Is the Rise of AI in Marketing Worth Worrying About?
AI is a recent development, if you cast Terminator aside, but new technological advances are bringing it closer to becoming a reality than ever before. Now, we can integrate AI into our workplaces, especially in digital advertising and marketing. You might have seen the recent news that Google’s AI team might have created a sentient machine, and soon we might be able to use something similar to help us increase sales.
In this article, we'll explore how we expect AI to have a bigger role in digital marketing moving forward, ranging from digital advertising to content creation and customer service.
What Is AI, and What Are Its Applications?
We've all seen the rise of chatbots in recent years. They're everywhere, from customer service on websites to automated responses on social media. And they're only going to become more ubiquitous as time goes on.
According to MIT, 90% of businesses report that issues are better resolved using chatbots. And while that number may seem high, it's not hard to believe when you consider how much AI has already infiltrated our lives and become integral to how we work.
Think about all the times you've used Siri or Alexa to do something for you and all the times you've used Google Maps to get directions instead of pulling out a map and figuring it out yourself. Remember all the times you've used Amazon's recommendation engine to find new products? All of these are examples of AI at work in our everyday lives.
And it's not just consumer-facing applications where AI makes its presence felt. Businesses are using AI for various tasks, from managing supply chains to analysing data and even creating marketing campaigns.
In fact, AI is already being used by some of the biggest names in marketing, including Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Procter & Gamble. And it's only going to become more commonplace as time goes on. We've already seen ChatGPT explode on social media as professionals use the power of AI to automate administrative and copywriting tasks.
What Does This Mean for the Future of Marketing?
Here are a few ways we expect AI to have a bigger role in digital marketing moving forward. This list isn’t exhaustive, not even close, but it should give you some food for thought that’ll help prepare you for a time when AI is integrated into almost every aspect of marketing.
1. Digital Advertising Will Become More Targeted
If you're not using AI to target your social media ads, you're missing out. With the help of AI, businesses can now target their ads with laser precision, ensuring that they're reaching the right people at the right time with the right message. Digital advertising will never be the same.
Gone are the days of spray-and-pray digital advertising, when you throw up a bunch of Facebook ads and hope someone clicks on them. With AI, you can target your social media ads so that they're only being shown to people who are likely interested in what you're selling.
2. Chatbots Will Become More Sophisticated
If you're not using chatbots on your website or social media channels, you're missing out. Chatbots are a great way to provide customer service, and they will only become more common as time passes.
With the help of AI, chatbots are becoming more and more sophisticated. They can now understand natural language and provide intelligent responses that sound like they're coming from a human.
What's more, chatbots can be used to automate tasks like customer support or lead generation. If you're not using ChatGPT already, now is the time to get on board.
3. Content Will Become More Personal
If you want your content to stand out in today's noisy online world, it needs to be highly relevant and personalised for your target audience. And there's no better way to personalize digital marketing content than with the help of AI.
By using data collected about your target audience, AI can help you create digital marketing content that is precisely tailored for them. That means they're more likely to engage and share it with friends and followers, expanding your brand's online reach.
4. SEO Will Become More Targeted
If you're not using AI to optimise websites for search engines, you're missing out. AI can help you target the right keywords and phrases so your website appears higher on search engine results pages (SERPs).
AI can help you create content that is optimised for voice search. With the rise of digital assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant, more and more people are using voice search to find information online. If you want your digital marketing, website posts, and social media content to be found, it must be optimised for voice search.
5. Lead Generation Will Become More Efficient
If you're still generating leads the old-fashioned way, it's time to start using AI. With the help of AI, businesses can now generate leads automatically by scraping data from the internet or collecting information from social media platforms.
What's more, AI can also help you qualify leads so that you're only spending your time on the ones that are most likely to convert. That means you'll be able to close more deals in less time, making your lead-generation efforts more efficient and effective.
What Can Businesses Do to Survive?
We think AI can become a fantastic tool for any digital marketing agency or professional, making content creation faster and more in line with what customers are looking for, without the need to spend hours doing manual research. These tools can pull in current data almost instantly, sourcing information from various places and presenting it legibly.
AI won’t replace human marketers, not for a while at least (we hope), but how we work will never be the same again and could have as much of a transformative impact as the computer, taking marketing into a new, machine-led age.
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