But what exactly is artificial intelligence? What is its role in digital marketing? And how does the future of AI-powered digital marketing look? In this blog post, we will explore the answers to all these questions. So, sit tight and wear your marketer cap!
“Artificial intelligence is the new electricity.” – Sundar Pichai
What Is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a rapidly expanding field that has the potential to transform how we live and work. At its most basic level, AI refers to the ability of machines to perform tasks that would normally require human intelligence, such as understanding natural language, recognising objects and images, and making decisions.
One of the most exciting aspects of AI is the breadth of its applications. In the past few decades, AI has been used in everything from self-driving cars and virtual assistants to medical diagnosis and financial forecasting. As technology advances, we can expect to see even more creative applications for AI in the future.
The Relationship Between AI & Digital Marketing:
Artificial intelligence (AI) and digital marketing are two of today’s fastest growing and most rapidly evolving industries. As technology progresses, so does our approach to marketing products and services to customers.
“AI integration in digital marketing has the potential to transform how businesses reach and engage with their target audiences. “
Some ways that AI is being applied to digital marketing are by concepts like machine learning, NLPs (Natural Language Processing), ChatBots, AI driven voice assistants like Alexa, customised user experience, email marketing, SEO etc. Just as AI is allowing digital marketing to expand its wings, the need for better digital marketing is enforcing more advancements in artificial intelligence. So, we can say that the relationship between the two is strong and intertwined. To better understand the specifics of how AI works in digital marketing, let us move forward to the roles.
Role Of AI In Digital Marketing:
-
Automation
Automation is one of the most visible ways AI is influencing digital marketing. AI-powered tools can do everything from scheduling social media posts to sending personalised emails. This not only saves marketers time and resources, but also ensures that the right message is delivered to the right audience at the right time.
For example, the AI Text analysis tool is capable of tracking, analysing, and responding to generated content, that too in real time. This tool’s improved version goes beyond by understanding user-generated message content, and determining emotions and sentiment to infer meaning much more accurately.
- Social media scheduling: With the emergence of AI automation, scheduling posts has become much more streamlined. AI algorithms can analyse a user’s social media activity, such as engagement levels and audience demographics, and figure out the best times to post. AI-driven scheduling tools can also automatically schedule social media posts, allowing businesses and individuals to plan ahead of time and let the AI handle the rest. This frees up their time to devote to more important tasks, such as engaging with their followers and creating new content.
- Email marketing: E-mail marketing has been used by Digital Marketers for quite some time. Its popularity stems from the convenience and cost-effectiveness it provides. The only drawback of email marketing has been how time consuming it can be. Well, AI totally solved that because AI driven platforms such as Emarsys and Salesforce Marketing Cloud can personalise email campaigns based on a recipient’s behaviour, preferences, and previous interactions, and automate them on the broadcast.
-
Personalisation
Personalization is essential for digital marketers as it helps in retaining old customers and gaining new ones, and AI is assisting businesses achieve that in a variety of ways. AI has enabled the identification of millions of people’s preferences, behavioural patterns, interests, and activities. This is accomplished by collecting and analysing user data while taking into account physiographic, demographic, device, and geographical location, among other factors.
- Predictive modelling: Predictive modelling tools can examine a customer’s behaviour and forecast what they might want to purchase next. For years, retailers such as Amazon and Netflix have used this technology to recommend products and shows to their customers.
- ChatBots: Chatbots can respond to multiple customer queries at the same time, and due to the automated response being so personalised, it can follow up with any user who is interested in buying products or services. They can also provide personalised support and recommendations to customers in real-time. This saves businesses so much cost by eliminating human actions.
-
Insights
Insights refer to the metrics that determine how well a specific piece of content is performing. For example: the number of likes, comments, and saves on Instagram. AI can provide useful insights into customers’ behaviour and preferences, allowing businesses to improve and modify their marketing strategies to suit their customers’ needs. There are two ways in which AI does that:
- Predictive analysis: Artificial intelligence (AI) uses statistical models and software to predict a customer’s future actions by studying their past behaviour and characteristics. It also enables marketers to understand more about their clients, including what prices they anticipate for a certain product. This way, predictive analytics can detect patterns in customer data and assist businesses in making better decisions about resource allocation.
- Natural Language Processing (NLP): Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of AI concerned with the interaction of computers and humans through the use of natural language. Because it allows businesses to analyse and understand customer sentiment, behaviour, and preferences, NLP has become an important tool in digital marketing.
One way it helps is through sentiment analysis. By analysing customer feedback on social media, review sites, and other online platforms, businesses can learn how their customers feel about their brand, products, or services. This data can be used to pinpoint areas for improvement, develop more effective marketing campaigns, and boost customer satisfaction.
By examining customer interactions with a website or app, as well as their search queries and browsing history, NLP uses this data to tailor marketing campaigns, recommend products and services, and enhance the customer experience.
