Unleashing the Future: How AI is Revolutionizing Digital Marketing 

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• What is AI Digital Marketing?
• Benefits of AI in Digital Marketing
• Popular AI Digital Marketing Tools 

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Q: What is AI digital marketing? 

A. AI digital marketing involves using artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to optimize and automate marketing tasks, enhancing personalization, efficiency, and overall campaign performance.

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Implementing traditional marketing strategies at scale is a very tedious job. Something about it feels tantamount to Sisyphus wrestling and rolling a giant boulder uphill, only to fall back every time he gets to the top. 

Traditional marketing was rife with lots of uninformed lead chasing, disjointed customer experiences, imprecise tracking and analysis, limited data collection, and miscalculated customer patterns and market trend forecasts. 

It was a potpourri of guesswork, trials, and errors. 

The advent of digital marketing in the 90s drastically changed how marketing works. The internet bore and facilitated the emergence of numerous platforms that streamlined and mainstreamed digital marketing. 

Small and large businesses were able to build a large customer base. They could research and analyze customer and industry data at scale to draw insights for data-driven marketing strategies, resulting in enhanced customer engagement and higher ROI. 

Barely 30 years later, we are witnessing another round of evolution: AI digital marketing. Truly, the digital marketing improvements that came with it are absolutely outstanding! 

It’s no surprise that marketers are rapidly adopting AI digital marketing tools across the globe. It’s even less surprising that the global AI in marketing market is expected to reach $214 billion by 2033, according to Market US report. 

So, what is AI digital marketing? How can your business benefit from it, and what AI digital marketing tools should you consider? 

Without further ado, let’s dive in! 

What is AI Digital Marketing? 

AI digital marketing is the use of AI technologies and algorithms, such as natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning, to optimize and automate marketing tasks, enhancing personalization, efficiency, and overall campaign performance. 

These algorithms form the basis for most AI digital marketing tools. These tools can effortlessly execute several digital marketing processes, from collecting and analyzing large datasets for actionable insights to automating customer-facing tasks to propel seamless engagement. 

There seems to be no limit to what business owners and marketers can do with AI in digital marketing. The technology is revolutionizing the marketing landscape while spurring new developments. 

This is so much so that two-thirds of business leaders believe that AI will surpass the industrial revolution in terms of impact on productivity, according to HubSpot’s AI trends for Marketers report. 

So, how does AI digital marketing work? What is the engine driving this revolutionary force? 

How AI Digital Marketing Works 

At the core of AI digital marketing tools are AI technologies, primarily natural language processing and machine learning, which enable these tools to independently learn, analyze data, execute tasks, and make decisions with minimal to zero human intervention. 

Machine Learning in Marketing 

Machine learning is a subset of AI that empowers AI digital marketing tools to learn and adapt to situations and events independently, without explicit instructions or programming. 

This algorithm enables AI digital marketing tools to analyze large datasets and extract valuable insights to streamline various marketing processes. 

Essentially, machine learning in marketing is the powerhouse of AI digital marketing tools and the foundation of automated marketing campaigns. 

From customer/market data analysis and audience segmentation to forecasting and customer service, machine learning can improve every aspect of digital marketing strategies for higher productivity and efficiency. 

Here are some applications of machine learning in marketing that paint a picture of how AI works in digital marketing: 

• Customer segmentation: AI analyzes vast amounts of customer data to identify patterns, behaviors, and segments you’d ordinarily miss. This enables AI tools to split broad customer segments into smaller, more nuanced, more specific segments. It creates hyper-segments that enable you to create highly personalized and relevant content for your target audience.
• Forecasting: Machine learning models analyze changes in market trends, consumer behaviors, and various data points to identify patterns in data and predict future events. This enables you to forecast demand, customer lifetime value, churn rates, consumer trends, purchase patterns, sales, and other metrics.
• Customer service: Machine learning, hand in hand with natural language processing, enables you to create chatbots and virtual assistants trained on customer, industry, and business data, to handle a range of customer support services. 

Generally, the autonomous and semi-autonomous nature of machine learning models means there is a degree of automation in all digital marketing processes handled by AI digital marketing tools. 

Natural Language Processing (NLP) in Marketing 

Content creation is one of the most time-consuming tasks marketers face and, understandably, one of the most common applications of AI in digital marketing. 

NLP is a subset of AI that employs machine learning to enable computers and digital tools to understand, generate, and manipulate human language. 

