At present, simply relying on growth/digital marketing is insufficient for most marketing teams, despite it being a crucial factor. Although being data-driven and growth-focused has been effective so far, this approach alone is no longer adequate.
To enhance your marketing outcomes and surpass rivals, you must embrace advanced technology and automation with swiftness. Essentially, it’s crucial to utilize artificial intelligence (AI) in marketing, which is simpler than you might imagine because it’s already 2021.
AI Marketing
AI encompasses a range of technologies aimed at improving both the internal operations and customer-facing initiatives of your business.
- Enhancing chatbots with natural language processing (NLP) to qualify leads without forms.
- CRMs that use machine learning to help businesses analyze every aspect of a customer’s relationship.
- Apps that use deep learning to take personalization to another level.
The potential applications of AI in your marketing plan are expanding at a rapid pace, and we won’t discuss every one of them in this article. After all, due to the emergence of new companies and technologies on a frequent basis, it would be impractical to cover everything.
AI in marketing importance
Marketing using AI provides the capability to:
- Cut operational costs by accomplishing more, in less time, with a smaller team.
- Make the most of your budget with data-driven decisions
- Automatically apply optimizations based on performance data.
- Write more effective copy to increase conversion rates.
- Bid smarter in your campaigns.
- Build a marketing strategy customized to your team’s needs and marketing objectives.
Using AI for your marketing endeavors can result in a streamlined marketing team and expedited business growth.
Practical ways to use artificial intelligence in marketing
A plethora of marketing tools and technologies exist to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of your marketing team. Rest assured, this will not exclusively consist of a catalogue of automated marketing tools.
1. Make your life easier with Google Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs)
In contrast to conventional paid search approaches, Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs) operate by reversing the process. Typically, you would conduct keyword research, segment your keywords, and then align the ad and landing page content with the ad group.
When utilizing DSAs, you only need to select the landing pages you want to advertise, and Google will take care of the rest. Google’s artificial intelligence examines the landing pages, selects suitable keywords on your behalf, and crafts precise ad headlines.
DSA campaigns have been in existence for quite some time, but their inadequate performance has led campaign managers to distrust them. However, Google has made significant enhancements to DSA campaigns over the past few years, which now function as Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) powered by Google’s AI. It’s worth noting that DSAs offer far more than RSAs.
There are various ways to organize and run your DSA campaigns, but they share similarities. You can begin by experimenting with a limited portion of your website, such as your blog or resources, and observe how it performs on your behalf.
Be sure to eliminate any unnecessary keywords or pages that you do not want to advertise. Your careers page may be an example of redundancy if it is promoted by DSAs. Utilizing DSA campaigns can help you save time by eliminating the need to continuously search for new keywords and create advertisements.
2. Use Google Analytics Intelligence as your site analyst
Using machine learning technology, the Analytics Intelligence function within your Google Analytics account assists you in comprehending your website’s outcomes and taking action. Its artificial intelligence foundation enables you to pose basic inquiries about your website’s success, and it responds, analogous to having an analyst on staff.
This tool can serve as your personal assistant for Google Analytics. By posing questions such as “What is the highest conversion rate among our marketing channels?”, Analytics will display a list of your marketing channels ranked by conversion rate, effectively simplifying the intricacies of Google Analytics.
Through Analytics Intelligence, your data can be analyzed thoroughly to provide answers to questions that didn’t even cross your mind, but are crucial for your business. It can also highlight aspects that require immediate attention, like the performance of a landing page compared to previous periods. Without it, you might have missed out on significant details that are essential for your business growth.
In fact, AI and machine learning are utilized further in this aspect. Analytics Intelligence makes use of website data and incorporates the smart goals, smart lists, session quality, and conversion probability of your Google Ads account to create demographics for you to focus on.
Google Intelligence serves as your analyst, while DSAs function as all-powerful campaign managers.
3. Use the Anyword AI for better copywriting
Anyword is a tool that assists you in generating and refining your marketing copy through artificial intelligence, enabling you to generate fresh ideas and save time when you’re out of inspiration. This tool can produce impactful copy for various marketing channels, including but not restricted to ad copy, landing pages, and social media posts.
- Email subject lines
- Facebook ad copy
- Google Ads copy
- LinkedIn ad copy
- Twitter ad copy
- Product descriptions and names
- Intro paragraphs
- Instagram captions
- YouTube titles and descriptions
- CTAs
It’s difficult to know how effective marketing copy will be beforehand, making it somewhat like a game of chance. Typically, one must wait for SEO data to collect or conduct A/B testing to determine what’s successful. Anyword, however, was taught utilizing more than $250 million in ad spending, giving it the know-how to create compelling copy that generates sales.
The tool assigns a Performance Prediction Score to each copy variation to estimate its success in an actual campaign. Anyword also provides additional features such as optimization of landing page text and personalized integrations.
