If the first thing that comes to mind at the thought of AI marketing is:
“The machines are coming!”
You’re right.
Kind of.
AI marketing is here. Already.
Let me give you the overview:
AI marketing is much more accessible than you would imagine. Which means the “machines” are already here. But they aren’t sentient (not yet at least).
As of now, AI is in a state where it is starting to become a legitimately helpful tool for businesses of all sizes.
AI-powered tools and applications are still far away from Jarvis (or Hal9000) levels of independent thought. Even though it is theoretically possible for this type of AI to exist, the technology isn’t there yet.
What is here are tools that can do some (or most) of the labor-intensive work significantly quicker than humans.
What is AI Marketing Capable of Right Now?
The definition of artificial intelligence — A computer-based system that can do tasks that require human intelligence. These include perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information.
The current commercially available tools do exactly this but with limitations.
Commercially available AI is limited by the amount of data it can perceive and how much it can process. In other words, it is smart enough to give you something useful but not smart enough to get it right all the time. It will help you get more work done, but it won’t replace anyone just yet.
AI tools can only do what they can with whatever data they have. So data is, at the moment, the main limiting factor to an AI engine’s capability and real-world utility.
Why You Should Consider Using AI Tools for Marketing
The best way to think about AI marketing tools is to consider them another productivity resource. They can certainly help you do more in less time. But only if you adapt your workflow accordingly.
The utility of a tool greatly depends on the user’s context and expectations. For example, some AI text generators are excellent for idea generation. But they become completely useless if you try to get a finished email out of them.
AI marketing tools are becoming more refined. Within specific parameters they can provide you with entirely usable results in a matter of minutes, on tasks that would normally take hours.
These are some of the areas where you’ll find marketing-specific AI tools:
- Content marketing
- Website Analytics
- Chatbots
- Ecommerce
- Email Marketing
AI for Content Marketing
Content marketing is still one of the most effective ways to generate more organic traffic and client conversions.
Great content gets great results for businesses.
Search engines keep improving their algorithms to ensure users get the best content. This is great for users since they get a better experience. For businesses it means that they can’t publish any content that isn’t awesome.
The challenge that businesses encounter is that they often don’t have the resources to invest in content marketing. Because generating a large amount of high-quality content can be cost-prohibitive.
This is where AI-powered content marketing tools can come to the rescue. You’ll be able to find AI-powered content marketing tools that can help your team write better and faster, tools to generate royalty-free music, and create custom images.
Here’s a short list of tools that you can look into if you want to boost your content marketing output.
- Grammarly: it is a highly evolved spelling checker. It’s simple to use and can help you make sure that whatever written content you create is grammatically sound.
- AIVA: if you are creating video content and are having trouble finding the right royalty-free music, then you should look into AIVA. For a reasonable price, AIVA will create 100% original music that you can use royalty free.
- Jasper: is a great content creator that many agencies and content marketing teams rely on. If you give it the right inputs, it can create an article that would take seasoned writers hours in a matter of minutes.
- Craiyon: if you are looking for images, but havent had any luck with the usual stock image sites. Or if you don’t have time to hire a designer, then Craiyon is a good option. All you have to do is describe the image, and it will come up with a drawing. Some of the work it generates may look somewhat odd. But if you use the right language to describe what you want, then you have a very good chance of getting something usable.
AI for Website Analytics
Looking at all the data that a typical website generates can be overwhelming. Trying to make a decision from all of it can be even more of a challenge.
You might as well be guessing, unless you have someone on your team with a data analysis background. The likelihood of making real data-driven decisions is low.
The reason?
Humans reach a point where it’s impossible to ignore biases, making decision-making less objective. (This is a very important point for marketing, too, since human decisions always have an emotional element.)
There are many areas in marketing where having the ability to make better data informed decisions can be a game changer and have a massive impact on your revenue.
Here are two examples:
AI for SEO Analytics
Search engine optimization is one of the more complex areas of marketing. To make it work, you need to be able to understand the impact of hundreds or even thousands of keywords on your website’s performance.
Most search engines provide you with some understanding into whether your content is working or not. But it is often not enough to get any valuable insight. This is why third-party tools can be incredibly useful.
Here are a couple of SEO centric tools:
- Hubspot SEO: as one of the most widely used content marketing platforms, it has now integrated an AI-powered SEO tool. Hubspot SEO will give you a lot more clarity as to what content is having the most impact. It provides you with a simplified dashboard that lets you see what is working and what isn’t.
