AI Marketing Basics: A Simple Guide

There’s no doubt that marketing is hard work — especially if you’re relying on outdated technology that requires your team to handle too many activities manually. Fortunately, recent technologies like ChatGPT3 are available that automate redundant tasks and provide strategic insights into the creation and performance of your marketing campaigns. This new AI technology has taken the marketing world by storm, and it seems like it’s here to stay for good.

In the past decade, new strides in artificial intelligence have made data-intensive analysis much easier for marketers, and new AI software solutions can even assist in content creation. Let’s uncover what you need to know about AI tools for marketers.

What Is AI Marketing?

So what is AI marketing, and how can it benefit you?

AI marketing involves using artificial intelligence to collect data, analyze it, and make decisions that can positively impact marketing campaigns. AI is widely present in data collection efforts, such as observing customer buying habits and online behaviors.

With data from AI, marketers can optimize their campaigns to target consumers most likely to purchase a product or determine the best time to send an email so that a subscriber will open it.

AI marketing can also aid in real-time personalization, allowing marketers to show their posts or adjust their web pages to fit buyers’ interests. For example, Netflix relies on AI to generate a list of recommended movies, while Amazon uses past purchases and browsing behavior for product suggestions.

The Real Benefits of Using AI Marketing Technology

There are a lot of benefits for companies that take advantage of AI for marketing. Here are a few.

Higher Campaign ROI

With the in-depth customer analysis tools that AI marketing offers, it’s much easier to maximize your ROI than in the past.

For instance, until the mid-2000s, major companies relied on print advertisements, TV commercials, and direct mail to reach customers. The closest they could get to targeting their advertisements was determining the basic demographics of viewers of a particular TV show or readers of a magazine.

Today’s advertising tools allow you to drill much further into customer behavior, and you can retarget your ads to customers who previously visited your website or purchased from you. You can also send automatic personalized emails for each consumer, generated through data gathered from AI.

Greater personalization means you won’t waste money on ads unlikely to interest your audience.

Better Analytics

One of the areas where AI performs best is in data analysis. Pre-programmed AI models can examine massive data sets and provide an output almost instantaneously.

You can obtain in-depth answers on your campaign’s performance with the proper parameters and software. Often, the software will summarize the data in a customized dashboard, reducing your reliance on Excel spreadsheets and similar tools.

Fresh Ideas

Marketers often develop content around topics after conducting in-depth research on their customers’ needs. This research might include keyword analysis, customer surveys, or competitor investigations.

While each of these tools has its place, AI can make it much easier to discover effective content topics without hours of research. Some tools also automate content production for social media posts or product descriptions. However, you’ll need to carefully audit content to ensure it’s accurate and aligns with your brand and voice.

Challenges of Current AI Solutions

Despite the apparent benefits of AI, there are significant drawbacks that marketers should be aware of.

Lacks Human Judgment (Critical Thinking)

At its fundamental core, AI is a tool of 0s and 1s. It doesn’t possess the capacity for human judgment or critical thinking. While AI can produce an output based on your parameters, it does not understand the output or how you’ll use it.

No Regulation

Currently, there is very little regulation around AI, so if you implement the tool into your marketing efforts, you’ll need to be careful about how you deploy it.

Slow Adoption

Much of AI technology is very new. While these tools have been in development for over a decade, many of them used today are underdeveloped. There’s much room for improvement, which will likely accelerate in the years to come.

Some companies are slow to adopt AI tools for a few reasons. First, embracing new technology is disruptive to existing processes. Employees need to learn new skills to use AI effectively. Also, use cases for the tool are only beginning to become apparent. As the technology improves, more widespread adoption will likely follow.

Popular AI Marketing Solutions

Despite the challenges, AI does have benefits, particularly for social media advertising and promotional emails.

For example, digital marketers who create many social media posts can take advantage of AI content tools like Lately. These tools can examine the results from historical campaigns, determining which topics perform the best and when to schedule your posts for maximum engagement.

Some AI content tools can also analyze long-form articles and blogs, creating a summary you can use to publicize your content.

Smartwriter.ai is a helpful AI tool for e-commerce companies that use email to promote their products. With this AI software, you can send thousands of emails at once, each incorporating a personalized subject line and product recommendations based on past browsing or purchases.

Seventh Sense, another tool popular with email marketers, can improve your emails’ deliverability by sending them when the consumer is most likely to check their inbox. Rather than sending your promotions all at once, it throttles them, which makes ESPs less likely to relegate your communications to the spam folder.

The Future Is Definitely Bright

While AI is still in its developmental stages, there’s no question that it has the potential to upend many of the data-intensive marketing tasks that traditionally took many working hours to complete.

The upcoming decade is likely to bring significant shifts to technology and marketing. To remain relevant in their industries, marketing professionals should stay abreast of the changes.