4. AI for content research
Writing content requires substantial preparation before the writer can begin the actual writing process. The majority of creators spend a significant amount of time beforehand conducting research and analyzing data for their content. Jasper’s Head of Enterprise Marketing, Samyutha Reddy, envisions this as the next significant field in which AI can assist.
According to her, utilizing Jasper’s Content Synthesizer to condense extensive content into a summary of various viewpoints and data can significantly expedite the process of creators forming an opinion or perspective.
Consider a scenario where a marketer requires the transformation of an e-book consisting of multiple pages into a blog post. To expedite this process, they insert the entire e-book into an AI chatbot and instruct it to outline the most significant key points.
The e-book’s key themes, topics, and ideas are analyzed by the AI chatbot. Then, the marketer utilizes the results as a starting point for her blog, while incorporating her personal voice and viewpoint. As a result, she has produced a fresh content that was created quickly.
5. AI for scaling marketing campaigns
A single channel would suffice for meeting, engaging, and converting customers in a perfect world, but marketers require a multi-channel approach to reach their target audience in real life. It is, however, difficult to scale marketing initiatives. According to Samyutha, “We frequently exhaust ourselves producing a stunning, optimized piece of content. Unfortunately, our distribution efforts suffer as a result.”
Marketers have the capability to utilize AI to create complete marketing campaigns from a single content piece, which they can customize for various formats and durations.
An example of utilizing AI in marketing is when a marketer produces a YouTube video and desires to extend it into a complete campaign. In this scenario, AI can be utilized to transform the video script into various formats such as Facebook ads, LinkedIn posts, or even e-newsletter copy.
6. AI for SEO optimization
We, as creators of content, aim for maximum visibility. To achieve this, optimizing for SEO is a viable option. Nevertheless, technical SEO isn’t everyone’s forte. Samyutha believes AI can excel in this aspect.
According to her, lacking a background in content marketing and lacking a technical tool for SEO has been her experience. Nevertheless, Jasper plays a critical role in assisting content marketers with the automation of various SEO-related tasks that can maximize their article optimization.
An AI chatbot has the capability to generate content based on particular keywords and recommend optimal headers, meta tags, and descriptions for enhancing click-through rates.
The use of AI is not limited to optimization alone, as it can also function as an editor during the last phases of writing. Platforms such as Grammarly and Jasper have the ability to spot redundancies, provide alternate expressions and enhance comprehensibility. The outcome is well-crafted material that is both user-friendly and optimized for SEO.
Pitfalls to Avoid When Implementing Generative AI Into Your Processes
1. Removing creators from the creation process
Samyutha warns that it’s crucial not to eliminate someone with a strong creative or editorial perspective while integrating generative AI.
At first glance, AI-written content may look perfect. Yet, many human elements — like humor, empathy, perspective, and cultural context — could be missing. On top of that, generative AI operates with limited data, so the information it collects could be irrelevant, outdated, or even biased.
In the end, AI should be utilized by marketers as the initial version rather than the final one. AI can establish the foundation, but you must still enhance this material by incorporating your distinct style or viewpoint.
2. Recreating the wheel
Each marketing team devises a distinct tactic for generating content. This means that how you incorporate AI into your strategy is specific to your team. Although AI is a thrilling prospect, Samyutha proposes adopting a “less is more” technique when incorporating it in your workflow.
An instance would be a marketing group’s content distribution process that could be enhanced through the integration of artificial intelligence, which could automate certain tasks such as the arrangement of social media posts and reconfiguration of content for various platforms.
Your marketing strategy doesn’t rely on AI but is rather enhanced by its implementation with this approach.
3. AI for content ideation
It’s frustrating for writers to face a blank document, however, nowadays, inspiration doesn’t have to come naturally. AI can be utilized to overcome this hurdle. Samyutha highlights AI tools as a significant advantage for remote marketers who lack the opportunity to brainstorm with their peers face-to-face.
According to her, AI can be very useful particularly when people are working remotely and teams are spread out. Although virtual meetings can be productive, they are not usually utilized for brainstorming or building relationships. Therefore, AI can serve as a great aid in this aspect.
4. Raising content demands too quickly
Having safeguards in place to preserve quality is crucial as artificial intelligence advances the pace of production.
According to Samyutha, the presence of Jasper does not eliminate the various techniques that are in place to scrutinize their work. Instead, the network of feedback is enhanced, making it possible to detect errors and inconsistencies more effectively.
She adds that the key is not to generate content rapidly but to proficiently assimilate another technological tool into your current work process.
As marketing professionals, our goal is to continuously seek innovations and integrate new technologies to enhance our productivity. Artificial Intelligence presents a promising possibility to elevate our performance. Nonetheless, as highlighted by Samyutha, we should maintain a practical outlook towards this technology.
In the end, the key is to understand the appropriate moments to integrate this technology into your work process, and when to refrain. Adapting such an approach can help marketers successfully assimilate AI in their plans to achieve the greatest possible influence.