Are you looking to start using AI in your business to unlock productivity, get exponential growth, streamline operations, and stay ahead of your competitors? We’ll breakdown how you can use AI in your business, as well cover the most popular tool in AI for marketing; ChatGPT.
Companies are already using AI in sales & marketing. In this guide, we won’t just be talking about marketers using AI to automate email marketing campaigns or analyze metrics – that’s old news.
These days, AI tools like ChatGPT are practically a fully-fledged member of the modern marketing team. They can do just about anything you can imagine, from sending personalized product recommendations to customers, to writing blog posts, creating images, providing marketing & analytics, and even acting as your brand’s personal influencer.
If you’re not taking advantage of everything AI can do for your marketing strategy, then you’re missing out.
Even some of the world’s leading marketing agencies (like Crowdcreate) now use generative AI to scale content creation and personalization, optimize search rankings and boost social media campaigns.
But – let’s face it – getting your head around the concept of AI in marketing can be tough. That’s particularly true as the possibilities of the technology continue to evolve at such an astronomical rate as we’ve noticed in every new release of ChatGPT.
That’s why I created this behind-the-scenes guide to everything you need to know about AI-powered marketing. Here, you’ll learn how you can use AI in marketing, the pros and cons of going AI-first, and so much more. Let’s dive in.
What is AI in Marketing?
AI in marketing is exactly what it sounds like – the process of using artificial intelligence tools to plan, execute, create, and optimize your marketing efforts. Embracing AI in the marketing world is all about experimenting with cutting-edge solutions, like large language models (such as Google Gemini), to machine learning systems and bots.
You can use these tools for a range of things, whether you’re analyzing big data to help you create more personalized content for your audience, or designing assets, like images for blog posts or social media campaigns. The possibilities are endless.
AI tools can interact with customers who visit your site – for instance bots can ask questions about what they want, or share voucher codes with new visitors. They can help you create dynamic, multi-channel content, like videos and blog posts. They can even create content from scratch based on an analysis of your customers and competitors:
So, what does all this mean for you? Simply put, AI in marketing makes capturing, engaging, and converting customers easier. AI tools aren’t fool-proof, and you do need the right strategy to make sure you’re using them correctly. But if you’re trying to boost your marketing ROI, investing in artificial intelligence is a great first step.
How Professionals Use AI in Marketing
Spoiler alert: AI in marketing isn’t a totally new concept. Companies have been using AI for years to help them create data-driven campaigns, track down the right keywords to prioritize for SEO, and manage social media strategies.
In 2024 though, AI is officially everywhere. According to the 2024 Global Customer Engagement Review, 99% of marketers say their organization is using AI already.
Elsewhere HubSpot found that 1 in 5 business professionals are using AI in their daily roles, and 35% of those professionals are marketers.
In the marketing world, professionals are using AI for a lot of different use cases. Probably the most obvious is content generation, thanks to tools like ChatGPT – around 45% of marketers are using AI to create content. But AI isn’t just great at creating blog posts and social media captions anymore.
While Writesonic and Copy.ai can translate words, and create marketing copy, MidJourney and Canva can create videos, images, gifs, and animations.
Beyond content creation, companies are using AI for research (48% according to HubSpot’s research). Plus, 32% of marketers are just learning how to do new things with AI, like optimize content for different channels.
The Core Elements of AI in Marketing
I’ll dive a little deeper into how you can use AI in marketing shortly, along with sharing all of the tips, use cases, and best practices you need to know. First though, let’s look at the core elements that are involved in AI in the marketing world:
Big Data and Analytics
Data, data everywhere – but not a drop to drink. Most marketers know that data is the key to effective marketing, but they struggle to access and use it effectively. With so much information to sort through, you can easily get lost among the trees.
That’s where big data and analytics gets a little help from artificial intelligence. AI tools help you sort through the mess to find the insights you really need. It ensures you can tap into competitor insights, market trends, and customer behavioral data, to make really impactful decisions for your marketing strategy. Basically, AI helps you answer all the questions you have about how you can capture, engage, and convert more customers.
