Generative AI has the potential to change the anatomy of work, augmenting the capabilities of individual workers by automating some of their individual activities.

By McKinsey

AI can do all sorts of things, but marketing is probably the biggest win. Organizations that are already investing in AI are experiencing a 3-15% increase in revenue.

That said, the marketing side of AI is not new, but ChatGPT was launched in 2022, and it made a buzz. It demonstrated the potential of generative AI to comprehend and create natural text, generating new opportunities for businesses to better communicate with customers.

This makes it very clear that unless a company embraces AI in its marketing approach, it will be left behind within a short time.

Admittedly, some marketers fear that AI will take over their jobs, but at present, there is a higher chance that AI will make them smarter at work. AI can act as a robust sidekick that processes customer data, identifies trends, and proposes relevant steps based on these insights.

So, if you are also thinking of incorporating AI into your marketing strategy, you are in the correct spot. This blog post is a step-by-step guide on how you can begin using AI in your outreach to scale your business.

What is AI marketing?

AI marketing is all about machine learning and data processing, which can be used to automate and enhance marketing operations.

AI in marketing can be defined as the application of machine learning (ML) algorithms and sophisticated data processing to streamline and automate promotional tasks. Artificial intelligence in marketing involves leveraging AI marketing tools to make data-driven decisions to optimize outreach efforts.

A large amount of information can be processed in real time with these AI-driven marketing tools, and they can find trends and patterns that are beyond human capacity. This ability enables businesses to obtain more insight into their customer base, develop more efficient initiatives, and lead to improved outcomes.

Consider an AI as your virtual helper. However, the major advantage of using AI is that it is empowered by natural language processing (NLP). It uses contact information to identify trends to make intelligent choices for determining the time and content to use to contact your customers.

The AI engines operate by using the following elements:

• Machine learning: Machine learning is the process by which AI analyzes data and becomes better as time goes on without being told to do so. AI can utilize machine learning to forecast customer interests, enhance advertisement targeting, and evaluate marketing campaigns’ effectiveness.
• Natural language processing (NLP): Natural language processing allows an AI to perceive, comprehend, and react to human words. Modern AI engines use this technology to be able to have natural communication with a buyer.
• Large language models (LLMs): LLMs are sophisticated AI versions that can produce human-type responses according to the model used to train them. LLMs can be utilized in AI marketing to craft tailored messages, write email copies, or generate informative articles.

These elements assist businesses in reducing expenditure and increasing ROI because they concentrate on the actionable customer engagement strategies. They do the heavy lifting, and marketers are left as strategic as they can.

What are the advantages of using AI for marketing?

Marketing’s core activities are understanding customer needs, matching them to products and services, and persuading people to buy—capabilities that AI can dramatically enhance.

By HBR

AI marketing does more than just give you ready-made content for your promotional messages. When implemented correctly, it can be a tremendous driver of business growth and streamlined internal workflows. Here are some of the benefits of using AI in marketing:

Optimizing customer targeting

AI has altered the customer targeting and segmentation methodologies of marketers. Conventional categorization strategies are mostly based on a generalized demographic location, which may be restrictive and not a true representation of each customer’s interests.

Through AI, marketers are able to come up with more detailed and precise customer segments being made on a broader basis of data. They may cover behavior, browsing trends, buying history, and even social media presence.

This kind of in-depth customer segmentation enables marketers to develop very personalized marketing experiences that address the requirements and hobbies of particular segments of shoppers more effectively.

Personalization at scale

Just one out of five marketers is not incorporating tailored content in their email marketing initiatives. Businesses have an opportunity to work with AI-based marketing tools and make each customer experience more personalized.

Under the monitoring of AI chatbots, companies can collect data on behavior and pain points on their entire customer base. These preferences, requirements, and interests can then be integrated into specific marketing content that appeals to every customer.

