Digital marketing is the name of the game for most types of commerce, even if ecommerce is not the only manner in which you interact with your customers. As the rise of digital marketing has continued, so too has the rise of artificial intelligence as an indispensable marketing tool. Despite its common use in today’s digital landscape, you may find AI intimidating, or bothersome. I have compiled 25 ways to leverage AI in digital marketing that you can implement today to bring your digital marketing efforts up to date, and benefit from the latest in AI technology. 

These tips will be divided into the following sub-sections:

• Using AI For Content Creation and Optimization
• Driving Acquisition and Engagement with AI
• Automating Campaigns and Advertising with AI
• Monitoring and Optimization with AI
• Future Trends in AI-Powered Digital Marketing

I’ll also end the article with 5 tips for getting started with AI technology together with some advice on integrating AI with your existing marketing stack.

Let’s get started!

Using AI For Content Creation and Optimization

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an invaluable tool in modern digital marketing, as it allows you to focus your digital marketing strategy on the areas that matter most–optimization and customization, for AI, and fine-tuning and honing for the actual marketing professionals poring over products, services, and policies. To that end, I have identified some important ways to use artificial intelligence to reach your target audience effectively, and how to do so using the valuable insights provided by ongoing use and continual tweaking. Five ways to use AI for content creation and optimization include the following: 

1. Automated Content Creation

AI content generators can be used to create blog post drafts, social media captions, landing page copy, and more. Artificial intelligence can also be used to edit and optimize generated content prior to publishing. When it is used for this purpose, it is important to give it a final review with an actual human, to ensure quality and accuracy. 

2. SEO Optimization

AI tools can be used to analyze content and suggest keywords to target in order to rank highly and improve customer experience. AI can also be used to generate meta descriptions and titles optimized for a higher click-through rate to make sure your content is performing well in SEO metrics. 

Further Reading: 15 AI SEO Tools to Help Your Content Rank

3. Sentiment Analysis

Artificial intelligence can be used to analyze customer feedback and reviews in order to understand (and respond to) positive and negative sentiment. The insights you glean using AI can help improve customer experience, content, and messaging overall across your marketing teams. 

4. Translation

Use AI to translate content into multiple languages in order to reach a wider audience, and expose your content, products, and services to potential customers in a wider range of markets. 

5. Summarization

Vast amounts of content can be summarized using AI. Summaries are important for long-form content to make it suitable for different formats. Research reports, ebooks, and more can all be summarized for promotion using AI. 

Driving Acquisition and Engagement with AI

Although content generation can help marketing teams tremendously by saving time and reducing the workload without sacrificing effective marketing strategies, it is able to do so much more. Acquisition and engagement can also benefit from using AI in digital marketing. 

How, exactly, can AI intervene and improve efficacy? 

6. Chatbots

Chatbots can be used both on websites and on messaging platforms to engage visitors and deliver customer service responses. Chatbots can also be used to provide personalized recommendations and answers to common questions in a relatively fluid and dynamic way. 

7. Predictive Personalization

User profiles can be built using AI based on engagement data and preferences. This means that from email marketing to general on-site messaging, AI can be relied upon to tailor content, offers, and experiences overall for each user segment. 

8. Lookalike Modeling

The digital marketer can glean a great deal of information from new and recurring customers using AI, including lookalike modeling. This allows digital marketers to identify their best existing customers based on attributes picked up on by AI, and find new prospects with similar attributes. 

9. Testing and Experimentation

AI can be used to continually test elements such as images, headlines, and calls to action. Using AI, you can roll out the highest-performing content you have across all channels, in order to boost customer interactions and improve content performance. 

Further Reading: 25 Best AI Tools for Marketing and Business

10. Attribution Modeling 

Digital marketing relies upon different types of modeling to successfully develop marketing campaigns and design marketing messages. AI can analyze customer journeys across your channels to understand influence and optimize channel mix and content strategy using insights gleaned through customer interactions and mining. 

Automating Campaigns and Advertising with AI

Automation is one of the best ways AI-powered tools improve your marketing efforts and add value to your business. The most effective ways to use AI to do so include: 

11. Programmatic Advertising

Programmatic advertising uses machine learning to optimize bids and target impressions in real time, which allows you to continually refine targeting and create based on performance metrics. This means that artificial intelligence technology can effectively help boost sales and reach through dedicated programming. 