Machine Learning
Machine learning is a growing field of AI that was already worth $150 billion in 2023 and should deliver about $50 in increased value to the global market every year. Nice. Machine learning is a great tool in the marketing landscape for a few reasons.
First it can help you extract better insights from your data, when aligned with data analysis tools. Secondly, it can help you understand and better-serve your customers.
Imagine being able to intelligently guide customers through the sales funnel, directing them to the right products, upselling them at the perfect time, and addressing any objections they might have, without having to lift a finger. That’s what bots with machine learning capabilities can do.
AI Tools and Platforms
Part of the reason that AI is so commonplace in the marketing world now, is that we have so many new platforms and tools to explore. The most obvious example of ChatGPT, the fastest-growing AI platform in history.
AI tools today are so easy to use, that you don’t need any real specialist knowledge to work with them. Anyone can log into ChatGPT and start asking questions, or getting the tool to generate content for them – it takes seconds.
AI platforms are a bit more complex than the typical “tools” we’re used to. They’re solutions that allow users to develop and deploy complex AI models for specific use cases, like customer data analysis. However, even these platforms are becoming increasingly easy to access.
Ways to Use AI in Digital Marketing
I could spend this whole article talking about how you can use tools like ChatGPT, Jasper, and so on to create content, or solutions like ContentShake for SEO optimization. But instead, let me show you what’s possible with AI in marketing, with some genuine examples.
1. Using AI for Marketing Data Analytics
It feels weird to call any form of “AI in marketing” traditional, but using artificial intelligence for data analysis is probably one of the most “traditional” use cases I can think of. We all know how great AI tools at processing data and finding trends.
AI can collect and sift through huge volumes of data in seconds, from information about your customers drawn from profiles and CRM platforms, to broader market data.
That makes it an incredible tool for building data driven marketing campaigns that are tuned to the needs of your audience, and your actual campaign goals. Probably my favorite tool to use for data analysis in the marketing world right now, for instance, is SEMRush’s ContentShake AI app.
This tool actually gives you ideas on what kinds of content you should create based on what’s “trending” in your niche, what your competitors are ranking for, and where your business is located. It even gives you tips on low-competition, high-volume keywords to use.
You can imagine how much easier this makes it to strategize and develop marketing campaigns for everything from SEO to social media advertising.
Coefficient is another great tool for data analytics and content creation. You can link the app to Google Docs and other platforms to import data you’ve collected into the system. Then you can use the ChatGPT integration within the tool to translate your data into lists, tables, summaries, and even entire blog posts or articles.
2. Using AI for Content Creation
Like many marketers I’m skeptical about relying too much on AI for content creation. I could have asked a bot like ChatGPT or Jasper to write this whole article for me – but I didn’t. The main reason for that is that AI can really only give you the foundations for great content.
It can provide ideas, and drafts for blog posts, product listings, social media campaigns and so on. Some tools can even draw insights from your customer profiles and tailor your writing to suit a specific tone of voice.
Plus, thanks to the increasing onslaught of multimodal AI platforms, you’re not limited to just creating written content with AI either. You can design images, videos, audio and more.
But AI just gives you the ingredients for good content. You need to add your own things to the mix too – like your personal experiences, insights, and opinions – otherwise you’re really just regurgitating data your customers can find anywhere else on the web.
Human input is still crucial for producing quality content. That’s why most marketers don’t publish AI content without editing it first. In fact, HubSpot’s research says only about 6% of marketers publish AI content “as it is”.
If I’d used AI to create this article, I’m sure you’d end up with a lot of great tips, but you wouldn’t get as many unique examples, experience-led insights, or the same (winning) personality you’d get with me at the wheel. So, yes – AI in marketing can support content creation – but it can’t do it all.
3. Personalizing and Optimizing Content
If you’re like me, you might not trust AI to do all of your content production for you (which is a good thing), but you should be able to trust it with making your content better.
There are plenty of examples of AI tools that can help boost your content’s performance. Tools like Frase can help boost your chances of creating content that ranks higher in the search engines, by suggesting which keywords to use, and how to distribute internal and external links.
Multimodal AI tools can also convert your existing content into different formats, ensuring they can perform more effectively on different channels. For instance, you can’t just copy and paste a great blog post into Facebook or Instagram and expect to get great results.
