The importance that AI already has in marketing was recently demonstrated by GAIO (Generative AI Optimization). GAIO addresses the challenge of how companies can ensure that their brand and products can appear prominently in Large Language Models (LLM) such as ChatGPT, Bing Chat and Google Bard. While GAIO is (still) theory, there are already many other practical ways to use AI in marketing.
Companies can use AI Marketing to better understand customer needs and align their offerings with them. It is therefore no wonder that McKinsey in a study already found out in 2018 that marketing is the area where artificial intelligence will bring the greatest benefit. A research by the American Marketing Association from August 2019 showed that the use of AI in marketing has grown by 27 percent in the last 1.5 years. That figure is likely to be significantly higher today.
In our detailed AI Marketing Guide, we explain the areas in which you can use AI for marketing and the challenges you face. We also show concrete AI marketing examples and AI marketing tools that enable you to address your customers more efficiently at every point of the customer journey.
This article was written in German, automatically translated into other languages and editorially reviewed. We welcome feedback at the end of the article.
AI Marketing Definition
AI marketing is the use of artificial intelligence for marketing strategies and measures. This primarily involves the use of advanced algorithms and machine learning. With these, companies can analyze extensive data sets in a short time and thus gain valuable insights into the behavior and needs of their target group.
In practice, this allows companies to (have) automated tasks such as email marketing, social media posts, and ads, for example.
The AI marketing benefits are manifold: companies can address their target group more precisely, respond to them more personally, make more informed decisions for marketing campaigns and implement measures more efficiently.
The bottom line is that they can generate competitive advantages and grow faster. In addition, consumers also benefit from AI marketing solutions: on their customer journey, they see (almost) exclusively content that is really relevant to them. This improves their shopping experience.
9 important AI Marketing Use Cases
An study by Deloitte from 2020 shows: 3 of the 5 most important AI goals are marketing-oriented. Companies want to use AI marketing solutions to improve existing products, create new products and improve customer relationships. What measures can you take in online marketing to achieve this? Here are 9 concrete AI marketing ideas:
1. AI Marketing Content Generation
Artificial intelligence offers content creation support. This can be, for example, for blog posts, product descriptions or social media posts. Here, AI-based systems automatically generate relevant and appealing texts based on existing content and data.
2. AI Marketing Content Personalization
Marketing AI enables the personalized adaptation of content to the individual preferences and needs of the target group. By analyzing customer data and behavior patterns, AI can deliver personalized recommendations and tailored content. This makes content more relevant and increases customer satisfaction.
3. Social Listening
Artificial intelligence uses what is known as aspect clustering to identify and extract relevant information in real time from social listening data. In this way, companies can filter the noise in social media and thus understand how customers think about their own brand. This makes it possible to predict future moves by customers and take appropriate action.
4. Customer Service
AI-driven chatbots offer businesses the opportunity to improve customer service. Bots can answer questions, solve problems, and provide relevant information around the clock. Conversational AI uses natural language processing. This means that AI-driven chatbots can conduct human-like conversations and interact with customers in a personalized way.
5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
AI marketing tools can identify relevant keywords, analyze content, and provide recommendations for content optimization. This way, you can improve search engine rankings.
6. Media Buying
Marketing AI can help companies optimize their media buys. By using AI-powered algorithms and machine learning, they can automatically target ads to relevant platforms and audiences. In this way, they can use ad spend more efficiently and improve campaign performance.
7. AI Marketing for Reputation Management
Social media makes brands more vulnerable to criticism than ever before. With AI-powered brand reputation management, companies can avert a potential threat to their brand before it becomes an issue. To do this, you can monitor negative sentiment in real time, select the right influencers, and proactively provide customer support.
8. E-Mail Marketing Campaigns
AI marketing can automate and optimize email marketing. AI algorithms analyze customer data to generate relevant content, product suggestions, and personalized offers. This leads to higher conversion rates and sales.