NLP-powered digital marketing tools can learn, understand, analyze, and create natural language texts and speech in a conversational tone, considerably relieving the burden of content creation and analysis. 

• On the one hand, NLP algorithms help marketers create conversational, textual content that mimics their brand’s voice and tone, drafting personalized emails, social media posts, blog posts, and other messaging materials that drive consumer engagement.
• On the other hand, these algorithms also help marketers extract actionable insights from unstructured data, such as online reviews and other multi-channel customer inquiries and feedback, identifying consumer trends, sentiments, and patterns that can inform the optimization of marketing strategies. 

With the latter, AI digital marketing tools can understand how customers speak and structure responses to fit their preferences. 

NLP is widely used in marketing: think AI chatbots, virtual assistants, and writing assistants. However, NLP in marketing is still at its nascent stage. 

Besides generating and analyzing customer-facing content, some professional marketers are using NLP-powered tools for deeper-level work. For context, marketing scholars at Columbia University classify NLP in marketing into three categories: 

• Concept and topic extraction: Some of the applications under this subject include:
  • Social listening and identifying concepts relevant to specific analysis for improving digital marketing strategies, such as trend monitoring
  • Brand analysis from user-generated content to determine the practical relevance of marketing articles.

• Relationship extraction: Used to identify and extract relationships between words and entities by analyzing the co-occurrence of words. Applications include:
  • Creating market maps based on the co-occurrence of brands.
  • Analyzing complex word relationships to determine customer needs.

• Sentiment and writing style extraction: Here, marketing professionals use NLP-powered tools to analyze linguistic elements, such as lexicons, to determine the effect of writing styles on various behavioral outcomes.  
  • For instance, professional marketers can use AI to conduct sentiment analysis to determine which emotional content would be most welcomed and which would backfire.

Benefits of AI in Digital Marketing  

The widespread adoption of AI in digital marketing proves that marketers find AI extremely useful.  

In fact, as of 2022, 90% of marketing professionals in 35 countries were using AI to automate customer interactions, according to Statista. And 84.8% of marketing professionals say that they use AI tools daily to improve the performance of various processes, according to the 2024 Foundation AI Survey.  

The total annual impact of AI in the marketing industry is pegged at nearly $500 billion, according to McKinsey 2023 report on The Economic Potential of Generative AI.  

So, what about AI is making work easier for digital marketers while driving unprecedented growth in the marketing industry? 

As you can imagine, AI digital marketing has numerous benefits, and we’ll address them across four themes: personalization, automation, predictive analytics, and enhanced engagement. 

Predictive Analytics  

The predictive capability of AI provides valuable insights for the seamless implementation of AI across various digital marketing processes.  

AI-driven predictive analytics utilizes advanced data analytics and reporting to generate market forecasts, enabling marketers to make data-driven decisions and optimize strategies to accurately fit their campaign goals. 

Here, some of the common benefits of AI digital marketing include: 

• Predicting customer behavior: AI can analyze historical data, like customer engagement metrics, email opens, buying behavior, time-on-page, etc., to predict the outcome or future of your digital marketing strategies and assets. This forecast enables you to develop better, more agile campaigns.
• Predict SEO trends: AI can crawl through the web to research and identify relevant keywords and determine what your target audience will likely search for in the near future. Enabling you to align your strategies to meet current and future demands.
• Data-driven sales: When you have many products or services in your catalog, it may be difficult to decide where to focus most of your marketing efforts and resources. AI can analyze large datasets to provide pointers on which product or service would drive the most sales. This can also help you develop products and services that sell.
• Data-driven recommendations: Many businesses use AI predictive analytics to forecast the buying behaviors of each customer. Amazon uses this feature to determine how well various products would sell when shown to customers. 

You can also use the outcomes of AI-powered forecasts to craft hyper-personalized messages and optimize your marketing touchpoints for enhanced engagement.  

There are really no limits to what you can do with predictive analytics. The more data you analyze, the more valuable insights and opportunities you will uncover.  

Personalization  

AI digital marketing tools use both predictive and generative models to identify consumer patterns in order to automatically create different styles and combinations of texts, videos, and images personalized to aptly suit a target customer’s behavior, preferences, and engagement patterns.  

Recall that machine learning in marketing can help create hyper-segments that account for even the minutest details when profiling your customers.  

This equally means that AI can recognize each customer as a unique individual and generate hyper-personalized content to target them individually. 

For instance, some AI digital marketing tools can target a customer by accounting for some nuanced details, including: 

• Their purchase history
• How much time they spend on a certain product or service page
• How often they open their emails, and when they open them. 