However, you can create images and videos with tools like MidJourney based on the content you’ve created, that draw attention to key statements, and drive customers back to your website.
AI is also brilliant at helping marketing teams to personalize content to suit different user needs. That’s crucial at a time when personalization is key to marketing success. For instance, Medallia’s 2024 State of CX Report found that customer experience leaders who focus on personalization achieve ten percent better growth than their competitors.
Aside from simply translating content instantly into different languages for global customers, AI tools can actually customize what different people see on your website.
For instance, you can create dynamic content for your site that changes based on your customer’s location, whether they’ve visited your website before, and so on. That means you can create highly personalized content at scale, without having to spend more time and money on marketing.
You can even use tools like 6Sense to gauge customer intent, determine who’s ready to buy on your website, and then send them messages automatically, pushing them towards buyer decisions. Businesses using this platform even say they’ve increased their daily revenue by 133%, and that they can close deals 39% faster.
4. Reducing Admin Work
A little over ten years ago, before I started by career as a “marketing expert”, I had no idea how much time I would spend on busywork. I thought I’d spend 90% of my days creating content. The reality is that a significant portion of my schedule is devoted to things like:
- Collecting data
- Summarizing research
- Fact-checking information
- Scheduling and attending meetings
- Tracking campaign results
… You get the picture.
All of these tasks are important for a marketer. You can’t create amazing content without data and research, and you can’t create personalized, results-driven marketing strategies without getting to know your clients.
But all of that work is time-consuming, and frankly – it’s draining. AI helps, and the data proves it. HubSpot’s report found that business professionals spend an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes every day just by using AI and automation tools.
With tools like Copilot in Microsoft Teams, for instance, I can eliminate the task of having to transcribe a strategy call completely, with instant summarization. With Superhuman for email, I can organize my entire inbox and summarize email threads. I can even use tools like Perplexity.AI to cut down the time I spend searching the web for relevant facts, articles, and reports to use in content.
Simply put, AI is a time-saving powerhouse.
5. Improving Marketing ROI with AI
A lot of the things you can do with AI in marketing can improve your “return on investment”. Using solutions like 6Sense to analyze your audience and create more segmented and personalized campaigns is a great way to boost conversion rates.
Using AI to generate the “baseline” templates you need for various types of content will reduce the time and money you spend on marketing strategies, giving ROI another boost.
There are even specific tools for AI in marketing that actively focus on helping you to reduce marketing costs and get more out of your marketing budget.
If you use Google Ads for PPC, you’re probably already familiar with the built-in ai capabilities that can help you unlock incremental conversions, and make better media buying decisions.
There are plenty of standalone tools out there that can offer similar results. For instance, Pattern89 can provide recommendations on how to use your marketing budget based on the type of audience you want to reach, and other factors.
6. AI Additions to Your Marketing Team
I mentioned above that, lately, it feels like AI solutions are becoming more like fully-fledged marketing team members, rather than just “tools”. They can already act as full-time researchers and draft or brief creators for your company.
They can also handle automating tasks like creating and sending email campaigns to customers. For instance, HubSpot Content assistant can generate an entire email marketing strategy based on just a few natural language prompts.
Beyond that, new ways of adding AI to your marketing team are starting to emerge too. For instance, we have generative AI chatbots that can surface product recommendations to customers, and even help customers complete transactions on your company’s behalf.
Amazon’s AI product recommendation tool and chatbot system are great examples of this.
More recently, companies have also begun experimenting with using AI bots as influencers. AI influencers, which are essentially virtual “people” who promote your products, interact with customers, and enhance your brand’s reputation, are everywhere right now.
Just look at Lil’ Miquela, a bot with 2.5 million followers on Instagram, that has helped to boost sales for companies like Calvin Klein, Chanel, and Givenchy.
How to Use ChatGPT in Marketing
These days there are dozens of different AI tools you can use for all of the marketing use cases I mentioned above. However – it’s probably fair to say that ChatGPT is the first stop for most marketers looking to leverage AI in their day-to-day tasks.
