10 Unique Benefits and Uses of AI Technology in Digital Marketing

One of the most exciting developments in digital marketing this 2021 includes the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) technology as an essential tool in modern-day marketing.

Although the use of artificial intelligence in marketing may seem intimidating at first, you might warm up to it once you understand its benefits.

The rise of artificial intelligence

In recent years, AI has started helping companies develop crisp and accurate insights through massive data computing – a feat that was near-impossible for humans to achieve in the past.

More and more, the application of this technology continues to diversify, demonstrating its usefulness in various industries, including digital marketing.

For one, AI provides automated tools that help improve a business’s customer relations and conversions. More importantly, this transformative technology enables companies to keep up with the rapidly changing landscape of digital marketing, like never before.

As it is, AI is slowly becoming a valuable tool for businesses to stay ahead of the digital marketing game. However, there are some considerations worth looking into before you decide to adopt artificial intelligence marketing for your business.

This primer will provide a deep dive into AI in marketing; so you can assess if this technology will best suit your business needs.

What is artificial intelligence (AI)?

When you hear the term “artificial intelligence”, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Humanoid robots and futuristic machinery, perhaps? While these associations aren’t necessarily wrong, AI is so much more than futuristic robots and highly intelligent machines.

In fact, artificial intelligence refers to any machine’s ability to mimic human-like intelligence when performing a function. This can include learning from “experiences,” responding to speech, and making decisions, in performing functions such as greeting people, solving problems, and even driving cars autonomously.

If you think of AI in any of these ways, you might realize that this technology is already integral in some facets of your daily life today.

Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning

If you have prior work experience in AI and marketing, you may have heard of ‘machine learning’ and ‘deep learning’. It’s easy to confuse these ideas, considering how closely related they are. However,  it’s important to tell each one apart, as you continue on in your AI marketing journey.

As mentioned, AI refers to any machine’s ability to perform human-like thought processes to execute a function. Machine learning falls under this category, while deep learning falls under the category of machine learning, like Russian nesting dolls of modern technology.

Machine learning is a branch of artificial intelligence that centers around creating machine models that can learn from data and improve accuracy over time. These models can learn, correct, and improve autonomously without the need for human intervention.

Deep learning, on the other hand, is a branch of machine learning which specifically uses neural networks to learn, correct, and improve insights over time. Unlike machine learning, deep learning can process unlabeled data because of its neural networks. It’s a specialized form of machine learning that can identify data and act on them, entirely on its own.

Each concept is nested within the wide scope of AI. By knowing the differences among the three, you can look forward to the different ways you can apply them to your digital marketing campaigns.

How is artificial intelligence used in digital marketing?

If you’re looking for artificial intelligence examples in daily digital marketing, below are 10 ways you can integrate artificial intelligence and marketing in your modern-day business solutions:

1. Content creation

One way to easily evolve your digital marketing process is by assigning some of your content creation to an AI. While it can’t replace content creation work entirely, some artificial intelligence tools can create email content, reports, and messages based on existing data for most of your marketing purposes.

Microsoft made this switch last 2020. On the company’s web news portal MSN, Microsoft replaced several human staffers with AI editors, in a continuous bid to replace some of their human content creators with AI creators.

AI can generate unique content that simulates human work by using pre-existing data and basic text templates. This is an exciting development to look forward to, as more digital marketers use this technology to optimize their complex workstreams.

Note of caution, though: This application of AI has been shown to not yet be evolved enough to function without human supervision.

With Microsoft’s AI editors confusing mixed-race artists in a published report, the company faced backlash. At the end of the day, human writers and editors had to step in and were subsequently tasked to police the AI for errors before publishing any further news articles.

2. Email marketing

Another benefit of AI for digital marketing is the personalization of email marketing, based on consumer behaviors. Much like how an AI can automatically generate email content for you, it can also send emails to customers based on certain trigger actions.

For example, when a customer makes a purchase, an AI can generate and send an email curated to the customer’s preferences. This curated email keeps the customer engaged in your brand and increases your chances for another conversion.

An AI can quickly work on email marketing campaigns. It can automate the campaign process which would otherwise take human implementers weeks of A/B tests to analyze and optimize.

3. Personalized website browsing

It has become a digital marketing norm for brands to tailor fit their messages to their consumers. Non-personalized marketing results in non-engagement by your customers. So, you need to utilize user location, demographics, and interests to gain their attention.

When a potential customer is on your website, you can use AI to predict their behavior. It can study their past brand interactions and send curated messages to them, to ensure a conversion. Websites, like Amazon, do this by collecting their purchase history, wish lists, addresses, among others to tailor fit recommendations for them.

The machine-learning algorithms of AI help marketers deliver curated experiences to potential customers. Keep this technological advancement on your ultimate web design checklist to help optimize your content and drive conversions.

