Artificial intelligence is a technology which everyone is familiar with on some level, whether through works of science fiction, or by keeping up to date with tech news. What people might not be aware of is that AI is starting to see more widespread use in fields ranging from finance, healthcare and video games, to the military, and even digital marketing.
Specially designed AI systems are used for analyzing large volumes of data, for automating work processes, and even for predicting online behaviors.
What’s even more surprising is that systems such as these are not just being used by the big players. With the rising availability of enterprise-level and consumer-grade level AI solutions, companies of all sizes can now enjoy the benefits of this cutting-edge technology. However, despite what some tech-enthusiasts have been claiming online, AI is not the be-all, end-all solution for all your business-related problems. What it is, is a powerful tool for solving a set of very specific marketing-related tasks.
If you are trying to achieve better results with your online branding, marketing, and advertising campaigns, investing in AI can pay significant dividends down the line. Before you get started with using AI for promotional purposes, take a look at our short guide on the topic below.
AI for Content Creation
Modern AIs are frequently being used in the fields of natural language processing (NLP) and generation (NLG). If content marketing is your digital marketing strategy of choice, you can get a lot of mileage from utilizing such machine-generated content. AIs tend to perform well when creating content with a strong emphasis on a consistent structure.
For instance, financial reports and legal forms are two types of content that rely on factual information and a strict structure in order to provide meaning and value. The benefits of using AI instead of actual writers for creating content of this sort is that it often involves a lot of tedious, repetitive work.
Nothing kills creativity faster than doing the same thing over and over again, so it makes sense to leave such tasks to AI content generation systems. According to a recent survey, some customers even prefer to read AI-generated content, because they perceive it as being more consistent and informative.
AI for Email Marketing
AI is also frequently used for content distribution via email. The secret to running an effective email marketing campaign is to deliver relevant content in a timely manner to each subscriber on your mailing list. This task is easy enough to accomplish if you have few subscribers, but as your mailing list grows, it tends to become cumbersome quite quickly.
To address this issue, businesses are now using email automation software packages which include embedded AIs. Such an AI can examine subscriber data in order to find the optimal time for sending out targeted emails. It can also give suggestions regarding things like which subject lines to use, or what kinds of content would work well for conversion purposes.
Once such a system is in place, marketers can work on the more creative aspects of email marketing, such as creating enticing content.
AI for Digital Advertising
Other forms of marketing content distribution can also utilize the predictive power of AI. For instance, Google’s AdSense algorithms make use of AI to determine which ads to serve to each individual website visitor.
Similar systems can also be used by regular businesses to automatically discover what kinds of ads are likely to perform well for your target audience, as well as how much you should spend per click.
By using machine learning algorithms, advertising AIs can detect useful patterns from consumer data, allowing you to advertise with laser precision. Finding out which ads to serve to which people at what time is a time-consuming task for a human, but an AI can perform it automatically, and without much difficulty, again leaving marketers with more time to work on their content.
AI for Conversational Marketing
Chatbots are automated conversation systems designed to mimic the way people talk in regular conversations. One of the more novel ways in which digital marketers are utilizing AI tech is through chatbots. A chatbot is simply a piece of software that can simulate how a real human being writes or talks. Chatbots are used for a wide variety of purposes online, including providing customer support, acting as brand ambassadors, or even simply as a form of entertainment.
More advanced chatbots can even place orders on ecommerce sites, gather data from their previous conversations, and perform web searches. What makes chatbots attractive for digital marketers is the fact that they are affordable, easy to set up and maintain, and able to serve numerous online consumers at once.
Chatbots can be embedded into websites, hosted on instant messaging platforms, or work as standalone applications on both mobile and desktop. Chatbots are not yet powerful enough to do marketing work on their own, but they can make great assistants for digital marketers with a lot of work on their hands.
Conclusion
Artificial intelligence is ushering in a new era of digital marketing. It is hard to beat an AI when it comes to performing repetitive tasks, analyzing big data, or predicting consumers’ online behavior. We are likely to see more and more companies starting to use AI as a part of their regular workflows, and the sooner you do the same, the better you will be prepared for the web of the future.