Not only is ChatGPT one of the easiest tools to use for marketing – but it’s constantly growing more advanced too. For instance, if you’re using ChatGPT Plus, you can now access GPT-4o, which gives ChatGPT new multimodal capabilities – it can even generate images and videos!
You can use ChatGPT in marketing to:
- Write marketing content (from blog posts, to social media captions and subject lines)
- Generate ideas for your marketing campaigns based on keywords or trending topics
- Create content outlines or briefs for comprehensive guides
- Analyze patterns of customer behavior and predict trends
- Summarize long-form content you want to use for marketing, like PDFs or web pages
- Reword or rephrase content to fit a particular style or tone of voice
- Repurpose content, like turning a blog post into a podcast script
- Fix grammatical issues, add keywords to content, and improve readability
- Organize content into new formats like tables or graphs
…the list goes on.
Using ChatGPT in Marketing: Quick Tips
I use ChatGPT pretty much every day to help me come up with ideas for content and conduct research. The most important thing you can learn how to do if you want to make the most of this tool is learn how to use prompts. Prompts will dictate everything you get from ChatGPT, so it’s important to make them specific and relevant.
Here are some quick tips to help you.
1. Provide Plenty of Context
First, the more context you give ChatGPT, the better the results are going to be. Think about the “who”, “what” and “why” for each marketing task. For instance, look at the difference between what I get when I ask ChatGPT to write 100 words about AI prompting:
Then look at what happens when I use a more in-depth prompt with the following elements:
- Giving ChatGPT a role – “You’re an SEO expert writing for a marketing company using AI in their campaigns for clients.”
- Explaining the audience – “This content needs to speak to people with no prior AI or technical knowledge, who are interested in improving their experiences with AI.”
- Identifying the outcomes – “This brief snippet of text should make people feel excited and confident about the concept of using AI prompts.”
- Specific structure elements: Include some bullet points.
2. Define a Specific Mental Model and Tone of Voice
Beyond simply giving ChatGPT plenty of context, it’s also worth guiding the bot on the kind of tone you want to use, the conditions you want it to write for, and the techniques you want to leverage.
For instance, for this prompt I used:
- Rules: Avoid salesy language, and write in a spicy, fun tone.
- Conditions: Write exclusively for native English speakers without technical knowledge.
Technique: Use the AIDA marketing model and assume our audience is at the “interest” stage of intent.
3. Give Structured Feedback and Refine your Results
Every time you use ChatGPT, think of it like you’re having a conversation – not just asking for a bot to complete a task. There’s usually a need for some back-and-forth to help refine your writing, and deliver the results you really want.
Every time you respond to something ChatGPT creates, give it genuine, structured feedback. List the changes you want to make, provide additional data and instructions, and learn as you go.
For instance, here’s how I responded when ChatGPT answered by prompt about the benefits of AI marketing above.
Remember AI Marketing Plugins and Apps! (Soon to be AI Marketing Agents)
Aside from learning how to prompt correctly, one of the best ways you can get more out of ChatGPT for marketing, is to take advantage of plugins – and external apps that use ChatGPT.
First, check out the “GPTs” section on ChatGPT and look at the various tools and add-ons you can get within the platform itself. There are options for AI humanizers, and even text-to-video creators.
Beyond that, check out all of the tools available on the web that use the same technology as ChatGPT, like Jasper, and ChatSonic. You can even use browser extensions like the ChatGPT Sidebar to generate content based on what you see when you’re browsing the web.
Plus, I definitely recommend checking out plugins like AIPRM for ChatGPT, which can give you direct prompt ideas to help guide your ChatGPT experiences. Plus, you can take advantage of apps like ChatPDF and ChatDoc to upload documents directly to ChatGPT and ask questions about its content.
Other tools worth using include:
- Summarize.Tech to summarize YouTube videos
- Genei or Elicit for in-depth scientific research
- AgentGPT or AI Agent to deploy your own AI agent
The Pros and Cons of AI in Marketing
So far, most of what I’ve shared about AI in marketing has been positive. AI has a lot of potential for marketing teams, and can deliver incredible results. However, there are pros and cons to using any kind of technology in marketing, and AI is no exception.
Before I share my tips for getting started with AI in marketing, let’s clear up the pros and cons once and for all.