Automated interaction with AI chatbots

Chatbots are increasingly being integrated on the internet and in applications using AI technology. Many companies are currently deploying AI chatbots in their 24/7 customer support to provide multi-channel assistance.

With LLMs powering them, these chatbots can respond to a broad spectrum of customer queries, including commonly asked questions, and provide more relevant product suggestions.

Moreover, a trained AI chatbot can be improved over time, meaning that based on the customer data used to train, the model will become more apt at recognizing and reacting to customer requirements.

Facilitating content creation

A marketing strategy cannot achieve much without relevant content. However, generating such can take a lot of time. AI is transforming this process by automating the majority of tasks, including idea generation and optimization.

Rather than leaning on a series of trial-and-error content, AI-driven tools can examine trending news, competitor posts, and user interaction data to present content ideas that you can turn into effective messages.

For example, image generators such as ChatGPT can generate visuals with tailored information that appeal to your customers. Besides that, AI can be used to assist in content research, i.e., by automatically recognizing and suggesting useful ideas from across numerous channels.

This may be especially applicable to social media marketing, as it is essential to remain aware of the recent happenings within your industry and publish the content in time.

Predictive analysis

Predictive analytics is also one of the most effective uses of AI in marketing. The machine learning algorithms are generally used to examine past data and determine the patterns to be able to make relevant forecasts based on trends like the churn rate or probability of a customer purchasing the product.

As an example, AI will be able to offer predictions on the most likely customers to leave, enabling businesses to reach out to these potential customers through tailor-made marketing campaigns to retain them.

Predictive analytics may also assist companies to evaluate demand for their offerings, adjust their pricing, and detect new trends in the market. This proactive nature allows them to be in front of their competition and take practical steps that can spur business success.

Better return on investment

With the assistance of AI, companies can make their money work harder to make sure that they are able to increase the returns on their marketing budget to a greater degree and serve the right people with personalized messages that help them reach their objective. This is particularly useful for newer businesses, which have small budgets.

Dynamic pricing, for instance, is a frequently applied technique by businesses to get as much profit as possible. At times when the demand for a particular product is high, prices may be relatively high due to a lack of alternatives, and when there is low demand, then the prices may be reduced to bring more buyers

How to adopt an AI marketing strategy?

Like any technology, AI in marketing tends to be most effective when it’s applied according to proven principles. These guidelines can help you take your AI marketing strategy to the next level.

Similar to any infrastructure, AI marketing will drive better results when it's implemented as per a well-planned roadmap. With that said, here’s the step-by-step process for incorporating AI into your marketing efforts:

Identify your marketing goals

You must understand what you want to fulfil before you decide to go with AI marketing. It might mean determining the pain points of your existing workflows and what you would like to enhance with the help of AI. Start by answering these questions:

• Would you like to enhance customer engagement?
• Improve conversions?
• Do you possess huge quantities of customer data but do not know how to process it?
• Is there any aspect of your promotional techniques where predictive analytics can be used?
• Does your business need to be personalized for each individual customer?
• Are there any redundant activities that are taking time and manpower?
• Would implementing AI pay off in the long run?

Having answers to these questions (or if you have any others) allows you to see the bigger picture, whether AI fits the needs of your marketing strategy. Also, AI will be required to mesh into your current processes rather than building new ones from scratch.

SMART goals enable businesses to stay on top of their AI marketing activities and keep track of their effectiveness. To begin with, aim to add AI into areas where you hope to see the biggest change, but don’t take it live to the entire process. Once you have seen the results, keep deploying it into other workflows slowly.

Have a source of quality data

There is no possible way to start and finish the successful integration of AI into your marketing strategy without data. Quality information should be invested in to enable AI to produce valuable findings and outcomes.

Start by evaluating information endpoints and AI models to understand how AI is necessary to utilize your information. With regard to tapping the capabilities of AI, APIs are the foundation. APIs act as a bridge between networks of tools, applications, data sources, and channels to streamline the flow of data.