12. Predictive Budgets

AI users can forecast future performance to optimize ad spend and budgets. What this means is that you can use AI to adjust bids and budget allocation to hit ROI goals and make sure that your digital marketing efforts are not exceeding your budget. 

13. Ad Creative Generation

AI can be used to generate new display ads, landing pages, and dynamic creative ads. Creation alone isn’t all AI is capable of, however; it can also be used to test new creative variations against top performers with the same or similar audience segments to make sure your social media posts and pages are performing at their best. 

Further Reading: 15 Powerful AI Content Generators to Test Out

14. Media Mix Modeling

AI can analyze historical campaign data to project future performance to reduce repetitive tasks and increase predictive accuracy. AI can also be used to run simulations to find optimal channel allocation, to once more ensure that your digital marketing campaigns are performing to the best of their ability, on the platform most ideally suited for their use. 

15. Campaign Tracking

Using AI for better attribution and contribution analysis can help improve campaign tracking and level up your social media marketing efforts, as well as your website efforts. With campaign tracking programs, you can identify the best-performing platforms, placements, and formats. 

Monitoring and Optimization with AI

Search engine optimization is the lifeblood of any marketing campaign, and real-time insights are essential to craft content that responds to consumer behavior and delivers searchable, usable results. AI can help human marketers improve their SEO efforts and increase their reach. This is accomplished through: 

16. Market Research

Analyzing search trends, consumer sentiment, and industry reports is all possible with artificial intelligence. By applying these insights to your content, you can create relevant content that resonates with your audience, adds value, and develops customer loyalty. 

17. Competitive Analysis

By tracking competitors’ digital activities and performance metrics, AI can uncover vast volumes of useful opportunities to differentiate and gain a share of the networks developed by your contemporaries and your competitors. Doing so will allow you to create more dynamic content and identify the unique wants and needs of your target audience. 

18. Anomaly Detection

Using AI, you can monitor KPIs like clicks, conversions, page views, and more. By detecting anomalies early, AI can help troubleshoot issues faster than the human brain may be able to, effectively making it possible for human intervention to correct any areas of concern or errors. 

Further Reading: How to Conduct a Social Media Audit the Easy Way

19. A/B Testing

Using AI, you can continually test out and experiment on elements like page layout, UX, and more. From there, you can implement the winning variations to maximize the conversion rate inspired by your posts. This alone makes AI a powerful tool in your marketing arsenal. 

20. Sales Forecasting and Pricing

AI can be used to complete strategic tasks, such as building models to forecast site traffic, leads, and revenue. From there, you can adjust prices and inventory based on those forecasts. This type of deep learning helps marketing tasks like developing campaigns according to price and inventory significantly easier and less likely to encounter significant issues or delays. 

Further Reading: 19 Best Social Media Analytics Tools to Empower Your Marketing in 2024

Future Trends in AI-Powered Digital Marketing

While I’ve discussed plenty of information about how to use AI as a current tool, there are upcoming trends in digital marketing that will make AI use invaluable. Some of the future trends forecasted to be useful in digital marketing (or trends that are currently used to some degree) include: 

21. Personalization 

Marketing professionals can leverage AI algorithms to analyze customer data and deliver targeted content to their audience. When you personalize any aspect of your marketing efforts, it enhances engagement and conversions and increases customer satisfaction, all of which are important to digital marketing success and the continued longevity of marketing campaigns and strategies. 

22. Expansion of Content Marketing

Although there is certainly not a shortage of platforms on which to publish marketing content, marketing industries will continue to grow and include new platforms like the Metaverse and AR, to create immersive experiences. Technologies like VR and AR can then be used to engage customers on a deeper level and suggest great connectivity between companies and customers. The role of AI in these efforts cannot be understated. 

23. Value-Driven Marketing

Value-driven marketing using AI means aligning marketing efforts with sustainability, social issues, and consumer values. While many of these platforms are identified and acted upon according to human investigation, Ai can use customer feedback, internet combing, and more to identify the latest in values and events in order to develop marketing materials. By staying abreast of current events and showing your role in them, you can boost brand loyalty and demonstrate your dedication to incorporating environmentally friendly practices. 

