Content generation

With the right inputs, AI tools can automatically generate your marketing content. For example, given suitable prompts on audience, tone and style, online AI tools like copysmith.ai and jasper.ai can create captions for social media posts, eye-catching email headers, and slogans for adverts. Specialized tools like MarketMuse can also make suggestions for meta-descriptions and SEO-optimized keywords. More cutting-edge tools like OpenAI’s Dall-E or Firefly by Adobe can automatically generate images and videos for ads and socials, as well as long-form content for blog posts.

An area where AI shines is generating personalized copy. Try using AI to iterate on taglines or emails to create a version for each of your customer segment. You can customize your content with a novel tone for each platform and/or customer to maximize your conversion rate.

Data analytics

Modern marketing campaigns create huge amounts of data which contain tons of valuable information. Gleaning insights from the data can be an overwhelming process. This is where machine learning techniques can help you better understand your customers and optimize your future performance.

Prediction algorithms can take historical data across the customer journey and predict figures like LTV or churn likelihood. Decision algorithms can take customer data and identify factors which lead to the best conversion rates, or look at purchase histories to recommend targeted ads or upsell opportunities. Tools like pecan.ai offer AI-powered marketing analytics. Fast FRWD uses proprietary AI algorithms to analyze your data and provide recommendations on where you’re excelling and where you can improve.

Campaign optimization

Machine learning algorithms can determine how channel performance varies for users with different backgrounds, in different locations, and in different circumstances – with some tools, like IBM’s Weather Targeting, even factoring in the influence of local weather! Spend can then be allocated to ads with the best potential for returns, minimizing wasted money. Some AI tools also allow you to adjust your ad bids every couple of minutes – at a much bigger scale than we could ever dream to do ourselves.

AI can also guide the longer-term view. By scouring social media platforms and public forums, AI tools like BrandWatch can pick up trends before anyone else to direct campaign development – a vital tactic for success on fast-moving platforms like TikTok. When considering promotions-based campaigns, ML techniques can dig into customer segment data, determining you should ‘nudge’ with a promotion to optimize promotional spending.

Legal issues

As AI grows more powerful, so do the questions around the governance of AI. The landscape is being shaped as we speak, but as a business you need to be “ethics first” in your approach to using these technologies. Several major AI companies are already facing legal action from creators claiming the unauthorized usage of their intellectual property in training datasets. These cases are yet to be resolved, but it’s important to confirm that any AI tools you use are clear on ownership of their training data.

Data privacy is also a concern when using AI tools. Large commercial providers generally claim ownership of any data inputted and can use this for their own purposes. You should ensure no private customer data is uploaded to open-source AI tools as this goes against consumer privacy laws, and discuss data ownership before signing up to any custom tools.

Quality control

Sometimes the content AI generates lacks context or is outright factually inaccurate. Outputs can be confusing and may not take in to account local variations in language. There have also been instances of AI creating offensive content or unintentional plagiarizing competitor sentences or ideas.

To avoid causing offence or damaging your brand reputation by publishing poor-quality material, retain human interaction with content before it’s published. Your marketing team should review content for credibility and cohesion with brand messaging, as well as ensuring nothing offensive has been created. You should also add your own ‘angle’ to every piece of content you publish, otherwise you will soon be publishing undifferentiated content.

Data availability

Using machine learning to gain insights from data is a great way to quickly identify what works best for your brand. Unfortunately, as per the computer science adage, ‘garbage in, garbage out’. If the data you are feeding your algorithms is messy or inaccurate, outputs from these algorithms may be confusing or meaningless.

To ensure useful insights from the data, review how you currently collect and store customer information, and discuss with your data science team how you can adjust your data collection to best feed into future AI tools.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques have been making waves in many industries in recent years, and their functionality will only continue to progress. By embracing these novel technologies, you can build a competitive advantage and step up your campaign performance.