Often when we think of AI, we picture scenes from The Matrix with mind-blowing robotics. Yet, AI today has a wide range of applications that can revolutionize business – even if Hollywood won’t be making movies about them anytime soon.
In particular, I’m convinced that AI is set to change how marketing is done in 2023. At TECLA, we’ve seen firsthand how AI for marketing can significantly elevate campaign outcomes and reduce departmental costs.
Even so, I know how hard it can be to embrace AI for marketing. Studies show that 34% of marketing professionals feel unprepared to handle the trend of AI. I’m not surprised: digital marketing has evolved so much in recent years it can be tough to stay on top of new trends!
As a techie myself, I thought it could be useful to highlight some of the top AI trends and best practices for marketing. Here you’ll find AI tips to give your business a competitive advantage and truly skyrocket your marketing efforts!
The Current State of AI for Marketing
AI for marketing is predicted to reach a whopping $107.5 billion market value by 2028 – and for good reason. According to experts, organizations that embrace AI technology will be 10 times more effective and hold twice as much of the market.
Unfortunately, few organizations have started utilizing AI for marketing purposes. The most significant adoption rates are in the financial services sector, with 37% usage. Most frequently, these companies utilize conversational AI for customer service.
By 2023, Artificial Intelligence is expected to be a significant player in the marketing world. Your company should adopt AI as soon as possible to avoid getting left behind. Take, for example, that 70% of high-performing marketers already have a fully defined AI strategy in place.
What AI Can Do For Your Marketing Efforts
Ultimately, leveraging AI’s potential can be a game-changer for your marketing strategy. Whether you’re looking to streamline tasks, improve user experience or utilize real-time data, you can do more with less by embracing AI. This is especially true if you work in a face-paced environment or have a small marketing team.
Some of the most high-impact AI for marketing applications include:
- Personalizing customer journeys
- Tailoring promotions (i.e., next best offers)
- Identifying and segmenting target audiences
- Creating dynamic landing pages and websites
- Monitoring and personalizing social media
- Optimizing and automating email campaigns (i.e., subject lines)
- Automating customer service (i.e., chatbots, messenger apps, etc.)
- Automating paid advertising campaigns
- Writing copy (i.e., AI-generated content)
- Data analysis (i.e., predicting customer behavior)
Automating Tasks
To start, AI can help to automate repetitive tasks and save time for marketers. Today, the world of digital marketing keeps expanding, and teams often struggle to monitor the ever-growing social media channels, customer service queries, and more. AI can help automate these efforts and free up marketers’ resources.
Improving User Experience
AI is also great for personalizing the customer experience and creating campaigns with high conversion rates. In fact, 82% of marketers say customer experience is the #1 priority in AI adoption. AI systems allow teams to segment audiences and personalize journeys for more effective outcomes.
Leveraging Data
What’s more, AI allows businesses to leverage customer data more effectively. With AI tools, marketers can collect more data, predict customer behavior, analyze buyer profiles, and more. In turn, companies can build data-driven marketing strategies that get more results.
Creating and Testing Content
AI tools can also be utilized to streamline your content creation process, including personalizing content, optimizing subject lines, and writing copy. With AI-powered resources, your team can identify opportunities for more effective copy and test the best approaches.
Boosting Revenue and Cutting Costs
Finally, all these AI for marketing applications automate and streamline your processes, giving your team significant cost savings. In addition, the potential to personalize content and segment audiences unlocks new opportunities for revenue.
Top AI Trends for Marketing to Watch in 2023
How exactly can you implement AI in your marketing efforts? While your AI strategy will be specific to your organization’s goals, here are some top AI trends for marketing that you should keep in mind.
Chatbots
Chatbots have now been adopted by about 23% of companies. Chatbots can do wonders for your marketing efforts, including providing 24/7 customer service, automating upselling offers, discovering high-quality leads, and significantly cutting your costs.
Virtual Assistants (VAs)
In addition, AI-powered virtual assistants have many uses across channels, including phone, chat, and text.
Companies are leveraging VAs to handle more advanced customer service areas, such as scheduling appointments, offering product recommendations, managing promotions, personalizing buyer journeys, and onboarding new customers.
For example, an online retail store could use a VA to recommend products to customers as they shop and offer promotions if they add items to their shopping cart, driving them to purchase.
AI-Generated Video & Image
Visuals such as videos and images are vital to marketing efforts today. After all, 91% of customers prefer visual content over written content. AI can help personalize video content without the huge overhead of working with third-party professionals.
AI-driven tools such as Synthesia and Shutterstock AI Image Generator make it easy for marketing teams to create affordable, scalable video content and images. This allows marketers to boost metrics such as average time on page and conversion rates.
Chat GPT
21% of marketers now feel comfortable using AI to write copy. Whether for social media, blogs, emails or more, teams using AI-powered machine learning tools can expedite the writing process, boost the quality of their copy and guarantee clear calls to action.
Resources such as Chat GPT, Jasper, and Wordtune have mastered AI dialogue, allowing your marketers to auto-fill sentences, get alternative phrasing, and create copy that sparkles. This streamlines the copy-creation process and saves your team resources.
AI for Predictive Analysis
Finally, AI systems can help you take the pulse on customer trends and plan your marketing efforts according to predictions. According to studies, 95% of companies now utilize AI-powered predictive analytics in their marketing strategy.
For example, AI-based prediction models for marketing can be utilized to:
- Optimize campaigns and advertising (according to the type of content, time of publication, audience segment, etc.)
- Understand brand engagement across multi-channels
- Forecast inventory and sales
- Track customer likelihood to engage or convert
- Identify sales opportunities
Best Practices for Implementing AI in Marketing
Like any tool, AI is only as effective as the strategy behind it. Now that you have a good sense of how AI can transform your marketing efforts, you’ll want to implement an action plan tailored to your team’s KPIs.
For a truly constructive strategy, you should be sure to:
- Identify specific marketing problems that AI can help solve for your company.
- Evaluate your data to ensure it’s relevant for feeding your AI and machine learning algorithms.
- Choose the right AI tools and platforms that fit your needs and have a clear plan for implementation.
- Hire top AI developers to guarantee professional, long-term solutions.
At the end of the day, AI systems must be designed, trained, and implemented by humans. For a savvy AI strategy, you’ll need a human eye for what resonates with your customers. And no one knows your end-users as well as your marketing team!
Final Thoughts on AI for Marketing
Ultimately, the future of marketing is all about Artificial Intelligence. With the right approach, AI can help your company automate repetitive tasks, personalize marketing efforts, make data-driven decisions, and more.
My hope is that the trends and best practices we’ve discussed above can help your business embrace AI and get even more successful marketing outcomes in 2023 and beyond.
At TECLA, we believe that AI is here to stay, so it’s vital to hire the highest quality AI talent for your marketing team. Learn more about the huge benefits of hiring nearshore AI developers here!