24. Chatbots and Conversational Marketing

AI chatbots can be used to improve customer engagement and recommendations through “conversational marketing,” or a style of marketing wherein customers and potential customers are invited to engage in conversation. This could mean asking questions and receiving answers from a chatbot, or receiving recommendations in a “conversation” with a bot. Chatbots can be used to provide instant, 24/7 customer support and targeted messages to keep your brand or company top of mind.

 Further Reading: 13 Unbelievable AI Prompt Generators to Maximize Your AI Content Creation

25. Social Commerce

AI enables customers to make purchases directly on social media platforms, a relative newcomer to the digital marketing landscape, but one that follows customer behavior well; after all, it is much easier to make a purchase with two clicks than it is to navigate to an entirely different site and pore over products. AI can allow companies to leverage platforms like TikTok and Instagram for social commerce, to increase purchases. 

5 Tips for Getting Started with AI Technology

Getting started with AI is not always easy; with an increasing number of AI platforms from which to choose and a host of different approaches to the technology, it can be difficult to know where to start. I have compiled some tips to help you get started with AI, in order to reap the most benefits and see a rapid ROI for your efforts. These include:

1. Start with a Limited Pilot Project to Test Potential AI Applications

Don’t leap into AI by applying it to every single aspect of your brand or business. Instead, begin with a small project, and learn how to use AI in your marketing efforts. This will allow you to develop some comfort with AI technology, and determine where it is likely to fit in with your marketing goals. 

2. Focus on Augmenting Existing Processes Before Pursuing Full Automation

There is no need to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. Rather than throwing out all of your existing processes in favor of AI, consider bringing AI in alongside your existing programs and management techniques. When (or if) the time comes, you will be able to make a smooth transition. 

3. Evaluate Different Vendor Solutions Before Committing to a Platform

Not all programs and companies are created equally. Some will provide solutions that work well with your goals, and others will offer superfluous or unnecessary features. Experiment with or evaluate the different solutions available in the AI market before committing to a specific program or platform. 

4. Ensure You Have the Necessary Data Infrastructure in Place

Although AI is extremely useful in its applications, it cannot take the place of a cultivated data infrastructure. AI tools have to be taught how to handle your brand or business; if you do not have the requisite information, the tool cannot operate fully. 

5. Provide Adequate Training for Staff to Work Alongside AI Systems

Just as AI must be trained, your staff needs training to learn how to work with AI systems. Although there is unlikely to be any serious clashing between the two, AI cannot be used effectively without at least a general understanding of what it is and how it is useful. Company training can help ensure that all marketing efforts using AI are done consistently and efficiently. 

Integrating AI with Your Existing Marketing Stack

Integrating AI is the name of the game, rather than upending your marketing strategy completely. AI is useful, but much of the technology is still in its infancy, which means that it still requires the support and structure of existing marketing technology. To integrate AI and existing stacks successfully, be sure to look for platforms with APIs and integrations with common marketing tools. This means avoiding any systems that require ripping into and subsequently replacing existing technology. This allows you to avoid destroying existing systems at the risk of introducing new technology or systems that will not work well with your existing workflows. 

Once you have selected a platform that meets your needs, take time to map out a data flow clearly and succinctly, between your new AI system and other martech tools. A staged integration plan, focusing on high-impact areas first can help make sure that your AI is integrated in the most effective and logical way possible. A great way to start is through workflow updates; by updating workflows and processes to incorporate AI insights, you introduce AI to your brand or company alongside meaningful data and actionable insights. 

Once you have accomplished all of this, make sure you provide staff training to accurately interpret and act on the insights you have collected though your AI program and establish monitoring mechanisms to quickly identify and resolve any issues that may arise. These safeguards will make sure that AI is not only working to your advantage, but also remaining free of potentially harmful bugs and glitches. 

Conclusion

Artificial intelligence is an immensely useful tool for digital marketers, whether they come from an in-house digital marketing team or a digital marketing agency. From taking on the tasks of customer service agents to gathering data and insights, to generating content, artificial intelligence can provide plenty of time-saving efforts for brands and businesses, particularly in the digital marketing space. Using the right techniques and practices, you can usher in AI, pair it with their existing systems, and enjoy the benefits of advanced analytics, increased productivity, and higher levels of automation. 

Hero Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash