If you are still concerned about using AI, the cat has been out of the bag for some time now, and there is definitely no going back. AI has made a huge difference in multiple digital arenas, and digital marketing is no exception.

Marketing professionals and business owners have started using AI-powered technology to create engaging content, gain real-time insight into their target audiences, and outperform competitors in the digital marketplace. It’s not surprising that the expected global valuation of the AI market will reach US $1.5 trillion by 2030.

However, the implementation of new-age, complex technology can prove daunting for a lot of people. The digital marketplace has been flooded with a plethora of apps and software solutions, so it can be confusing to understand how to use them for the best possible outcome.

In this article, I will discuss some tips that can help digital marketing professionals and business owners utilize AI-powered tools for their benefit.

Pros and Cons of Using AI in Digital Marketing

First, let’s talk about some of the pros and cons of including AI in your digital marketing strategy.

Pros

Artificial intelligence can help marketing professionals understand how customers behave while looking for products and solutions. This knowledge empowers you to deliver a personalized experience that can resonate with each customer for better conversions.

You can use the technology to gain insights into market segmentation and targeting. AI can also take care of several repetitive tasks, which gives you more time to focus on the strategic necessities. You can use generative AI tools to create targeted written or visual content. According to the Capgemini Research Institute, 73% of consumers believe in AI-generated content used for marketing purposes. Furthermore, you can use AI-powered bots to offer personalized customer support for better retention and brand loyalty.

Furthermore, leveraging artificial intelligence helps personalize content and attract more potential customers, engaging them to patronize your products and services. This technology involves analyzing complex customer data and providing accurate answers and recommendations to resolve concerns. With AI-powered email software or a customer relationship (CRM) system, maximizing these capabilities to your marketing campaign is possible.

Cons

Unfortunately, AI is not all bells and whistles, and there are certain aspects that you have to be aware of while using these tools. While some AI tools are not too expensive or even free, many can burn a deep hole in your pocket. It can be a roadblock for small or medium-sized businesses that may have limited resources for investment.

Also, many generative AI tools, including paid ones, can deliver imperfect results. That’s why it is absolutely crucial that you double-check the work produced by such tools. If you use AI-driven systems to handle vast amounts of customer data, you must take adequate steps to safeguard this data and ensure legal compliance.

Even though these tools do not possess the unique insights that human marketing professionals bring to the table, AI has much to offer to the industry. Let’s understand how digital marketing professionals like you and I can embrace AI as a powerful ally to enhance our work and derive optimum results.

Marketing Attribution

Remember those days when we could only measure the success of our marketing campaigns with last-click attribution? We only recorded the interaction of a customer with our website right before they purchased something or filled out a form. Unfortunately, this gave us a very limited knowledge of how prospects became customers and what led them to buy or sign up.

According to Vital Design, effective marketing attributions can help in improving product development, finding creative solutions to your problems, and even understanding how your customers think. AI-powered solutions can provide data-driven attribution by recording each interaction a prospective user has with your app or website.

It will help you understand the complete picture of a user’s journey to understand how your top-of-the-funnel campaigns are working. Also, since every user has more than one interaction with a brand before deciding to purchase or sign up, you can study these interactions along the further stages of the funnel to understand how to modify your digital marketing strategy.

You must gather data from all the relevant marketing channels and touchpoints, including social media marketing, email marketing, website analytics, and CRM. There are several attribution models you can choose from, such as first-touch, last-touch, linear, time decay, or data-driven models. Some AI-driven solutions are more sophisticated and can provide better insights, so use the one that can meet your requirements.

You must remember to tailor your attribution model by adjusting the parameters or rules to ensure the tool reflects your customer’s journey and conversion paths along the various stages of their interaction with your brand. You should also consider testing and validating the AI tool based on the data generated by it before integrating the solution into your marketing tech stack.

Bidding Strategies

Even though I do not have a lot of experience in manual bidding en mass, I’ve been told that PPC advertisers had to regularly adjust the bids and keywords individually for bulk ads. That means they had to work through vast amounts of data on sheets to reduce the cost per conversion constantly.

Thankfully, manual bidding is mostly used for experiments nowadays. Platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads offer AI bidding options now, a powerful way to reduce your ad spend, improve campaign performance, and maximize your returns. AI and ML algorithms can even adjust the bid amounts automatically for each ad impression, click, or conversion in real-time.

You will have to define your campaign objectives and KPIs like Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) and Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) for the best results. You can use the tools to segment your audience based on demographics, behavior, and other factors and adjust your bidding strategies as well as real-time bids accordingly. AI tools can also run A/B tests to understand the impact of bidding adjustments on your campaign’s performance so you can fine-tune the strategies based on the results.

Targeted Content Personalization

AI-powered solutions are quite effective in helping digital marketers personalize content and deliver it to prospective customers at the top of the marketing funnel. You can use AI-driven tools to analyze customer data based on user behavior or choices and gain valuable insights as to how you can create and present the content. This data-driven approach enables you to tailor the content to resonate with every prospective consumer and increase conversions.

Personalized content can be especially useful for prospects in the consideration stage. You can adjust the content to help the prospects decide whether your products or services suit them. AI tools can analyze customer data to help you understand the pain points of the consumers who are considering buying from your brand. You can use these tools to generate content that helps them understand how your products or services can solve their problems.

Personalized content is also useful in the loyalty or retention stage of the marketing funnel. You can send targeted content to your customers to increase your engagement with them and improve their level of satisfaction with your brand.

AI tools like website content adjusters or chatbots can help you deliver tailored experiences to prospective and existing customers. For example, an AI-powered chatbot can answer questions and also recommend products or services that can solve the problems faced by a prospect.

According to a survey by Wakefield Research for DataStax, relevant recommendations can improve the trust in a brand for almost 72% of consumers surveyed. Also, nearly 49% of them said that they would prefer going back to companies that offer recommendations based on their requirements. Using these tools to engage with your prospective customers individually can enhance their experience significantly and improve your conversion rates.

You can also use Generative AI for personalized content creation. For example, natural language generators like Chat GPT and GPT 4 with vision or Bard can help you create content that will resonate with your prospects. On the other hand, AI-based tools like Canva or Adobe Sensei can create visually appealing photographs or graphics that convey a personalized message to an interested user.

As I mentioned before, these tools are limited by their database and ability to understand your commands, so the results may not always be as optimum as you hope for them to be. But you can definitely make them worthy with a little human intervention and adjustments.

Content marketing services can also help personalize content if you prefer a human approach rather than relying on AI. Quality control is enhanced with humans overseeing tone, messaging, and style alignment with brand values. Experts can bring consistently impressive results if you’re looking for editorial content, infographics, animated videos, calculators, or interactive content.

Aside from content, most agencies offer search engine optimization and link-building services.

But how do you choose the right content marketing services? Working with a company that provides holistic services is best, so you don’t have to hire different agencies to perform various tasks.

Choose a company with a good reputation and can offer free performance analysis. You want to maximize their services for effective and efficient marketing. Before committing to any contract, check their portfolio, including case studies and knowledge-based resources, to gauge their expertise. Also, ask for their terms and fee structure and clarify other related concerns.

Conclusion

AI can be quite effective in revolutionizing your digital marketing strategies as long as they are used intelligently. They may require a human touch once in a while, but the results can definitely improve the speed and quality of your digital marketing campaigns.

It will become increasingly vital to use AI-powered tools in various digital environments as the technology advances. So now is the time to implement these intelligent solutions and stay ahead of your competitors in an ever-evolving digital landscape.