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By Euny Hong 10 Minutes read
You might be nervous about using artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace, given everything you’ve heard about this new technology coming to take everyone’s jobs away. While it’s true that AI will change how people perform jobs across all industries, most experts agree that your best strategy to deal with AI is not to fight it, but to harness its considerable power. If you’re in the field of digital marketing, you’re actually one of the lucky ones.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) in digital marketing refers to the integration of AI technologies—such as machine learning, natural language processing, and data analytics—into marketing strategies: AI marketing tools analyze data, automate processes, personalize experiences, and optimize marketing strategies. They help businesses enhance customer engagement, increase efficiency, and improve campaign performance. Think of it as your personal assistant, not as your boss! Below, you’ll find tips and advice on how best to use AI in digital marketing. But lets first define what is AI in marketing.
Let’s look at how a digital marketer can use AI in nearly every step of the marketing process.
AI can enhance content marketing by automating content creation, optimizing strategy, and personalizing engagement.
AI predicts content trends and recommends topics that will perform well in a couple of useful ways:
Chatbots get a bad rap, but they’re much more sophisticated than they used to be, and much better at guessing what the customer wants in fewer steps. AI-powered chatbots can make digital marketing easier by doing the following:
Social media management is both an art and a science. No matter how brilliant your social media manager is with the former, AI can always help with the latter:
Here are platform-optimized social media posts for X (Twitter), Instagram, and LinkedIn:
X (Twitter):
🚨 Exciting news! 🚨 Boylston Farmers’ Cooperative is now offering freshly baked goods made with locally sourced ingredients! 🥖🍪 Stop by and taste the difference. #SupportLocal #FarmFresh
Instagram:
🌾🥖 Big News! We’re bringing freshly baked goodness to Boylston Farmers’ Cooperative! 🍞✨ From rustic breads to delicious pastries, every bite is made with love and local ingredients. Come taste the farm-to-table difference!
📍 Find us at [location or website] 🛒 Shop fresh, eat local! #BoylstonFarmers #FarmFreshBaking #SupportLocal
LinkedIn:
Boylston Farmers’ Cooperative is expanding our offerings! In addition to farm-fresh produce, we’re now baking up delicious, locally sourced baked goods for our community. From hearty breads to sweet treats, everything is crafted with care and the finest ingredients from our Massachusetts farms.
We’re excited to share this new chapter with you—stop by and experience the taste of fresh, farm-to-table baking! 🍞🌾 #FarmFresh #LocalBaking #SustainableFarming
Not bad, right?
Pros
Cons
Enhanced personalization.
May noticeably lack the human element.
Automation and efficiency.
Data will sometimes need double-checking.
Data-driven decision-making.
Privacy concerns.
Improved customer support.
As with any disruptive technology, AI should be approached with both optimism and caution. In order to make it work for you and not against you, it’s wise to be cognizant of both what it can and can’t do, from a digital marketing perspective.
Leverage AI to maximize performance with realize:
Leverage AI to maximize performance with realize:
“Today’s Top Picks for You”: Your Netflix home page will contain several different categories of suggested content. Some are simply different genres — action, sci-fi, romance — but others are more granularly tailored to your own tastes. These will fall under headings such as “Today’s Top Picks for You” or “Because you watched [show X].” These suggestions are based on its top-secret AI algorithm that stores all your previous actions — not just which shows you watch, but where you paused, which scenes you watched more than once, and what you watched immediately before and after.
Also worth discussing is the “Bandersnatch” Experiment: This is one of the most famous recent examples of interactive storytelling. Back in 2018, season five of the popular dystopian series “Black Mirror” included a much-hyped episode that allowed the viewer to choose their own adventure at various points in the story. At one point, for example, you could decide whether the point-of-view character Stefan should “throw tea over computer” or “shout at Dad.” Each decision leads to a different branch of the story. A technology policy researcher at University College London looked into Netflix’s motivations, and published his findings on X (formerly Twitter). He discovered — no surprise here — that the streaming giant was storing away your Bandersnatch choices for future use.
