In the last year, artificial intelligence (AI) has become a buzzword in the business world, and it’s no secret why.
Between June 2022 and March 2023, the traffic volume for the keyword “AI” tripled, increasing from 7.9 million searches to over 30.4million monthly searches.
So, what is artificial intelligence, and how is it used in marketing?
This article explores the ways in which artificial intelligence is used in marketing and the pros and cons of AI in marketing efforts.
Whether you’re in the marketing industry or are just curious about how artificial intelligence has come to be used in marketing, this comprehensive guide will answer all of your questions.
How Is AI Used in Marketing?
While artificial intelligence has been around since the 1950s, it has only really gotten popular within the last decade.
Over the last few years, more and more marketing businesses have started to utilise artificial intelligence to help lower their workload and boost efficiency.
So, what are the most common ways AI is used in marketing?
Content generation
Through platforms like ChatGPT, marketing businesses can use AI to create captions, social media posts and even entire articles.
However, while AI platforms can certainly create content for marketing purposes, it isn’t ready to be published straight away.
Marketers still need to fact-check, edit and adjust the content written by the AI to make it sound more human.
SEO
Another way marketing businesses use artificial intelligence is for SEO purposes.
AI algorithms can analyse website traffic and identify the keywords that can help a business’ website rank higher in search results ,as well as track competitors’ activity.
Through AI-powered tools, marketers can also learn about their audience’s preferences and customise their content to match their interests.
Data analysis
Analysing data is one of the main uses of AI in marketing. Artificial intelligence can collect and sift through large amounts of data from your marketing campaigns and summarise the findings.
Through data analysis, AI can also predict the outcome of current and future marketing campaigns by analysing historical data, such as purchase behaviour, time-on-page, email opens and more.
Utilising AI for data analysis allows you to save time when strategising and developing marketing assets for your future campaigns.
Chatbots
Have you ever gone onto a website to ask a question and a chatbot popped up? That’s artificial intelligence in use!
Chatbots are created with natural language processing (NLP) and are placed on websites to help solve problems for customers, nurture potential leads, answer frequently asked questions and more.
Automated email marketing campaigns
Automated email marketing isn’t a new thing; in fact, it’s been around for years. However, by utilising artificial intelligence tools, you can produce more engaging email content and learn more about the behaviour of customers on your email list.
The goal of utilising AI is to reduce the amount of time marketers spend researching and brainstorming ideas so they can instead focus on sending successful campaigns.
Improved customer experience
When it comes to marketing, customer experience is a top priority, and AI can help marketers deliver the best experience to visitors to convert them into leads.
Artificial intelligence can help increase customer retention, loyalty and sales through personalised content and improved assets.
The Advantages of AI in Marketing
So, what are the advantages of AI in digital marketing?
Improved efficiency
The use of AI in marketing can help improve efficiency in many ways, such as
● Creating content for social media posts, headings and blog posts
● Prioritising leads that are close to converting
● Creating triggered emails and email drip campaigns
● Analysing your email engagement to improve your email’s open rate and click-through-rate(CTR)
● Answering inquiries from visitors on your site with a chatbot
Optimised campaigns
AI tools can track your marketing campaigns and provide you with insights into what is doing well and what isn’t.
From there, you can decide which elements of your campaign need to be altered to ensure the campaign’s success.
Cost savings
By utilising a range of AI platforms that only need one or two pairs of human eyes to read, edit and update content and campaigns significantly reduce costs.
Personalisation of products and messages
AI tools that use predictive analysis allow companies to understand user preferences and make recommendations based on that data. An excellent example of this is Netflix. Netflix takes a look at the shows and movies you’ve previously watched and uses that data to recommend similar shows and movies to watch.
Predictive analysis is also beneficial for recommending products to customers based on their location, purchase history, and demographics
The Disadvantages of AI in Marketing
While there are many benefits of using AI in marketing, there are also some disadvantages to consider.
Data privacy and security concerns
For artificial intelligence to efficiently draw insights from your campaigns, it must collect and analyse a large amount of lead and customer data. Because of this, it can raise concerns about data privacy and security.
Since transparency is one of the main elements that foster trust in your customers and potential customers, it’s crucial to discuss how you collect, process and protect their data.
Potentially biased and inaccurate content
The output you get from AI tools is only as good as the data it’s trained on. If AI tools are trained with data of disproportionate representation, they may produce inaccurate or biased predictions. Due to this, it could lead to unfairly targeted ads.
Lack of creativity
One of the disadvantages of using AI tools in marketing efforts is the lack of creativity.
While AI tools, such as ChatGPT, can write anything from headlines to social media posts and even entire articles, they lack the creativity and tone that occurs when a human writes content. Therefore, it’s crucial for marketers to edit and alter the content written by AI tools to give it the human touch and make it more creative.
Navigating AI in B2B Marketing
How can you navigate AI when it comes to B2B marketing?
1. Define your business objectives
The first thing you should do is define your B2B marketing objectives. By doing this, you can then understand how AI aligns with your goals and determine the areas in which using AI would be beneficial.
2. Choose the appropriate AI tools
Once you’ve identified your business goals and objectives, it’s time to choose the appropriate AI tools to help achieve those goals.
Some things to consider when deciding which AI tools to use include ease of integration, scalability and compatibility with your existing systems.
3. Invest in data quality
The effectiveness of the AI tools you choose to utilise depends on the quality of your data.
Ensure that your data is accurate and up-to-date. Cleanse and organise your data to maximise the effectiveness of AI algorithms to get the most reliable insights.
4. Be transparent about privacy and data
When using AI tools for marketing purposes, to get insights, they dive deep into customer data and analytics. Due to this, you need to be transparent with your customers about data collection and where you plan to use it.
Having transparency with your customers about data and privacy is an effective way to foster trust and build long-term relationships.
5. Augment AI with human expertise
It’s no secret that AI is a powerful tool. However, human creativity, empathy and critical thinking can’t be replaced.
While AI tools are effective in helping marketers with arrange of tasks, it’s important to strike the right balance between automation and human experience.
It’s important to keep in mind that AI is a tool that enhances human capabilities; it doesn’t replace human intelligence.
Therefore, you should use AI tools as a starting point. For example, when you use AI to write a blog post, you need a human to edit, fact-check and provide a human tone to it
Overcome The Marketing Challenges of AI with Anchor
Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool, and when paired with human intelligence and empathy, it can create successful and memorable campaigns.
If you’re looking to boost your marketing efforts with AI but aren’t sure where to start, look no further than Anchor Digital.
Our team of experienced and dedicated professionals are passionate about using AI and human creativity to create marketing campaigns that will skyrocket your business to success.
If you’d like to learn more about how we can help your business, drop us a line.
