Technology and marketing are already two well-integrated fields of business. Their combination allows companies to promote products and services on the internet. Automating routine, time-intensive tasks such as emails and social media posts is another great use of AI tech in any marketing strategy.
In fact, the entire field of online marketing wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for technology. But up until recently, most of the tech influencing marketing was simply a tool. A human had to decide how to use that tool, what it should do, and how it should function.
Recently, that has begun to shift.
Artificial intelligence has started to find applications in the marketing world. While it’s still very much in its infancy, AI is quickly becoming a popular option for many marketing activities — if you know how to use it.
The Benefits of AI in Marketing
Before considering specific applications of AI in marketing, it’s worth taking a minute to lay out why a marketer should consider doing so in the first place. After all, marketing is a business activity. As such, marketers should only apply technology if it has a specific (and profitable) outcome.
So, how does AI benefit marketing? To properly understand that, it’s important to differentiate the concept of artificial intelligence from other forms of modern technology. For instance, things like data collection and automation aren’t necessarily AI.
According to Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google’s AI acquisition DeepMind, AI is the “science of making machines smart.” In other words, when you give technology the ability to make decisions based on the information that it’s given, it becomes artificial intelligence.
Marketers can apply technology that doesn’t just operate digitally but can perform tasks and functions on its own. When they do, it has a number of powerful benefits.
- AI can have a dramatic effect on the efficiency of an organization. Activities can be truly outsourced and left for computers to handle.
- The use of AI can also impact the quality of your work. It does this by maintaining strict standards and providing a sense of consistency and predictability to your outcomes.
- AI has proven itself capable of lead generation. It accomplishes this through things like increasingly sophisticated chatbots and virtual assistants.
From efficiency to quality to lead generation, AI can have a big impact on how effective a marketing campaign can be. One question still remains, though. How can you incorporate AI into your marketing strategy to start benefiting from these advantages?
How to Use AI in Marketing
AI is an exploding field. As such, it can take a little bit of work to uncover its most beneficial applications in an area like marketing. Nevertheless, there are plenty of ways that AI can make a difference.
Here are two of the best areas to explore. Start here to discover the various ways that AI can impact your marketing strategy in the months ahead.
Use AI in your content.
Make no mistake, AI isn’t at the point where it can flawlessly mimic a human’s inherent creativity. Nevertheless, it is still possible to employ AI when it comes to creating content. This is especially true if you find that you’re generating things that are more mundane and have a predictable format.
For instance, consider MarketMuse, a company that develops AI-powered content optimization tools. They point out that popular online publications are already using AI “in various low-level ways.” They also add that companies often do this with data-heavy content that tends to follow a highly structured format.
Nevertheless, the opportunity to use AI to create content is certainly becoming a reality. Not only that, but its growing capabilities can apply to content creation. This works in many different ways, from machine learning to automated reasoning, and beyond.
Use AI with your data.
Data and analytics are already one of the most powerful ways to apply technology in marketing.
However, adding AI into the mix can create a synergistic effect. According to the marketing text and analysis tool Monkey Learn, “Using AI-guided systems in your data analysis allows you to automatically clean, analyze, explain, and ultimately visualize your data.”
This application of AI can transform multiple areas of your marketing. For instance, by applying artificial intelligence to your current marketing data, you can identify gaps and issues. Addressing problems is suddenly much faster and simpler.
In addition to cleaning up problems, AI-driven data analysis can help you find potential opportunities.
This can come from areas that you thought were successful but still have more room for growth. It can also come from completely new considerations that you wouldn’t have been aware of without a thorough analysis of your data. You can even use this kind of data analysis to help you better understand your customers and create more effective buyer personas.
The time to embrace AI marketing is at hand.
Using tech in marketing is nothing new. However, many marketers are still cautious about the idea of applying artificial intelligence.
This hesitation may have been warranted in the past when AI was still too underdeveloped to help in the high-pressure marketing world. But the situation is changing as AI continues to increase its capabilities and more third-party software solutions incorporate AI into their tools.
All that remains is for marketers to find the tools that can help their particular situation and then create a strategy that allows them to tap into the powerful benefits of AI. This shouldn’t be done five or ten years in the future, either. It’s time to start right in the here and now.