The Pros of AI in Marketing
- Increased ROI: As I mentioned above, AI is fantastic at improving the return on investment from marketing campaigns. It can reduce marketing costs, and give you the insights you need to actually make the most of your budget.
- Speed and efficiency: Two thirds of marketers say that “saving time” is the biggest benefit they get from generative AI in marketing – and I agree. You can save hours on not just content creation, but admin work and meetings, just by using AI.
- Enhancing customer experiences: Provided that you don’t rely too heavily on the bots, AI can improve your relationships with customers. It can personalize marketing campaigns to different audiences in seconds, and even make your content more accessible.
- Reducing churn: Forget wasting money on irrelevant content and offers. Stop sending the wrong messages to customers at the wrong times. With AI, you have all the insights you need to avoid these mistakes, and prevent customer churn.
- Improved innovation: With machine learning-powered insights and tools like ChatGPT to help you create content, you can experiment faster, and build innovative marketing campaigns faster than your competitors. You might even speed up the time it takes to launch a new product, which means faster time to value.
The Cons of AI in Marketing
- Content quality and accuracy: I’ll say it again, AI doesn’t create flawless content. It’s good at giving you the basics you need to create great content, but it can still make mistakes, and end up producing pieces that feel generic, or even weird. Be careful about assuming everything your AI tools produce is just “ready to publish”.
- Privacy and ethical issues: First, if you want to use AI to create highly personalized campaigns, you need to feed data to your bots. There are obvious risks to consider here, particularly when it comes to adhering to laws like GDPR. Plus, there’s always a risk that AI could plagiarize other work when creating content for you, leading to new ethical concerns.
- Tracking issues: It’s not always easy to “quantify” the impact AI has on your marketing strategy. Certain metrics are easy to track, but the results of things like improving the user experience, or increasing brand awareness can be harder to monitor. That’s why it makes sense to work with an AI marketing agency, that can help you to understand the incremental impact of your AI-powered strategies.
Why You Need to Use AI in Marketing
You’re probably thinking – if there are so many risks to using AI in marketing – shouldn’t I just avoid it completely? Well, you could – but I wouldn’t recommend it.
Ultimately, AI is too valuable to ignore. If you’re not using it in your marketing strategy to help you understand your customers, create better experiences, and improve your content – your competitors probably are. By ignoring AI in your marketing strategy, you’re basically just giving other companies the shovel they need to bury your brand.
AI allows you to understand your market more effectively, so you can create more unique content, formulate more personalized marketing campaigns, and deliver smart solutions to buyer needs. It also gives you the power you need to scale and improve your marketing strategies quickly, so you don’t fall behind the competition.
The good news? While AI definitely has its risks, it’s not like consumers are going to start distrusting you just because you use it (as long as you’re careful). Remember, 39% of consumers are actively excited about the future of AI.
Real Life Examples of Successful AI in Marketing
I’ve already shared a bunch of examples of how you can use AI in marketing to achieve more with your campaigns, but I wanted to add a couple more into the mix – to show you exactly just how versatile artificial intelligence can be.
Netflix’s Unique Recommendation Engine
Let’s start with a biggie – one of the best known examples of a company using AI to facilitate growth today – Netflix. In the marketing world delivering the right message to the best person, at the right time, is everything. Netflix uses AI to do this at scale.
The world-leading streaming company uses a customer’s previous viewing history to determine everything from which content it should recommend to you, to what artwork you see for movies and TV shows. For instance, if you’ve watched a lot of previous shows that feature a certain actor, Netflix will make sure the thumbnail of recommended shows features that actor too.
Alternatively, if you watch more comedies than romances, Netflix might change the artwork you see to show comedic scenes, rather than something romantic.
Look at the difference between what you see as a fan of romance, and as a fan of comedy when Netflix recommends a movie like “Good Will Hunting”.
This is all part of Netflix’s comprehensive strategy to not only increase conversion rates, but improve the user experience on its platform.
Coca-Cola’s Creative AI Platform
We love the metaverse, NFTs, and all-things Web3 here at Crowdcreate, so it’s probably no surprise that we were impressed by Coca Cola’s “Create Real Magic” campaign. Sure, the aim might not have been to create NFTs here, but the brand could have gone in that direction.