4. Customer service chatbots

With the progress of AI language processing and recognition, more and more companies are using this technology to deliver better services to their customers. One way marketers use artificial intelligence is through chatbots, to greater success every time.

Customer service chatbots powered by AI have several advantages over human customer services. One advantage is that chatbots can accurately respond to multiple customer queries all at once, no matter where the customers are in the world.

Another advantage is that chatbots never need to rest. Unlike humans, chatbots can work round the clock to deliver curated customer service. Chatbots will always be “polite” and “happy” because they’re fully powered to do so by an AI.

5. Overall user experience (UX) development

In relation to how AI can improve personalized browsing and chatbot service, this technological advancement can also upgrade your customer’s overall experience. Through deep learning, artificial intelligence can help improve any user experience design project, to make each element more tailored to the customer’s wants and needs.

These automated advancements aren’t limited to personalized website browsing and customer service chatbots. Using deep learning algorithms, an AI can analyze a huge volume of data from thousands of users, including all their likes, shares, comments, or product interests.

An AI can segment users into smaller groups and whittle down data to a one-to-one marketing level. Its deep learning algorithm can create a curated user experience and an intimate connection with your potential customer.

6. Improving search engine optimization (SEO)

Best SEO practices continue to evolve, as time goes by. So it’s imperative for your business to keep up with the technological pace. One advancement you should explore is optimizing AI for voice search, to help direct users to your brand as efficiently as possible.

Customers usually use AI-powered devices to process complex speech patterns and recognize meaning for their voice searches. As voice search becomes more common, you should explore the possibility of optimizing your digital marketing content for this mode of search, too.

If your business isn’t equipped to optimize content for voice search, you can work with a data-driven SEO company to keep up with the technological pace. Evolve your SEO and improve your site’s traffic to win more conversions for your company.

7. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising

If your business runs on huge PPC campaigns, then you’ll want to optimize your workflow for gains on each click. A machine learning algorithm is the best way for you to regularly churn out the best possible layouts, bids, and copies.

While traditional methods, like A/B testing ads, are still effective ways to test your PPC campaigns, they take a long time to execute. By using an AI that uses machine learning algorithms, you can automatically improve and optimize your campaigns, based on the data you collect from your customers.

8. Processing big data

Human error is a big risk for anyone in digital marketing. In terms of processing huge amounts of information, even the most accomplished analysts are prone to committing errors, given the sheer volume of customer data companies collect in a day.

Your business can use AI to process, understand, and gain insights from huge amounts of customer data. By using artificial intelligence, you can reduce risks caused by human error, gain valuable insights, and deliver information that’s easy to understand.

Use AI to identify and remove outdated or duplicate customer data. Let it do the brunt of the work in going through insurmountable amounts of information. This way, your human analysts can optimize customer data and advance your data-driven marketing while exposing your business to fewer risks.

9. Dynamic pricing

Dynamic pricing determines the prices of your products based on demand and availability, to help maximize your business’s profits.

To streamline this constantly fluctuating system, you can use an AI to automatically adjust your product prices, even when the demand skyrockets but product availability crashes.

You will often find dynamic pricing at work on airline booking websites. As a user, you could visit a booking website, leave, and come back to higher ticket prices. The website’s AI could’ve adjusted ticket prices based on their availability, over time, while you were away.

10. Predictive analysis

Last but not least is the use of AI for predictive analytics in digital marketing. Traditionally, predictive analytics is used to develop predictive models for conversion optimization. But these models are only as good as their data. So if there’s human error in the data collection process, then these models won’t be fit for conversion optimization.

An AI can help ensure the accuracy of predictive models through precise data collection, analysis, and insights. This will allow you to rule out human error and instead let you focus on conversion optimization for increased sales, better time management, and improved use of resources.

The ethical implications of artificial intelligence

Despite the many benefits it has to offer, AI is also a hot topic for debate in terms of its ethical implications – enough to have held back the widespread use of this technology in marketing over the past few years.

Amid the debate, businesses that have reaped the benefits of using AI cannot disregard this technology’s undeniable value.

Will you bite the bullet and integrate AI wholly in your business, or will your operations remain 100% human-driven? At the end of the day, the decision on what’s best for your business is yours to make, alone.

Key Takeaways

As digital marketing trends continue to evolve in 2021, it’s important to hold on to the following key takeaways to keep evolving your business:

• Technological advancements, like AI, are more common than you think. It’s part of your cell phone, laptop, and other digital devices. So why not apply it to your business?
• AI is key to optimizing large volumes of customer data. So if you want to use these customer data well, AI is the way to go.
• You can never get rid of the human aspect of marketing. Don’t let the debates get in the way of your business’s progress. Only you can decide if your business needs AI or not.

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