These teensy details could be instrumental for content optimization, helping generate and distribute relevant content to each customer at the right frequency and time. And it doesn’t matter that you have nearly 100,000 customers; AI would treat each as an individual instead of sending generic messages to all as a unit.  

This level of personalization is something that customers appreciate.  

With AI, you can personalize product recommendations at scale, giving each of your customers an individualized experience that compels them to engage further with your brand.  

Starbucks is a great example of a company using AI to hyper-personalize customer experience.  

Starbucks uses their Deep Brew AI platform to suggest optimal product pairing based on contextual information drawn from the purchase location, weather, time of the day, purchased product, and even day of the week. This enables Starbucks to customize product recommendations and optimize customer journeys through Starbucks in-store and app interactions.  

Automation 

There are numerous cost and time-saving benefits attached to AI-automated digital marketing campaigns.  

Nucleus Research found that marketing automation results in a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead while increasing sales productivity by 14.5%.  

Using AI to automate repetitive tasks like email marketing, social media posting, customer service inquiries, SEO strategies, content creation, bidding strategies, A/B testing, lead scoring, and many other digital marketing tasks frees up more time for strategic decision-making and planning.  

Let’s have a quick look at the benefits of AI digital marketing automation across some of these aspects: 

• Lead scoring: AI tools can automatically analyze and score leads based on their behavioral and engagement patterns. This enables marketers to identify high value leads and prioritize them in their campaigns.
• Email marketing: AI tools can analyze customer data to automatically create a personalized email campaign for each recipient, accounting for optimum send times and messaging preferences. 

Essentially, AI uses available data to streamline processes with minimal human intervention. This allows you and your employees/team members more time to focus on other business-critical processes.  

You can save as much as 6 hours per week by automating social media posts, according to Encharge.  

Enhanced Engagement 

Most, if not everything, AI does in digital marketing boils down to enhanced engagement. From predictive analytics and personalization to automation, the end goal is to improve marketing efforts and drive conversion.  

And that’s only possible when your customers are actively engaged at every point of the marketing funnel. And that’s exactly what AI in digital marketing does.  

By using AI digital marketing tools, marketers are empowered to easily jump the many hurdles that make it difficult to catch consumers’ attention in the digital economy while unlocking new avenues to engage with their audiences.  

There are many ways that you can use AI digital marketing to enhance engagement: 

• User feedback and surveys: AI can systematically analyze feedback from customer interactions and surveys to quickly identify sentiments, preferences, and pain points, leading to more informed digital marketing strategies.
• Market-specific insights: You can use AI to analyze sector-specific data to extract customer expectations and the market trends guiding your industry’s progression. This equips you with strategies that ensure customer satisfaction now and in the future.
• 24/7 customer support: AI-automated chatbots and digital assistants can work round the clock, attending to your customer inquiries in real time and providing solutions to minor issues.
• Proactive campaigns: Here, think triggered events and A/B testing.
  • AI can continuously A/B test various elements, such as email subject lines, blog post keywords, CTAs, etc., to find the best fit and automatically adapt content in real time to reflect current trends.
  • With a load of dynamic content at its disposal, AI can send the most relevant content or campaign to a customer in real time when triggered by specific customer actions.  

The possibilities are endless when it comes to using AI to drive engagement. For instance, in 2018 Alibaba launched FashionAI, an AI-driven fashion store.  

FashionAI enables customers to have an efficient, stress-free experience when they walk into a FashionAI and log in with a QR code or face recognition. Anytime a shopper picks up an RFID-tagged item, the product comes up on a smart mirror with all the necessary details, including other items that match it and where the shopper can find them in the store. 

Popular AI Digital Marketing Tools 

Here are some popular AI digital marketing tools that small businesses are using to gain a competitive edge in their industries.  

HubSpot 

HubSpot regularly tops the list as one of the most comprehensive AI digital marketing tools, and for good reasons, too. 

For starters, it is an intelligent system that leverages AI for company research, industry research, website building, drafting prospecting emails, improving data analysis, enhancing customer service, and generating social media copy.  

Unlike most other AI digital marketing tools that are specific or limited in their operations, HubSpot has it all. 

HubSpot also embraces various intelligent models and inputs from other platforms to ensure improved overall digital marketing performance. 

