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Written by: Shane Barker
Artificial intelligence or AI is seeing steady growth and penetration in digital marketing.
According to a Gartner survey of Chief Innovation Officers (CIOs), AI usage in marketing grew by 270% during 2018-19, and is poised to grow even more in the coming years.
The reason?
AI-powered tools can handle more workload than humans, decipher hidden data patterns, and facilitate quick decision making.
As these tools become more sophisticated, their application in digital marketing widens.
Earlier, AI tools were mainly used for automating repetitive, mundane tasks. But today, they play a big role in high-level, cognitive tasks like market analysis and content development.
Plus, it’s no secret that they reduce labor overhead, human errors, and downtime by a big margin. All in all, it’s worthwhile to power your digital marketing with AI.
Are you behind the AI curve?
Fret not; I have you covered. In this post, I’m going to explain the three most effective applications of AI in digital marketing, plus tools and pro tips. Read on.
The 3 Best Ways to Leverage AI in Digital Marketing
As explained, AI is now a part of core marketing practices. However, it needs to be implemented with caution, especially in customer-facing areas. Here are the three most effective applications of AI in marketing:
1. Chatbots
As you know, modern consumers expect brands to be available for them around-the-clock. Even with the most efficient customer service, you can’t possibly meet such heightened demands with human agents.
The solution?
AI-powered chatbots. These virtual assistants can be embedded in your websites and apps to provide prompt service and collect user insights.
As bots interact more and more with your audience, they collect insights about them and become more “intelligent.” Over time, they start anticipating user needs and providing contextual shopping suggestions to make user experiences smooth and seamless.
On top of that, 61% of netizens prefer to interact with bots rather than with live agents. Since bots are such people-pleasers, the ecommerce industry has adopted them with a vengeance. AI’s application in ecommerce is wide and varied.
Need an example?
American Eagle Outfitters, a clothing brand, uses a bot named “Aerie” to engage their website visitors in a this-or-that quiz. The aim is to learn about their visitors’ product preferences and convert them faster. Thanks to the bot, the brand has been able to increase their sales and boost customer engagement rates.
2. Content Creation
Consumers dig personalized content from brands. 56.5% of brands are using AI to tailor content to their audience’s needs and interests. AI tools analyze the tone and structure of best-performing content in your niche. Using these insights, they provide content improvement suggestions to bring your content up to par.
There’s one more way AI can improve your content quality.
If you’re big on visual content, you can use AI-backed analytics to A/B test your visual content before publishing it.
This way, you can tailor your content according to your target platforms and audiences. You can create content variants and test them on real users. Since AI tools can handle huge data volumes, they produce near-accurate analytics.
For instance, you can get more return from your paid ads by testing your ad copy on real users and platforms. By eliminating guesswork from content creation, AI can save you a lot of effort, resources, and costs.
3. Market Research
As a marketer, you likely understand the importance of creating accurate, precise buyer personas. AI-based analytics tools can help you get inside your consumers’ minds. They inspect millions of data points and sources to draw insights hidden from the human eye.
These tools fetch data from multiple sources, like CRMs, mailing lists, and social media pages to create comprehensive buyer personas. They also have the ability to present complex data in comprehensible formats.
What’s more?
Sophisticated tools in this genre can dig into abstract parameters such as consumer sentiment and tone, which are opaque otherwise. It’s natural that if your market analysis is so rigorous, your content, targeting, and timing will be on-point.
Are You Ready to Accelerate Your Digital Marketing with AI?
There was a time when only global brands could afford to invest in AI. But as the technology becomes more mainstream, it has come within the reach of small businesses as well. Now is, in fact, the right time to leverage AI in digital marketing for the simple reason that if you don’t, your competitors will.
Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant who specializes in influencer marketing, content marketing, and SEO. He is the co-founder of Attrock, a digital marketing agency. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities.
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