.

Keep in mind these guidelines from Google:

  • Ensure the generated content is coherent and sensible for human readers.
  • Avoid using tools that simply combine existing content from various web pages.
  • Don't rely on tools that automate synonymization.
  • Have a human reviewer edit any AI-generated content before it goes live.

For advanced content creation, consider integrating tools like Jasper.ai and ChatGPT. These platforms can significantly streamline the process of producing marketing content, allowing you to generate high-quality articles quickly and efficiently.

Thanks to their access to vast and continuously updated data, these tools can understand the context of the topics being written about, ensuring that the content reflects current trends and nuances.

6. Consumer Segmentation

For a marketing initiative to succeed, it's crucial to have a deep understanding of your target customers. Regardless of the tactics you employ—whether it's content, email, or paid advertising—your marketing efforts must be informed by who your customers are and their position in the sales funnel. This requires thorough analysis of the vast amounts of data you collect.

AI-powered tools excel in efficiently and accurately segmenting customers. These segmentation applications analyze data sets to uncover behaviors and patterns, organizing information to align with your campaign needs. By doing so, you can craft personalized marketing messages that resonate more effectively than generic ones. For instance, tailored product or service recommendations can enhance customer engagement by providing relevant suggestions.

7. Customer Relationship Management

Customer retention can be just as challenging as acquiring new customers—sometimes even more so. However, keeping existing customers is much more cost-effective; acquiring new customers can be five times more expensive than retaining loyal ones. So, how can you maintain these valuable relationships?

Utilizing AI in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an effective way to manage and nurture existing customer relationships. AI-powered CRM software offers several key capabilities:

  • Automation
  • Predictive analytics
  • Sentiment analysis
  • Machine learning

By leveraging AI, your CRM can significantly enhance the customer experience. It allows you to allocate resources more effectively, providing your sales team with valuable insights into customer perceptions of your business and products. Additionally, AI helps streamline workflows, reducing human error and standardizing processes.

Some notable AI-powered CRM solutions include:

  • Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services
  • Salesforce Einstein
  • Oracle Artificial Intelligence
  • IBM Watson
  • Adobe Sensei

8. AI Assistants

Customer retention can be just as challenging as acquiring new customers—sometimes even more so. However, keeping existing customers is much more cost-effective; acquiring new customers can be five times more expensive than retaining loyal ones. So, how can you maintain these valuable relationships?

Utilizing AI in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an effective way to manage and nurture existing customer relationships. AI-powered CRM software offers several key capabilities:

  • Automation
  • Predictive analytics
  • Sentiment analysis
  • Machine learning

By leveraging AI, your CRM can significantly enhance the customer experience. It allows you to allocate resources more effectively, providing your sales team with valuable insights into customer perceptions of your business and products. Additionally, AI helps streamline workflows, reducing human error and standardizing processes.

Some notable AI-powered CRM solutions include:

  • Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services
  • Salesforce Einstein
  • Oracle Artificial Intelligence
  • IBM Watson
  • Adobe Sensei

Transform Your Marketing Efforts — Carefully

The volume of data businesses accumulate grows exponentially as they gather extensive customer and market information. When the amount of data becomes overwhelming, it's essential to leverage technology that can assist in managing it effectively. Artificial intelligence (AI) is that technology.

AI adoption is on the rise, with marketers increasingly recognizing its potential to improve customer management, enhance products or services, boost conversions, and streamline workflows. However, to fully benefit from AI, a strategic approach is necessary, particularly when implementing more advanced solutions like integrated machine learning applications.

Teams will require time to familiarize themselves with sophisticated systems and undergo training to use them effectively. It's crucial to ensure that the integration of machine learning and human efforts enhances employees' skills rather than complicates their work.

While considering your employees, also keep your customers in mind. Will the chatbots you implement be user-friendly and genuinely helpful? Will the AI technology on your website ensure the safety of their personal information and maintain their privacy? Ultimately, no technology is worth the investment if it jeopardizes customer trust.