5 Ways AI Will Impact Digital Marketing

The Role of AI in Digital Marketing

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the ways businesses work across a variety of sectors. In digital marketing, it’s been one of the main drivers of innovation in recent years. Digital marketing has always availed itself of the latest technological advancements, but with AI, it can further streamline operations and reduce costs.

AI is currently used in digital marketing to perform cost and ROI analysis for PPC advertising, chatbot customer service, and social media sentiment analysis, among other things. Marketers are using the time they save to extract valuable insights from the information gathered. Currently, more than half of all digital marketers use some form of AI to assist in their work, and the numbers are only expected to grow.

Companies That Use AI Seamlessly

AI in digital marketing runs so smoothly that consumers aren’t even aware that it’s operating. For example, Amazon uses AI to show relevant products to individual consumers. The products are chosen based on previous searches, purchases, and views. This is not only a form of digital marketing but an effective sales strategy, since consumers who are shown relevant products are more likely to become repeat customers.

Google has been implementing AI for years. Its responsive search ads allow marketers to enter up to 15 headlines and four description lines, while its machine learning (ML) tool determines which combination will perform best for any given search.

Unsurprisingly, Facebook has been using AI for years as well. As an entity that has access to an incredible amount of data, AI is crucial in helping Facebook identify target audiences based on demographics, interests, and online activity.

What to Expect From AI in Marketing

As consumer-generated data grows, subsets of AI, like ML, DL (deep learning), and NLP (natural language processing), will increase in relevance.

Here are 5 ways AI is expected to impact digital marketing.

  1. Data Generation
    While AI may have started out with a focus on data analysis, today it is moving toward data generation. How is this possible? The technology being developed has enabled machines to better automate both sight and hearing, which in turn allows them to gather insights from voice media and video. Humans don’t even need to categorize which type of media it is — AI is sophisticated enough to do it.
  2. Increased Proactivity
    Up until now, marketers have worked by gathering data and adjusting their campaigns accordingly. AI will now allow marketers to become proactive instead of reactive, offering enhanced analytics that will help with segmentation, tracking, and keyword tagging.
  3. Cautious Marketing Executives
    At the same time that AI is bringing these advancements to the world of marketing, not all marketers are comfortable with it. According to Conductor, the rapid pace of AI is the largest point of uncertainty among marketing executives.
  4. Content Assistance
    AI is expected to help in content creation, but that doesn’t mean content marketers will be out of jobs just yet. AI doesn’t yet have the capability to create content or choose the right image to go with it. What AI is being used to do more is cut down on production time and help marketers learn which type of content is more effective, according to consumer behavior.
  5. Pairing Up with AR/VR
    AR and VR (augmented reality and virtual reality) technologies are already being used to enhance the online shopping experience, allowing consumers to “see” and “feel” products as they do in a store. The combination of AI and AR/VR can serve to refresh consumers’ previous experience with the product and build a greater sense of consumer loyalty.

Businesses That Use AI in Digital Marketing Will Thrive

Not every business will be able to incorporate every new AI trend. The most important thing is to incorporate at least one, or as many as you can. In this day and age, it’s very hard for a business to survive without digital marketing. Those that don’t use AI to enhance their marketing operations will soon find themselves lagging behind competitors, while those that do will find that they have an edge over their competitors.

But even those that do employ AI in digital marketing can’t afford to sit back and rest on on their laurels. AI is constantly advancing, which is why marketing executives must stay up to date about the latest offerings if they want to stay ahead of the curve.