The use of AI for marketing, as in any other field, has grown significantly over the past year thanks to the new tools which constantly appear almost weekly and to the people’s interest in making their work easier. And because of that, at Digitalee, had appear the curiosity to understand how we can automate certain processes using AI and what AI tools can we use to improve the digital marketing services we offer (especially since AI is increasingly present in the functionalities of the platforms we work with everyday: Agency Analytics, Google Search Console, META Ads Manager, etc.). The „AI for Business & Marketing” course at the Digital Marketing Institute helped us in this regard, being a roller coaster in the true sense of the word which had trained our brain to its maximum capacity through interactive video courses, accompanied by practical examples and relevant case studies from various fields.
It is said that „AI won’t steal our job, but the people who know how to use it will”. So read on our article to find out how we can turn the collaboration with an AI for marketing into a successful and long-term partnership.
When, How and Why to use AI for marketing?
I know it can be discouraging, scary, or weird to blindly trust AI. I mean, have you ever taken a video course where the teacher was generated by an AI tool? I certainly have one of the lessons in the DMI course held by such a teacher! It seemed so unusual to me! So unfamiliar! But it also opened my eyes to what the future holds in marketing and beyond!
It is understandable to feel a certain reluctance to use AI for marketing, because you can fall into two extremes: either you want to use it all the time to do your tasks, without „the human retouch” effort, or you don’t use it at all because you don’t trust its answers. Let’s tackle both of these situations!
The one with the „WHEN” response
It’s true that it can be tempting to see AI as the solution to every problem we face at our job, especially when we run out of ideas for a campaign or we don’t feel very creative on some days. But AI excels in specific areas of the digital marketing world so knowing when to use AI in marketing can really make the difference between an efficient and a misguided strategy.
Pattern recognition – AI can help us uncover hidden consumer behaviors (to meet their needs before they will be aware of them), market trends (to stay relevant in our industry), and sentiment analysis. The last one is very important when you want to understand the online user’s opinion about your products or services or even your brand, overall, in order to create content that resonates with your real audiences. And AI can help us with that in a faster way!
Data analysis and interpretation – AI can be used to analyze large data sets in order to obtain information from which we gain valuable insights. For example, you can conduct a sales analysis to help you annually divide your products into the BCG matrix, in order to get the direction of the communication strategy for the next year.
Automation of repetitive tasks – AI can free us from repetitive tasks in order to reallocate the effort for more strategic work. The usage of AI in this area includes automated email campaigns, A/B tests that automatically adjust based on real-time results, and the examples could go on.
The one with the „HOW” response
One of the reasons why AI doesn’t deliver the result we want is the way we wrote the prompt in the first place! Because AI can provide the „what”, not the „why” of our problem. AI can mimic human interactions and experiences, not human thinking. To ensure that AI tells us exactly what we’re looking for, it must be actively guided by comprehensive business perspectives and contextual information. Otherwise, AI tools won’t be able to deliver relevant and valuable results that align with our strategic needs and objectives.
So, next time when you want to instruct an AI tool in a more thorough way, follow these 5 best practices to increase your chance of getting useful responses:
- Write a clear and specific prompt, giving to the AI tool all the details about the project or campaign you are working on. For example: „Give me five key messages for a Black Friday campaign dedicated to kid’s bikes.”.
- Don’t assume it knows your brand because it doesn’t, unless you provide the whole context in the prompt.
- Write longer and more detailed prompts to help the AI to better understand the context when it’s needed.
- Indicate the brand’s tone in your prompt to guide the AI to generate content that matches your brand’s voice. For example: „Generate a joyful post to announce the new location of my women fashion store.”.
- If you’re not satisfied with the first response generated by AI, ask for follow-up prompts to further guide it. This is an important one to obtain the results you want!
The one with the „WHY” response
In some areas of your work where you feel the need for a personal assistant, you shouldn’t hesitate: AI is the perfect candidate! Why? I already have three main reasons for that! First of all, it boosts your productivity to free up more time for complex and strategic tasks that require your time and attention. Also, it unearths new perspectives by its data-driven research capabilities, so you can concentrate more effort to develop an effective marketing approach for your company or client. Last but not least, it can help you to craft customized content and more personalized campaigns for different audiences in order to meet your client’s needs.
What AI tools can improve the digital marketing services?
The field of digital marketing services is broad and comprehensive, so you’re probably wondering, „Okay, fine! But what AI tools can we use for content creation, email automation, and so on?”. I’ve got you covered!
Of all the AI tools presented in the DMI Course, the Clarity by Microsoft had stolen my heart! This is a dedicated AI tool to map customers’ journeys (similar to Hotjar), which can be connected to Google Analytics 4 to display anonymous records of user visits for in-depth heat maps. With a master’s thesis on eye tracking usage in marketing campaigns, I felt very excited and a familiar, warming feeling came over me seeing heat maps again, knowing that I could do that again for our clients as well.
HubSpot and Mailchimp use AI for customer segmentation, helping you to automatically segment the audience into target groups for email marketing campaigns or product recommendations, based on previous customer behavior.
Google Ads and Facebook Ads, two powerful paid media tools, use AI to dynamically adjust campaign budgets based on real-time performance and, also, to automatically test different combinations of creative elements, texts, and targeting parameters. This helps us to concentrate our effort on other areas of the media buying strategy.
If we want to improve our keyword research strategy for our clients based on AI, we can use tools such as Semrush and Ahrefs which can identify keywords with high impact and even predict keyword trends.
For social listening activities, Brandwatch stands out, examining brand mentions, reviews, and comments on social media to gain insight into how people feel about a client’s brand.
Above, we have mentioned only the most important AI tools used frequently in digital marketing activities. But there are so much more, as well as for the following areas: Trend Forecasting, Competitor Monitoring, Influencer Identification, Website Design, Content Marketing, Content Scheduling, and so on. If you are interested in finding out more about what and how to use AI tools for one of these digital marketing areas, contact us with trust!
Marketing is changing, and AI just shows us that the speed of change is reaching ever higher levels. The DMI course had a clear and insightful structure that covered a much wider range of topics, including the use of AI in business, the difference between AI and machine learning, how to use AI in data-driven decision-making (which give me so more insights to improve my work in data analysis and insights), as well as ethics and practical AI skills that no specialist should overlook. In a future article we will cover the juicy topic about AI and data-driven decisions. Until then, keep an eye on our blog for more insights into the digital marketing world.
Post A Comment