9. Sales
AI marketing tools enable companies to make predictions about future sales. AI algorithms do this by analyzing past sales data and seasonal trends to create accurate sales forecasts. This helps companies plan inventory, resources, and sales strategies.
AI Marketing Examples
We take a look at specific AI marketing examples. These show how major media companies are using AI in their marketing:
Amazon
Amazon uses AI to generate sales forecasts and personalized product recommendations. Based on customers' buying behavior and preferences, AI analyzes Amazon's data to create tailored recommendations for each user. The insights also show Amazon how likely the customer is to buy one of the suggested products.
Netflix
Among other things, Netflix uses artificial intelligence to offer personalized movie recommendations. To do this, the platform analyzes users' viewing behavior and preferences and creates individual profiles. Based on these, Netflix suggests movies and series that might match the users' interests.
In the process, the streaming service also adjusts the artwork of the suggested movies.
For example, if a user has seen several films by an actor, Netflix not only suggests other films by the same actor. To ensure that the user also recognizes directly that the actor can be seen in the films, Netflix shows him or her on the artwork - even if the original film cover shows something else.
Starbucks
Starbucks uses AI for personalized marketing campaigns. To do this, the company analyzes customers' purchases and preferences to generate customized offers and discounts. Starbucks then sends personalized notifications to customers to alert them to new products or special promotions.
Coca-Cola
The company uses artificial intelligence to analyze social media, customer reviews and market trends to gain information about consumer sentiment and preferences. In this way, Coca-Cola identifies trends and can respond quickly to changes in the market. This enables the company to develop effective marketing strategies and continuously improve the customer experience.
Sephora
Sephora uses AI Marketing Technology for personalized skincare and makeup recommendations. Using a mobile app, Sephora can analyze customer photos and make personalized product suggestions based on individual characteristics such as skin tone and skin type. Customers thus receive tailored recommendations that meet their specific needs and preferences.
Spotify
Spotify uses AI to understand music interests, podcast preferences, location, purchase history, and interaction with the brand. Based on this, the service creates customized playlists and recommendations for users.
Konfuzio
Konfuzio is an AI platform that transforms unstructured data into insights and accelerates information and processes across hybrid multi-cloud infrastructures. The company therefore uses Generative AI when writing or modifying documentation to increase readability and check documentation for coherence or possible duplicates.
AI Marketing Benefits
Efficiently analyze comprehensive data, make personalized recommendations, and automate marketing processes: AI marketing software enables companies to implement better actions faster. How do they benefit? Here are 3 key AI marketing benefits:
Higher ROI
AI Marketing Services make it possible to create personalized campaigns that companies can adjust and optimize in real time. In this way, the marketing team saves time and money. This increases ROI.
Better customer relations
The better recommendations are tailored to customers, the more likely they are to identify with a brand. And the more likely it is that existing customers will buy again. AI marketing solutions can also identify customers who are ready to churn and use an automated campaign to persuade them to engage with the brand again.
Better strategic marketing decisions
AI enables comprehensive data analysis and the identification of patterns and trends. Companies can thus make more informed decisions for marketing campaigns.
AI Marketing Challenges
AI marketing tools present companies with these challenges and problems:
Data quality and availability
To use AI marketing services effectively, companies need high-quality and sufficient data. The data must be up-to-date, relevant, and free of bias or inaccuracies.
Technical infrastructure
Implementing AI marketing tools requires a solid technical infrastructure, including powerful servers, databases and cloud resources. Companies need to ensure they have the resources and capacity to process and analyze data in real time.
Content quality
If companies use artificial intelligence for AI marketing content, the quality of the content can suffer. AI can create website texts, emails and blog posts. However, without detailed control and revision of the content, the quality does not reach a high level. Companies must therefore always ensure that the generated AI marketing content is relevant, precise and appealing.
data protection.
