There’s one thing our everyday lives and the business world share in common, and that’s going through constant change. The same goes for the marketing landscape. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has entered the picture, which proves to be a turning point in how we do marketing. AI marketing is gaining ground among marketers looking for methods to better connect with their target audience.
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And with good reason, since AI technology enables them to do more with less effort. Moreover, it offers them a more nuanced understanding of their customer base and a chance to improve customer experience through personalized and quality content. However, even the most tech-savvy marketing professionals have trouble finding the right balance when employing AI. But that’s what we’re here for, to tell you all there’s to know on AI marketing and how you can take full advantage of it.
What Is AI Marketing?
AI marketing is the use of AI technologies to automate marketing tasks in order to deliver tailor-made experiences to customers in less time. From gathering valuable insights into consumer behavior to predicting campaign performance, AI-guided marketing tools are meant to enhance any brand’s marketing efforts while easing the workload of marketers. But let’s dive a little deeper into the advantages of incorporating AI into your marketing campaigns.
Why Should You Use AI in Your Marketing Campaigns?
While many businesses have already put their trust in AI to create compelling campaigns, many marketing professionals are skeptical about its long-term value. If you belong to the second group, we’re here to convince you that AI marketing is a trend you shouldn’t ignore. Here’s why:
Building stronger relationships
When it comes to personalizing your messages, the sky is the limit. AI gives you all the tools to deepen relationships with your customers through laser-focused content and personalized recommendations. That way, they will think of your brand as an industry leader and become recurring customers. Not to mention that tools like chatbots are always available to address customer concerns, saving your representatives time to resolve more complex queries.
Increasing campaign ROI
AI-decision making is a trusted ally for producing content that aligns with customer needs and adds value to their journey. With AI, you can access crucial analytics that you can later leverage to optimize your marketing campaigns based on what best resonates with your target audience. AI will produce data-driven recommendations for your customers, leading you to make informed decisions regarding your resources and workforce. Having a comprehensive view of what works helps you increase profits and replicate effective content marketing efforts.
Automating trivial or repetitive tasks
AI tools make every marketing professional’s life easier by automating repetitive or trivial tasks. AI marketing increases their efficiency and frees up valuable time for several teams within your organization. Removing mundane tasks like answering queries and streamlining processes like audience segmentation or resource management saves effort, time, and money for marketers to spend on creative tasks.
Making fast and data-driven decisions
One of the most challenging parts of growth is scaling your business. AI systems offer you real-time analytics on user interactions with your campaigns across different platforms. Not only that, but it transforms piles of data into valuable insights that will help you reach the right audience at the right time. The best part is that your team members don’t have to wait for the campaign to end to analyze results since AI tools allow them to come to conclusions faster.
How and Where to Use the Power of AI Marketing in 2023
Personalization and efficiency play a big role in marketing communication. Therefore, investing in the power of AI marketing is an absolute necessity. But how can AI systems give you a hand with different digital marketing methods? Let’s find out!
1. Automated email marketing
Employing automation in email marketing is no secret to experienced marketers that use solid email automation software to send tailored messages based on recipient preferences, demographics, behaviors, etc. But even with such tools, it takes a lot of work on your part to research, analyze, and predict the performance of your email marketing campaigns – especially for marketers dealing with large audiences and complicated objectives.
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That’s where AI solutions come in to help you produce more engaging email content and streamline time-consuming processes. You free up time from gathering and implementing feedback to provide personalized recommendations that match each recipient’s interests and needs. From generating high-performing email subject lines to optimizing your sending times, machine learning gives you the tools to automate email personalization across different components, like your images or CTAs.
2. Social media
A common nightmare among marketers is the constant changes in the algorithms of social media platforms. Social media best practices keep evolving, and keeping up with every trick in the book is exhausting. AI technologies allow you to create engaging social media copy or even images for all social media platforms. Just find out where your audience hangs out and what your goal is. Do you wish to create exciting content to generate leads on LinkedIn? Do you want to come up with catchy Instagram captions?