With this strategy, Coca-Cola worked alongside Bain & Company and OpenAI to create a brand-new creative platform where digital artists could leverage cutting-edge AI tools like DALL-E to create unique images based on text prompts.
People from all over the world got involved, creating Coca-Cola themed images they could share with their friends, and the brand itself. Not only did this lead to a fun community-first experience for Coca-Cola’s fans, but it gave the company access to hundreds of high-quality, user-generated assets it could use for its future marketing campaigns.
The result of the campaign was a massive selection of assets Coca-Cola could use to reduce its advertising costs, and stronger relationships with more “engaged” community members.
What more could you want?
Spotify’s Customized Experience
Spotify is another company, like Netflix, that a lot of people associate with excellent AI marketing tactics. The music streaming company uses a similar strategy to Netflix, leveraging AI to understand a user’s specific music interests, podcast preferences, brand interactions, and so on.
Then, it generates customized playlists and recommendations for every user:
Once again, it’s this approach to customization and content personalization that has turned Spotify into a major streaming platform. It gives customers exactly what they’re looking for, every time. But Spotify’s approach to AI-powered personalization doesn’t end here.
The company also sends automated marketing messages to customers via email with personalized recommendations – using AI. That’s how it keeps its customers constantly coming back for more.
Nike’s “Never Done Evolving” AI Marketing Campaign
Nike always seems to stand out in the retail market for its impressive advertising campaigns that build genuine emotional connections with audiences. For it’s fifty year anniversary, Nike decided to take advantage of the latest innovations of AI in marketing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ehJczf2FEk
The company used cutting-edge AI to crunch data from more than two decades of tennis matches, and generate 130,000 games simulating a matchup between a younger version of Serena Williams from early in her career, and a more “up-to-date” version.
The result was a highly engaging and thought-provoking content campaign that drew attention to how people really evolve over the years. It was a testament to the power of hard work and perseverance that resonated with Nike’s ambitious customers.
H&M’s AI Influencer Campaign
For this final case study, I wanted to draw attention to one of the most recent innovations of AI in marketing – the rise of AI influencers. Obviously, AI influencers have their limitations – they can’t form emotional connections with customers quite as well as real influencers.
However, they can still generate amazing results – when they’re used correctly. For instance, H&M partnered with the AI influencer @Kuki_AI and Meta on a campaign to promote its metaverse-inspired collection. The campaign featured the digital influencer wearing numerous outfits from H&M – just like a real influencer would.
The results of this campaign was astronomical. Not only did H&M achieve an 11 times increase in ad recall, but the company also boasted a 91% decrease in cost per person for ad recall. In other words, the fashion brand turbocharged it’s marketing results, connected with new potential followers, and reduced its marketing costs, all at the same time.
Using AI in Marketing: Tips for Getting Started
If you’ve analyzed the pros and cons of AI in marketing carefully, and you still want to dive in, the best thing you can do is get the right support. Agencies like Crowdcreate have years of experience using AI effectively (and ethically) to improve marketing results.
Don’t worry though, I’m not just going to leave you with a recommendation to work with our team. Here are some quick tips for getting started with your AI strategy.
1. Define Clear Goals in Advance
Yes, this is a pretty generic tip you should be keeping in mind whenever you’re implementing any new marketing strategy – but that doesn’t make it less important.
When we use AI in a marketing campaign for a client, we start with a clear goal setting process. We identify exactly what kind of results the company wants to achieve. For instance, do you want to use AI, combined with other strategies, like influencer marketing, to raise hype for a product launch, and hopefully increase conversions (like we did for TPLink’s influencer marketing campaign on TikTok)?
Do you want to save your team time and money on future marketing campaigns, or simply make better, more data-driven decisions about how to use your budget?
Figure out exactly how you’re going to measure the success of your strategy in advance. My best advice? Stay focused, and don’t try to accomplish too much at once. As Desmond Tutu said, the best way to eat an elephant is one bite a time. Don’t try to revolutionize everything in your marketing strategy with AI at once. Start slow, and work your way up.