With email marketing: 

• HubSpot uses Seventh Sense, an AI-driven email delivery optimization system, to determine, optimize, and customize email delivery times for each individual, boosting engagement.
• HubSpot leverages AI-powered predictive analytics to identify which email versions would perform best in terms of different conditions set by different metrics. 

Besides being an all-in-one AI digital marketing tool, HubSpot is also cherished by marketers for its integrability and interoperability with most business growth tools and processes. 

Mailchimp 

If email marketing is your focus, then Mailchimp is your pal. 

Mailchimp enables you to automate the whole customer journey through its Customer Journey Builder feature. 

This feature empowers your brand with an always-on presence, enabling you to scale and maintain more relevant customer interactions with messages that are specific to their behaviors and needs. This drives repeat business and increases customer retention.  

Mailchimp runs on the Intuit Assist AI model, a generative AI assistant serving over 100 million customers across Intuit’s customer base.  

Mailchimp boasts enough data to provide intelligent, personalized recommendations at scale while providing contextual insights and content that small businesses and marketers can leverage to elevate their digital marketing strategies. 

At its basics, Mailchimp AI digital marketing tool can: 

• Automate personalized campaigns at scale
• Generate on-brand emails and copy.
• Identify high-value customers, enriching your lead scoring and nurturing process.
• Test different versions of content with A/B testing.
• Generate on-brand designs using your brand fonts, logos, colors, and images.
• Enhance engagement through data-driven insights and recommendations. 

Additionally, you will soon be able to use Mailchimp to get AI-powered recommendations to target leads right when they are ready to convert. 

Salesforce Marketing Cloud 

Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) is an AI-driven marketing automation platform that enables small businesses and marketers to automate marketing across mobile apps, SMS, websites, social media, and email.  

It acts as a central hub for all your marketing channels, consolidating your marketing efforts for super-enhanced content optimization and overall marketing efficiency and productivity.  

SFMC has two main types of modules: 

• Builders: This allows you to manage data and automate the entire campaign. Builders in SFMC include contact builder, journey builder, analytics builder, brand builder, and content builder.
• Studios: This module enables you to seamlessly manage content and specific marketing channels. Studios in SFMC include email studio, social studio, advertising, web studio, and automation studio.  

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is home to numerous AI-based features and technologies to supercharge your digital marketing strategies and implement seamless automated marketing campaigns.  

Marketo Engage 

Adobe Marketo Engage is an AI-driven marketing automation software that enables you to automate, streamline, and measure marketing tasks and workflows. Everything about Marketo Engage is designed to increase digital marketing efficiency and boost conversions.  

Marketo Engage acts as a singular solution that combines the power of automation, lead development, content, and account-based marketing.  

Some ways you can employ Marketo Engage for your ​​marketing automation strategies include: 

• Audience building and segmentation
• Cross-channel personalization
• Lead nurturing and scoring
• Performance analytics 

At its core, Marketo Engage relies on predictive analytics and capabilities of Adobe Sensei to deliver customized digital marketing campaigns.  

Wrapping Up: AI DIgital Marketing 

If you’ve been in marketing since forever, you’d agree that the changes in the marketing landscape in the past 30 years are utterly unprecedented and far-reaching at every turn.  

From traditional marketing to digital marketing, early adopters of the marketing models therein always have a competitive edge. AI digital marketing is no different.  

Now that you know and hopefully understand the concepts and mechanisms behind AI digital marketing and how it works through machine learning and NLP models, it is time to tap into the revolutionary force of AI to transform your digital marketing strategies! 

Think beyond content creation.  

Exploit the deeper applications of NLP and machine learning in marketing to overhaul your digital marketing strategies with AI-driven predictive analytics, hyper-personalization, automation, and enhanced engagement. 

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Further Reading: 

• Hybrid Work Schedule Explained: Balancing Flexibility with Productivity
• Blueprint to Success: Crafting Your Comprehensive Business Plan
• Forwarding Calls: A Comprehensive Guide to Call Routing and Management
• The Customer Connection: Is a Live Receptionist Your Key to Success?

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In addition to HubSpot, Mailchimp, and other popular AI tools mentioned, review your industry to find AI digital marketing tools driving change in your market. 

At the end of the day, the point is to streamline your marketing workflows, enhance customer engagements, boost conversions, and reap high ROI. 

Are you looking beyond AI to future-proof your business? Then, look towards Alliance Virtual Offices! 

Contact us today to learn more about Alliance Virtual Offices’ services, which are specifically designed to help you affordably break into local markets around the world and instantly establish a business presence that thrives on credibility and agility.