Artificial intelligence (AI) is a big buzzword. It has become a household term and is one of the most exciting technology trends we can expect in the near future. However, many marketing professionals are still unsure of how to use AI to improve their marketing campaigns. The good news is that there are ways to use AI for marketing, even though it's not yet possible to create an algorithm that does everything for you.

Here are six ways to use AI for marketing purposes.

AI-powered predictive analytics

Predictive analytics is shaping up to be one of the most significant fields in AI for marketing. Businesses can use predictive analytics to make better decisions on when and where to run campaigns, which adverts will resonate with your audience and what advertising mediums are most effective for you. It can also help measure how well your campaigns are performing and which adverts or channels work best.

Furthermore, businesses can use predictive analytics to predict future customer behaviour, useful for marketing campaign planning. For example, you could use predictive analytics to predict when people are likely to buy a product or service. Using this information, you can run campaigns to the cohort of contacts in your database that best fit the "most likely to purchase" criteria.

Nevertheless, predictive analytics is still in its infancy. It's only been around for a few years, and technology is improving all the time. As a result, predictive analytics is only just beginning to be used for marketing purposes. It's still relatively expensive and not as accurate as it could be. But this is likely to change in the future as more organisations start using AI for marketing.

AI-powered Chatbots

While chatbots are still early in their lifecycle for marketing purposes, they are likely to become more popular. The technology is developing all the time and is becoming more accurate. It's also relatively cheap and easy to use, as more AI chatbot software hits the market. As a result, chatbots are increasingly used to enhance the customer experience and provide customer service interactions that replicate human interaction. Chatbots can be programmed to respond to queries, asking for information on products or services and answering them with appropriate answers. A chatbot will then send that answer back as text or an audio file.

What's more, chatbots can be programmed to respond to more than just questions. Chatbots can also be used to provide customer service, answer technical queries and even make payments. For companies looking to scale their customer service operations without hiring an army of staff, Chatbots can be an excellent way of improving the customer experience without adding to the employee headcount. Having a chatbot that responds to your customers' queries can improve customer service outcomes and make your customers feel well looked after.

AI Copywriting for marketing

Content marketing is booming right now, as is the marketing AI tech space, so it’s no surprise that there are lots of uses for AI software in content marketing. Marketers can use AI to create and write marketing copy. Since OpenAI launched the GPT-3 natural language model, which uses deep learning to produce human-like text, software developers have been creating tools to help marketers write better copy for websites, landing pages, and ads. GPT-3 was the most extensive language model ever published at 17 billion parameters.

Most AI copywriting tools use OpenAI's GPT-3 model, but other AI language models tools are coming to market soon. Getting started with AI copywriting tools is straightforward, with many low-cost options available for SMEs who would like to try AI copywriting services. These tools tend to be standalone products now; I would recommend trying Rytr if you're on a low-budget or, if you have the additional funds available, try Jarvis. As the space heats up, we can expect AI copywriting assistants to feature in standard marketing tools such as email marketing software, advertising management platforms, website CMS, and many more applications.

As with many of the marketing applications for AI that deliver creative outputs, the benefit of copywriting tools for AI is the ability to create a large number of outputs in very little time. This is useful when you run large sets of ads and run multivariant tests at scale to identify the best set of headlines and descriptions to convert customers.

AI-powered personalisation in marketing

Personalisation is a core component of marketing. Marketers can use personalised ads to target customers based on their previous behaviour and then present them with the right ad at the right time. However, personalisation can be expensive if you have to manually create individual profiles for each set of customers you want to target. Using AI personalisation tools can save a lot of time and money by analysing vast amounts of data to find patterns that can automatically create high-converting campaigns.

Predictive personalisation is one of the most common applications of AI in marketing. Predictive personalisation tools use AI to predict customers' needs and then serve them offers before they realise they need them. Watch Michael O'Leary, Ryanair's CEO, talk about the low-cost airline's use of data for predictive personalisation at the Future Travel Experience conference below.

AI-powered digital advertising optimisation

AI-powered digital advertising optimisation is the process of using AI to improve the effectiveness of online advertising campaigns. Businesses can use AI algorithms to identify which ads are most effective so that you can spend less time and money on ineffective ones. Digital marketing platforms such as Smartly.io use AI to automatically optimise digital advertising campaigns based on customer behaviour and historical campaign performance data.

Unlike traditional print advertising, digital advertising campaigns can be updated quickly and easily, allowing for rapid testing of creative designs and targeting options. Businesses can run the testing process using AI to run digital advertising campaigns at a lower cost and without a large marketing team.

AI-powered Conversion Rate-Optimisation

Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) identifies and implements new customer acquisition tactics to increase sales. The goal of CRO is to increase the number of sales or conversions made by website visitors or app users, all of which can be measured and tested using tools such as Optimizely.

The benefit of AI-powered conversion rate optimisation is running vast numbers of experiments with ease. You start by defining the scope of the tests; for example, you may want to test different landing page headlines. Having set the conditions for your experiments, you then leave the AI to try various iterations. If you have a large enough traffic volume to your website, your AI can identify winning combinations incredibly quickly. One CRO case study from Cox Automotive found they could run a test and identify a winning variant within just 12 hours.

In conclusion

Artificial intelligence has many marketing applications and is becoming a key element of strategic business planning, with new tools and services entering the market every quarter. Some of these tools, such as Optimizely, allow organisations with large website or app usage to improve the user experience. Other tools, such as Rytr, provide a low-cost, easy-to-use way of getting started with AI.

To learn more about using AI in your marketing campaigns, schedule a consultation today.