AI solutions can also help you with your social media listening efforts. Social media listening is keeping track of the mentions of your brand, picking the ones you should prioritize, and extracting crucial customer insights in real time. If done manually, this process is time-consuming, whereas AI algorithms cut through the noise and pave the way for deeply understanding your audience’s mind. You can discover social media trends, address complaints, or even repurpose the most engaging mentions to increase brand awareness.
3. Chatbots
One of the first uses of AI technology was chatbots. While they’ve been around for quite some time, they’re still one of the best ways to use AI in marketing. Their capabilities vary from answering common questions to nurturing leads with dedicated content according to their stage within the customer journey. Nowadays, AI-powered chatbots can answer more complicated questions and handle multiple conversations. And they do so 24/7.
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There’s the option of investing in new-technology chatbots with advanced features like mimicking human conversations and providing content based on the query. So, your audience gets an accurate answer without anyone on your team monitoring chat systems. Moreover, you can streamline requests to route them to the appropriate team. Therefore, chatbots are must-have tools for a seamless customer experience, thus increasing satisfaction and loyalty.
4. SEO
Search engine optimization is about figuring out what your customers are searching for and creating the right type of content to meet their needs. Insights coming in from your SEO will indicate which topics to cover and shape your content strategy. AI is a valuable resource for mastering SEO, reducing the workload when performing the following processes:
- Performing keyword research and identifying the keywords that could improve your search engine rankings
- Discovering your audience’s preferences and generating content that meets both their needs and SEO criteria
- Creating high-quality content in less time while optimizing older content
- Writing titles, meta descriptions, and outlines according to the SERP research performed
So, incorporating AI marketing into your SEO efforts helps you optimize your website ranking for your target keywords and effectively reach your audience. However, you have to do it right. There’s a prerequisite to making things work, and that’s the human factor. You need to make sure that someone from your marketing team will be responsible for proofreading and editing any piece of content created by AI tools. After all, machine-learning solutions don´t match the skills required to create a perfect content piece like a human does.
5. Ad optimization
Ads aren’t exactly the most cost-effective marketing method. You could keep testing without knowing if it will bear any fruit. The worst part is that this process might cost you a fortune. It’s hard enough to engage users because of the countless ads popping up. If they are irrelevant, too, it’s a major turn-off and could result in them turning away from your advertising.
AI systems create engaging ad copy for marketers, even those with none to zero coding experience. You can generate targeted ads to reach the right audience at the right time while reducing costs by selecting the most effective ads to go live. AI solutions allow you to analyze and test your ads before publishing them to find the ones most likely to convert users. Also, you get to access accurate performance metrics that will help you optimize future efforts.
The Downside of AI Use
AI technology empowers businesses to pave the way for customer engagement opportunities and content strategy optimization. They offer unique opportunities to gather crucial customer insights and analyze them to drive customer satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately conversions and business growth.
We won’t lie to you, though; it comes with downsides. Just like your team members, AI tools require training, therefore time and effort, to understand business objectives, rising trends, or customer preferences. Also, you should have a person in your team proofread AI-generated content to ensure it meets the quality standards you’ve set.
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Human editors ensure this type of content is free of inaccurate or false data and that it represents your tone of voice. What’s more, you have to make sure that the AI tools you use comply with privacy standards and laws, such as GDPR, to avoid damaging your reputation or even facing legal consequences.
Conclusion
Implementing an AI marketing strategy requires careful consideration and planning on your part. AI systems are new and powerful tools in your toolkit as long as you figure out how to separate the wheat from the chaff. By following the practices and tips shared in this guide, all that´s left is your marketing experts to determine which methods serve your objectives and brainstorm on how to use AI to drive business growth!
Author: Maria Fintanidou works as a copywriter for email marketing automation software Moosend, having created the Help Articles (FAQs) and overseen the platform’s translations in Greek and Spanish. She loves exploring new cultures and ways of thinking through traveling, reading, and language learning.