2. Audit Your Infrastructure
For a lot of companies, the biggest challenge of using AI in marketing is actually “implementing” it into their everyday processes. However, depending on the infrastructure and tools you already use for marketing, there may be some easy “entry points” you can take advantage of in your strategy.
For instance, if you’re already using SEMRush for keyword research, you could use ContentShake AI for idea generation and content optimization too, without making a lot of changes to your strategy.
If you have an existing CRM solution like Salesforce that helps you to segment customers and create more personalized campaigns, you can use that platform’s built-in AI tools to improve the efficiency and performance of your marketing strategy.
Even if you’re not using tools that already offer “AI” solutions, there are plenty of tools that can integrate seamlessly with existing platforms. You don’t necessarily have to reinvent the wheel here. Take advantage of the assets, and the data you already have.
3. Build on Your Team
A lot of marketers might be embracing AI tools these days, but not everyone will know which tools to use to get the best results, or how to implement new strategies effectively.
Don’t just assume your existing team can comfortably take advantage of all the benefits of AI. They might need training on how to use new tools, or they might need guidance on how to ensure they follow compliance guidelines when working with AI.
Sometimes, you might not have the staff you need available in-house at all. Around 62% of marketing leaders say they’ve considered hiring an employee specifically to enable AI in marketing.
If your current personnel don’t have the skills they need already, then you don’t necessarily need to hire a new full-time employee. However, you should at least consider working with an agency or freelancer who can give you extra support.
Working with a marketing agency like Crowdcreate will ensure you can take advantage of specialists with proven skills and experience. It also means you can potentially save money on purchasing new AI software, and training team members on how to use it.
4. Choose Tools for AI in Marketing Carefully
Once you’ve identified your goals, audited your current infrastructure, and assessed your team’s skills, you can start exploring the kind of tools you might want to use. As I mentioned above some of the tools you’re already using, like HubSpot, SEMRush, or Google Ads will already offer access to AI-powered features.
However, you might want to explore external standalone solutions too, such as ChatGPT for research and content ideation, Jasper for content writing, or MidJourney for visual content creation.
Choose your options wisely and don’t rush in with too many tools too fast. Based on what you want to accomplish right now, create a shortlist of potential tools. For instance, if you want to streamline and accelerate content generation, you might look at ChatGPT, Jasper, and Copy.AI.
Take advantage of any free trials or demos of those tools you can get, and make sure you pay attention to things like:
- How easy they are to use
- How well they integrate with your existing processes and systems
- Whether you can maintain control over your data
- How affordable they’re going to be (long-term)
- Their overall reputation in the market.
5. Commit to Constant Evolution
Finally, implementing AI into your marketing strategy isn’t the same as just deciding to use a new social media platform one day. It’s a process. You’ll need to constantly evaluate the results of your new AI-driven marketing campaigns, and look for ways to drive improvements.
Look carefully at all of the benefits you get from your AI tools. If they help to increase conversions and reduce marketing costs, that’s great, but are they also:
- Saving your team members valuable time?
- Helping you to forge stronger connections with customers?
- Increasing brand awareness or reach?
- Ensuring you stay one step ahead of the competition?
Make sure you monitor any potential downsides to using AI in marketing too. For instance, do your rankings and engagement levels start to drop when you start using AI too much for content creation? What will this mean for your business in the long-term?
The Future of AI in Marketing
It might feel like AI is everywhere in the marketing industry right now, but the reality is that we’ve really only begun to scratch the surface of this technology’s potential. As AI continues to advance, we’ll see more opportunities emerging. Here are some of the biggest trends to look forward to.
The Constant Evolution of Large Language Models
Large Language Models (LLMs) – like the GPTs that power ChatGPT, are going to continue having a major impact on conversational marketing in the years ahead. We’re going to see more companies leveraging these solutions to define the next generation of conversational AI.
For marketers, this will mean having access to more adaptive conversational tools that can significantly enhance customer engagement. Already, chatbots are getting better at boosting marketing strategies, with 25% of customers saying that a chatbot helped them buy a product.