The use of AI marketing software requires the handling of sensitive customer data. Companies should therefore ensure that they comply with relevant data protection regulations in the process. This includes policies and regulations to protect the privacy of customers. For this, companies need to implement adequate security measures. In this way, they can prevent data leaks or unauthorized access.
Evaluation of non-quantifiable KPIs
While AI marketing is based on data analysis and quantifiable key performance indicators (KPIs), there are also aspects that are difficult to measure. This can be, for example, the emotional reaction of customers to certain content or the perception of the brand. Companies therefore face the challenge of evaluating and interpreting these non-quantifiable KPIs.
Change management and competencies
The successful use of AI marketing solutions requires not only technological adaptations, but also changes in corporate culture and employee competencies. Companies must ensure that their employees recognize the potential of AI and acquire the necessary know-how. Only then can they use AI technology effectively.
10 Important AI Marketing Tools
AI marketing tools are now a dime a dozen. To help you find your way through the AI jungle, here are 10 AI-based tools that can help almost any business:
Chatfuel
Chatfuel is a tool for creating chatbots for Messenger platforms like Facebook Messenger. Businesses can use Chatfuel to create custom chatbots that automatically respond to customer inquiries, provide information, take orders, or provide support.
Jasper
The AI tool Jasper enables companies to create, for example, advertising copy, emails, landing pages, articles, product descriptions and posts for social media. The application uses ChatGPT as a basis.
Growthbar
This is SEO AI tool that allows companies to improve their search engine rankings. It offers support for keyword research and SEO competition analysis, among other things.
Phrasee
AI marketing software for email campaigns generates creative and engaging email subject lines and content that achieve higher open and click-through rates based on AI analytics.
Flick
The AI-powered tool is used for Instagram management and makes it easier for businesses to schedule and publish posts, manage hashtags, and analyze Instagram data.
Optimove
Optimove is an AI-based customer relationship management platform. It analyzes customer behavior and preferences to create personalized marketing campaigns. Optimove helps companies strengthen their customer loyalty, increase conversion rates and thus boost sales.
DeepL
DeepL is a powerful translation tool that is based on artificial intelligence It uses neural networks to generate high-quality translations in different languages. Companies can use DeepL to automatically translate content such as product descriptions, promotional materials or social media posts to reach the international market.
Brandwatch Consumer Intelligence
Brandwatch Consumer Intelligence is an AI-powered social listening and consumer data analysis tool that enables companies to track and analyze opinions and trends on social media and other online sources. This allows companies to better understand the needs and preferences of their target audience and make informed marketing decisions.
Seventh Sense
Seventh Sense is an AI marketing software for email scheduling that analyzes email recipient behavior and uses AI to determine the best time to send out e-mails In this way, Seventh Sense helps to improve email open rates and achieve higher user interaction.
Marketmuse
Marketmuse is a tool for AI marketing content that provides support for content optimization, keyword research, and generating ideas for creating high-quality content. It thus helps companies improve their content strategies and increase visibility in search engines.
Konfuzio
The tool enables access to knowledge from documents and e-mails. The use of archives and comparable storage locations of existing documents (see also web scraping) supports the answering of customer inquiries or the creation of new content for web pages, documentation or e-mails.
FAQ
AI Marketing describes the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in marketing strategies and processes. It involves the use of algorithms and technologies to enable data analysis, personalization, automation and prediction. This helps companies to increase the effectiveness of their marketing activities, deliver relevant content and improve customer retention.
Use cases of AI Marketing Solutions include SEO optimization, social listening and content generation. AI helps companies optimize their website for search engines and improve visibility. Through social listening, AI can analyze customer sentiment on social media. In addition, AI enables the automatic generation of relevant and engaging content. These solutions increase efficiency and improve marketing results.
Companies can find a variety of AI marketing tools on the market to automate and improve processes. For example, they can use Jasper for personalized recommendations, Chatfuel for creating chatbots, Seventh Sense for optimized email schedules, and DeepL for high-quality translations.