-
Real-time optimization
Real-time optimization is an AI tool that enables businesses to make real-time adjustments to their digital marketing campaigns based on the results they see. This strategy is becoming increasingly important in today’s fast-paced digital landscape, where consumer behaviour and preferences can shift rapidly.
One of the main benefits of real-time optimization is that it allows businesses to be more agile and responsive to changes in the market. For example, if a company notices that a specific ad is underperforming, it can quickly adjust it to improve its performance. If, on the other hand, an ad performs exceptionally well, they can replicate it or increase ad spend to maximise results.
Companies can use AI to optimise their marketing campaigns in real-time based on performance data. For instance, real-time ad targeting can analyse user data and behaviour in real time to deliver the most relevant ads to the right audience at the right time. Also, A/B testing tools such as Optimizely and VWO use machine learning to automatically determine which versions of a landing page perform the best and then serve that version to the majority of visitors in real time.
“AI is revolutionizing digital marketing by unlocking deep insights, automating processes, and enabling hyper-targeted campaigns.”
-
Online advertising
Online advertising is a critical component of digital marketing. It enables businesses to reach out to their target audience quickly by collecting user data, analysing it, and predicting future behaviour. As soon as the AI tools detect that you need a particular product or service, they automate online advertising in your favour. This is exactly how most of the advertisements on the internet come to our screens. For example: Once you search a product on google once, you will start seeing ads of that product on every social media site you visit.
AI also assists in online advertising via programmatic advertising, which is a real-time method of buying and selling digital advertising space using AI algorithms. Businesses can use programmatic advertising to target specific demographics and interests, resulting in higher ad relevance and higher conversion rates.
Optimization is another way AI improves online advertising. Data from previous ad campaigns, such as click-through rates and conversion rates, can be analysed by AI algorithms to identify patterns and predict future performance. This information can be used to optimise ad placement, target and make creative changes to increase the effectiveness of the ad campaign. -
Website design
One of the most important aspects of digital marketing nowadays is to have your own website. Every ad or post a business uploads generates a link that leads straight to the website because that’s where all the information about the product or service is. But developing a website is technical, time consuming, and expensive. Thanks to AI, those limitations have now been eliminated.
AI is making waves in the field of website design, providing a variety of tools and platforms that can assist designers in creating more engaging and personalised user experiences. Here are a few examples of AI-powered platforms for website design: Wix ADI, The Grid, GridBox, Duda etc. As AI technology advances, we can expect to see more platforms with even more advanced features and capabilities to assist designers in creating visually appealing and user-friendly websites. -
Security
Digital marketing would not be possible without enhanced security, which is a reality now because of AI mechanisms that protect customer data and allow safe capturing and sharing of information. AI has also made it easier to analyse massive amounts of data, resulting in better insights and faster decision making. Most importantly, AI-powered systems can assist businesses in protecting their digital assets, preventing fraud, and ensuring compliance with industry regulations by leveraging advanced machine learning techniques.
-
Content generation
A lot of digital marketing involves content marketing, which includes content creation and curation. Creating high-quality, engaging content for digital marketing campaigns has traditionally been a time-consuming and labour-intensive task. Marketers are required to conduct extensive research, brainstorm ideas, and then write and edit content. However AI has made the process more efficient and effective.
Content generation tools by AI use NLP and machine learning algorithms to analyse large amounts of data, such as market trends, customer preferences, and competitors’ strategies. This data is then used to create high-quality, relevant, and engaging content that is tailored to a specific target audience. These tools save time, money, and other resources by generating a large amount of content in a fraction of the time that a human would. The best part is that this content is more consistent and error-free than human-generated content, which can help businesses in improving brand reputation.
Another advantage of AI generated content is that it targets specific audiences by generating content that speaks directly to the interests and needs of a particular group of people by analysing customer data. This can aid in increasing engagement and conversions, which is the end goal of any digital marketing campaign.
“AI is neither here to do less than it’s supposed to, nor here to replace human-driven jobs. It is a productive inclusion to the marketing world.”
Conclusion:
At this point, we can safely say that AI is masterfully improving the way we run our businesses nowadays. It’s assisting us in becoming more aware of market trends, and improving efficiency in our efforts by automating tasks, personalising experiences, providing valuable insights, creating content, and optimising campaigns in real-time.
In 2023, AI-driven analytics will become more prevalent, allowing digital marketers to make more data-driven decisions than ever before. In the world of digital marketing, AI has already proven to be a valuable asset by assisting marketers in better understanding consumer behaviour and optimising campaigns for the best results. This year will bring more use of AI, which will inspire businesses to focus more on creativity, innovation and customer satisfaction instead of the mundane tasks that AI can easily perform.
If you, as a businessman, were sceptical of the incredible role AI plays in effective digital marketing, your doubts would’ve been cleared by now. AI is neither here to do less than it’s supposed to, nor here to replace human-driven jobs. It is such a productive inclusion to the marketing world because of how value-adding it is to both – businesses and customers. Let AI & digital marketing work their magic together for your brand, and you will see miraculous results!