The Rise of Multimodal AI
The rise of multimodal AI solutions will mean we can create more diverse content with AI than ever. Teams will be using AI to create not just blog posts and social media captions, but unique images, videos, demonstrations, webinars, podcasts, and other types of campaigns.
Going forward, any marketing team will be able to create all kinds of content at scale and even make the most of their existing marketing assets, by converting them into new formats.
Greater AI Governance
As companies begin to use AI more often, industry guidelines will need to evolve. We’re already seeing new regulations emerge to determine how companies can use personal data to train bots. Some government groups are even creating policies that dictate the steps companies need to take to reduce the risk of AI bias and discrimination.
We’re going to see a rise in the number of cybersecurity solutions implemented into AI platforms to help protect against potential data leakages, as well as more demand for “responsible AI practices” among marketing teams in the years ahead. Be ready to adapt to some new regulations.
Enhanced Automation and Targeting Solutions
Marketing automation is all the rage, from programmatic advertising automation to automated email marketing. We can expect the options for using AI to automate marketing tasks to increase in the years ahead. Not only will you be able to automatically create and publish content at the right time, but you’ll also be able to dynamically adjust content to suit different audiences, and reduce admin work for your teams.
AI will also help to automate and enhance the ad targeting process. Solutions with advanced algorithms can help you to make more intelligent media buying decisions, improve ROAS, and design more personalized campaigns. As systems gain access to more data, they’ll become even more effective at boosting targeting strategies.
More AI Marketing Team Members
I mentioned this above, but the potential of AI solutions to become fully-fledged marketing team members will increase in the years ahead. AI tools won’t just include bots that can suggest relevant products to customers and guide them through the purchasing journey. We’ll also have access to AI influencers and thought leaders that can boost brand awareness and reach.
If you’re feeling uncomfortable about working with AI in marketing right now – buckle up, because you’re going to be interacting with this technology a lot more in the future.
Harnessing the Power of AI in Marketing
AI in marketing is here to stay, and for the most part that’s a good thing. Marketing teams can scale operations, reduce costs, improve customer experiences, and improve ROI with AI tools. However, it’s important not to overlook the limitations of AI too.
Even as the technology continues to evolve, it can still make mistakes, create new issues with your brand reputation, and harm your chances of success if it’s not implemented with caution. That’s why we always recommend working with the experts when implementing an AI strategy.
Crowdcreate can work with you to discover the best opportunities for implementing AI into your marketing strategy, and help you leverage the right tools and processes. What’s more, we can help you navigate common risks with using AI in your marketing strategies, ensuring your brand reputation remains strong for years to come.
Contact us today to learn more about how a leading AI marketing agency can help you accomplish more with intelligent marketing solutions.
FAQs
How is AI being used for marketing?
AI is the secret weapon behind personalized campaigns, predicting customer behavior, and targeting the right audience with laser precision. It’s powering chatbots, automating content creation (thanks ChatGPT) and delivering ads that seem to know what you want before you do.
What is the best example of AI in marketing?
Ever notice how Netflix seems to know your next binge before you do? That’s AI at its finest! From Amazon’s recommendation engine to personalized email campaigns from brands, AI isn’t just assisting marketing—it’s leading it by predicting your next move.
What are the benefits of AI in marketing?
AI doesn’t just save time; it makes marketing smarter! Picture this: pinpointing your target audience, creating hyper-personalized content, and optimizing campaigns—all in real time. The result? More conversions, better ROI, and less guesswork.
What are some common AI marketing tools?
From HubSpot’s AI-powered lead scoring to Salesforce’s Einstein predictions, the marketing world is stacked with AI tools. Options range all the way from content creation tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Jasper, to image creation tools, analytics platforms and more.
What is the future of AI in marketing?
AI will predict every customer’s move, automate entire campaigns, and even craft personalized content instantly. However, there’ll also be more governance and rules around using AI for marketing. AI solutions will introduce a range of new opportunities and challenges in the future. Make sure you’re ready for them now.
Can AI replace human marketers?
AI can handle a lot of the grind work of marketing, but true creativity and innovation requires a human touch. Think of AI as the ultimate sidekick for automating simple tasks, and enhancing data driven decisions. However it won’t ever replace human intuition, storytelling, or emotional connections.