- Evolve AI: the best way to know if a change in your strategy is working better than what you previously had in place is by doing a/b testing. The problem with A/B testing is that it can become difficult to sift through all the data and make the right decision. EvolveAI helps you make this process quicker and more accurate by condensing relevant data so that your decision making is more accurate.
AI for ad campaign optimization
Many businesses are reliant on ads to generate their traffic. Any improvement you can make to your ads performance will make a direct impact on your revenue.
However, when you have multiple ad platforms to manage and a large amount of content, it can be almost impossible to determine the impact of each element of your strategy.
There are AI-powered tools that can help you figure out what impact every element is having and how your customer reacts to it. This way, you can condense data and have something that can be immediately actionable.
- AlbertAI: is a tool that reads everything about your brand and analyzes your best customer’s behavior. This is a complicated task for the average marketer. It’s usually a task fit for an entire team. Unless you have said team, using a tool like Albert AI makes a lot of sense.
AI for Ecommerce
According to research, the ecommerce space will double in size within the next five years. This is great for brands that are in the space since they’ll have access to more customers. But it also means that competition will become tougher.
Any edge you can get will help you stay ahead in the race for ecommerce market share.
Tools vary widely in their approach to optimizing ecommerce performance. Some help with automation. They can help you create product descriptions and upload them automatically to your platform of choice.
Other AI ecommerce tools allow you to create personalized experiences for your customers automatically. Doing this manually is, for the most part, impractical. But with the help of AI tools you can do something that will dramatically improve your customer’s experience.
Here are a few tools that are making an impact in the ecommerce space.
- TUP e-commerce: this tool works with the concept of revenue optimization. At its core, it is trying to make sure that you’re squeezing all the sales you can get from your current traffic. It identifies your key buyer personas and creates personalized user experiences for each one of them. Its services are on the higher end of the price scale. But if you think you have the budget, it compares favorably to hiring a data specialist or an outside firm to help you create personalized experiences.
- Phrasee: this tool helps you make your brand’s voice consistent across all platforms. Consistency is key in making sure that your customers recognize you, but it can be challenging to do. There are marketing agencies that focus on this aspect alone. So if working with an agency is something you are not interested in for one reason or another. Then Phrasee can help make your brand recognizable and provide the best experience for your customers, which will in turn, translate to more sales.
AI for Email Marketing
Email marketing is still one of the most efficient strategies when it comes to value for the money.
On average, for every $1 spent on email, you can get $36 back.
With an ROI this good, it only makes sense to use email to its fullest extent.
The challenge of email marketing is writing all the emails, configuring them, and analyzing the performance of each one of them. To make this process faster and more accurate, there are now several AI powered tools in the market that will help you make the most out of your email ROI.
Here are a couple of standout tools:
- Personalize: this is a tool that, as its name suggests, helps personalize your email campaigns so that they can perform better. Customers today don’t want to read generic email blasts. But creating personalized content simply isn’t possible without some sort of automation. Personalize analyzes your customer’s behavior and automatically sends them emails based on what products they have shown interest in.
- Seventh Sense: knowing the best time to send out an email campaign can be complicated. Most email marketers will choose a strategy that works for most of their list and take it from there. The problem is that there is a large amount of variability within your list. Seventh Sense has the ability to analyze the behavior of each one of your list’s recipients and make a personalized strategy for each one.
- Phrasee: this tool also has utility in email marketing. It features an artificial intelligence-powered subject line writer. The best part is that it will give you a usable subject line and make sure that they are on brand. So if you find yourself spending way too much time coming up with good subject lines, then Phrasee might be the right tool for you.
How Are You Using AI for Marketing?
One of the biggest challenges businesses across every industry face is finding and affording the right people to do the job.
This is a situation that won’t change overnight.
Every business must live with it and find ways to work around it.
The marketing space is fortunate to have so many AI powered tools that have the potential to change how you work. They will help you empower your team so that you don’t have to depend solely on hiring.
Will every tool work for you? Probably not.
But if you find ways to integrate them into your workflow, you’ll find that they’ll help you and your team get more work done, reduce mistakes, and make your life easier.
As stated earlier in this article, AI tools still can’t work without human supervision. But most of them are affordable enough that you should undoubtedly make room in your budget to test them out for yourself.