Have you ever noticed while shopping on the Amazon or Walmart sites that the prices seem to fluctuate, and some seem to be arbitrarily marked down? This is due to a practice known as dynamic pricing, whereby an item’s price can depend on real-time supply and demand and the user’s own purchasing or browsing history. This practice is highly controversial. In fact, in 2024, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, wrote open letters to the CEOs of those two companies, criticizing them for using customer data to adjust prices.
From Starbucks to Target to Marriott, big companies discovered long ago that customer loyalty programs are the gift that keeps on giving. Not only are they effective in retaining customers — who wouldn’t want a 10% discount, after all — they allow for easy data collection, which is then used to suggest other products and services. For example, someone who books a hotel room in Aruba will probably start to get special offers on hotels in St. Croix.
You might not know it, but many SMBs are also using AI to help set up, manage, and optimize their campaigns. Abby by Taboola — an industry-first generative AI technology — works to guide marketers and advertisers through the process in a helpful, conversational way, answering questions and providing guidance on budgeting, strategy, image and caption creation, and more.
To excel in AI-driven digital marketing, professionals need to develop certain skills to harness the power of AI while crafting impactful campaigns, such as:
The ability to collect, analyze, and interpret large datasets is crucial. Marketers must understand how to use AI tools to extract actionable insights and make data-driven decisions.
Familiarity with AI-powered platforms like Google Analytics, HubSpot, or Jasper AI is essential. Marketers need to know how to use these tools to automate tasks, optimize campaigns, and generate insights.
While AI handles data and automation, marketers must think strategically to design campaigns that resonate with audiences. Creativity is key to crafting compelling content and innovative strategies that stand out in a competitive landscape.
Below are a few solutions from the list of the best AI marketing tools out there, designed to help marketers automate tasks, deepen customer insights, and ultimately drive better results.
While primarily known as a social media management platform, Hootsuite’s AI-driven features can suggest the best times to post, curate content, and even provide sentiment analysis for better community management. It’s ideal for marketers looking to streamline social media workflows and measure ROI.
Offering advanced generative text capabilities, ChatGPT can serve as a versatile copywriting tool for marketers. You can leverage it to quickly generate draft copy for email campaigns, ads, or blog posts. ChatGPT’s SEO plugin by SERPstat is particularly useful for investigating keywords, domain metrics, and backlink data.
Embedded within the Adobe suite of marketing tools, Adobe Sensei delivers predictive analytics, automated insights, and personalization features. It can automatically tag and categorize assets, predict ad performance, and help segment audiences. Marketo’s impressive analytics and reporting features, meanwhile, are helpful for optimizing your campaign and adjusting your strategy based on the available data.
From automating repetitive tasks like email marketing and social media scheduling, to delivering hyper-personalized customer experiences, AI helps marketers save time and improve engagement. That said, AI works best as a complement to human creativity and strategic thinking, not a replacement. AI offers many benefits, but it lacks emotional intelligence and can produce generic or impersonal content. Additionally, privacy concerns and data security remain significant challenges.
No, AI is not going to replace digital marketing. Digital marketing is still all about anticipating and meeting customer’s needs, which requires human judgment. While AI can automate tasks, analyze data, and optimize campaigns, human creativity, empathy, and strategic thinking remain essential for crafting compelling messages and building genuine customer relationships. The more you know how to harness the power of AI, the more empowering it will be for you.
To start AI digital marketing, familiarize yourself with AI tools like Google Analytics, ChatGPT, and Abby. Learn the basics of data analysis and machine learning, and experiment with automating tasks like email campaigns, social media scheduling, and content personalization. Begin small, test strategies, and scale as you gain confidence.
As mentioned above, one of the best examples of AI in marketing is Netflix’s recommendation engine. By analyzing user behavior, viewing history, and preferences, Netflix delivers highly personalized content suggestions, significantly improving user engagement and retention. Netflix reports that in recent years, viewers have watched nearly 100 billion hours on its platform during a six-month period, so they must be doing something right when it comes to using AI analytics to anticipate their customers’ behaviors.
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