It's hard to go 5 minutes on the Internet without seeing some mention of AI — and for good reason, especially if you're a marketing leader.
Artificial intelligence is changing the game for marketers. We don't need to rely on intuition and guesswork when marketing anymore. AI can help us make data-driven decisions that improve our campaigns significantly.
The digital marketing teams that don't adapt their marketing stack to the next generation of AI-powered tools? They risk falling behind. But don't worry — that won't be you.
This blog post will explore how AI is used in marketing and discuss some of the best AI tools marketers can use to improve their campaigns.
Ready to start? Let's go!
What is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial intelligence is a technology that helps us make better decisions using data. It's an umbrella term that covers several kinds of applications, like:
- Natural language processing: This is the ability of a computer to understand human language. It's what allows us to have conversations with chatbots, for example.
- Predictive analytics: This is the ability of a computer to make predictions about future events, trends, and behaviours.
- Machine learning: This type of artificial intelligence allows computers to learn from data without being explicitly programmed. Instead, the program learns independently — hence, "machine learning".
While it may seem like AI as a technology is years out from us, we use it every day — in our phones, our homes, and even in our cars. And as AI technology gets better and cheaper, we're seeing it used more and more in marketing.
How is Artificial Intelligence Used in Marketing?
We can use AI to improve several aspects of our marketing campaigns. Here are a few examples:
- Targeting ads: Advertisers can use AI to target ads more effectively. By understanding a customer's purchase history and behaviour, AI can help identify which customers are most likely to be interested in a product or service.
- Optimizing campaigns: AI helps marketers optimize their campaigns by automatically testing different versions of an ad or email and determining which one performs best.
- Generating insights: AI can help marketers generate insights from data sources like social media, customer surveys, and transactional data. By understanding customer sentiment and behaviour, marketers can make better decisions about allocating their resources.
- Automating tasks: AI can help marketers automate tasks like lead generation and customer segmentation. This frees up time so that marketers can focus on more strategic tasks.
Artificial intelligence marketing clearly sounds pretty great — if you want your marketing team to get started, it helps to understand how it all comes together.
4 Essential Components of AI Marketing
Every industry uses AI slightly differently, but the core elements usually stay the same. Here's how your marketing teams might use AI:
- Leveraging customer data: To use AI in marketing, you need a lot of customer information. This data can come from various sources, like social media, website interactions, surveys, and email campaigns.
- Building models: Once you have your customer information, you (by which we mean your marketing AI tools) need to build models that will help you understand it. These models can be used to identify patterns and trends in customer behavior.
- Testing and experimentation: After building your models, it's essential to test them out with real-world data. This will help you fine-tune your models and make sure they're accurate.
- Ongoing optimization: As your customer base changes over time, so will their behavior. It's crucial to optimize your AI marketing models continuously to ensure they're still relevant.
That might sound like a lot of work. But don't worry, it's all happening under the hood of your martech. All you need to think about is maximizing the customer experience.
7 Benefits of Artificial Intelligence in Marketing
Depending on what kind of artificial intelligence marketing tool you use, costs can quickly build up. If you're trying to make a business case for a new AI tool, here are a few benefits to keep in mind:
- Enhanced customer journey: AI can help you create a personalized customer journey by understanding their needs and preferences.
- Faster results: With the help of AI, marketing tasks that would typically take weeks or months can be completed in a matter of hours.
- Actionable insights: AI-powered customer insights can reveal previously hidden trends and behaviors. This allows you to take action on these insights to improve your campaigns.
- Improved targeting: By understanding a customer's purchase history and behavior, we can show them ads for products they're actually interested in.
- Increased ROI: Because AI allows us to make better decisions and target our ads more effectively, we see a higher ROI from our marketing efforts.
- Faster decision-making: AI also helps us make decisions faster. By automating tasks like lead generation and customer segmentation, we can think big picture about long-term marketing goals.
- Data-driven decisions: One of the most significant benefits of AI is that it helps us make data-driven decisions. By quantifiably understanding customer behavior, we can make better decisions about our campaigns and see a significant increase in performance.
AI in marketing has clear benefits. But what tools should you use to get the most out of it?
6 AI Marketing Tools for the Savvy Marketer
Artificial intelligence in marketing has been around for longer than you think, so these names might sound familiar:
- Hootsuite Insights: Social listening
- Segment CDP: Lead scoring and qualification
- Qualtrics XM: Predictive analytics
- Jasper AI: Content marketing
- Optimizely: Automated optimization
- LivePerson: AI chatbot
Hootsuite Insights
Hootsuite's social listening tool, Insights, helps users understand their social media data better. Insights uses natural language processing to generate insights from social media data, like which posts are performing well, sentiment analysis, topics of interest, and beyond.
Segment CDP
Segment's customer data platform (CDP) is a tool that centralizes customer touchpoint data to help marketers understand their audience better. Segment offers several recipes to integrate with other platforms (like Goedle.io) to power machine learning models. These apps can automatically score and qualify leads, as well as predict churn and conversion.
Qualtrics XM
Qualtrics' Customer XM (experience management) is a tool that helps users predict customer behavior. Customer XM uses artificial intelligence via iQ (their predictive engine) to analyze customer information and make predictions about future behavior. By using their prescriptive insights, you can personalize the customer experience.
Jasper AI
Jasper AI is a content marketing tool that helps users create content using natural language generation. Jasper can write ad copy, blog posts, and even scripts. The platform also lets you set the tone, length, and objective for your written content, meaning you can fit it into nearly any marketing strategy.
Optimizely
Optimizely is a tool that allows marketing teams to test different versions of their website or app and see which one performs better. Optimizely uses machine learning to automatically test different versions of a website or app and determine which one has the best outcomes. To get the most AI bang for your buck, check out their Intelligence Cloud.
LivePerson
LivePerson is a conversational AI platform that provides a personalized customer experience at scale. LivePerson uses an AI chatbot to automate interactions with customers, including customer support, sales, and marketing. The platform also offers a human-in-the-loop system, meaning a human can take over the conversation if needed. To leverage their technology, check out their Conversational Cloud.
Is AI the Future of Marketing?
Like nearly every other industry on the planet, AI is set to make massive ripples in the marketing industry. We can expect more personalized customer journeys, increased ROI from marketing campaigns, and faster decision-making with AI.
In a world where technology is constantly evolving, it's vital to stay ahead of the curve and keep your finger on the pulse of the latest trends. If you're not already using AI in your marketing efforts, now is the time to start.
Need some help configuring your martech stack to make the most of your tools? Portage Labs can help you supercharge your martech and maximize your output. Get in touch today to find out how we can help!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Can AI replace marketers?
No, AI cannot replace marketers. While AI in marketing can automate specifc tasks, like lead generation and customer segmentation, it cannot create a strategy or develop a creative campaign. Marketing teams need to be involved in the decision-making process to ensure the company takes the right steps.
How much does AI cost?
The cost of AI depends on several factors, like the type of tool you're using and the size of your company. However, there are a number of free or low-cost options available, so you don't have to break the bank to get started with artificial intelligence marketing.
Do I need a degree in computer science to use AI?
No, you don't need a degree in computer science to use AI in marketing. While it helps to have a basic understanding of how AI works, there are countless user-friendly tools that don't require technical know-how. If you'd still like a martech expert to handle it for you, Portage Labs can help!