This neural network of applications is critical to the consolidation of data in all available data silos. It is something human beings could not handle by themselves; there is too much information to handle.

Once AI can easily retrieve data from connected API sources, it can categorize and visualize it in a manner that is easier to understand for businesses. This leads to multi-channel, personalized bulk messaging with the management functionalities that are not only humanly manageable.

Choosing the correct AI solutions

After you are convinced of what you have to do, begin researching for tools that can fit your needs perfectly.

Take your time to work with and test various AI marketing solutions to consider which ones are in line with your objectives. Get acquainted with the major AI engines, including natural language processing and machine learning algorithms, to learn their possible application and how you can use them for your particular goals.

The following are some aspects that would be considered in your assessment:

• Capabilities: Research the feature-set of each solution and the ways it meets your requirements.
• Intuitiveness: Look for a solution that is both user-friendly and easily adopted by your team without having to spend a lot of time training.
• Pricing: Decide how much you can spend to implement AI and use that as a standard to measure the cost of various tools.
• AI functionalities: Research the accuracy of AI forecasts on every platform using reviews or a free trial.
• Integration: In case you are utilizing any marketing tools, ensure that the AI solution can work together with the other tools without causing any interruptions in the marketing processes.

As said before, your AI platform must work well with your current marketing stack. For instance, in terms of content creation with the help of AI, go for tools that would be easily integrated with your CMS. Some AI content tools can directly import content drafts to your tools effortlessly with just a few clicks.

Zixflow builds its entire infrastructure around intelligent automation, from adaptive drip email campaigns to smart audience segmentation that identifies high-value prospects without manual intervention.

The platform eliminates the common frustration of knowing what AI can do theoretically but struggling to implement it practically, by providing intuitive tools that turn complex AI capabilities into straightforward marketing actions.

Empowering your internal teams

Human interaction should be improved with AI, and not substituted.

To get the best out of AI, it is important to equip your marketing team with skills that can allow them to embrace AI. Through the extensive training opportunities, you can prepare your internal staff to manage the capabilities of AI and utilize it to its full potential.

The process of creating an AI-ready marketing team can take the form of empowering current reps on how to work with AI tools or recruiting people with AI knowledge.

Implementation & optimization

After choosing the appropriate tools, training your team members, and elaborating on the adoption roadmap, it is time to implement AI.

Begin with minor implementation, and once you are satisfied, only then integrate AI into your complete marketing approach. This will assist in determining the possible problems and refining the workflows before implementing them across all the channels.

That being said, AI marketing is not a one-and-done thing. The key to success is constant enhancements.

Monitor the effectiveness of your AI marketing campaigns to ensure that they are achieving your objectives. Observe the response of customers to the effect of artificial intelligence on your marketing activities and make changes accordingly to make sure that you continue to improve.

Common use cases of AI in marketing

According to BCG, the time to implement AI in your marketing strategy is now, with 70% of business leaders confirming that they already use AI in their promotional outreach.

Forecasting customer behaviors

The forecast analysis feature of AI allows companies to estimate future trends or customer behavior using past data. This is especially useful in identifying sales-qualified leads using a scoring scale where AI algorithms determine the probability of a prospect turning into a buyer.

Taking into account various aspects such as how visitors behave on your online platforms, their demographics, and interaction trends, AI is used to prioritize prospects with the highest chances of conversion and inform sales teams to work with them first.

For instance, when an individual in a technological firm has watched your demos and participated in your in-person events, AI may consider them a meaningful prospect. This assists in ensuring that your sales reps know who to reach out to on a priority basis.

With that, the advantages of AI are obvious; your agents will work on better leads and will not spend as much time on the cold ones. Besides, AI becomes more proficient with time in learning what types of behaviors result in conversions.

Content creation & SEO

SEO and content generation are a couple of the most common uses of AI in the marketing field. This all started because of how easily accessible AI tools have become. Companies are able to make the process of generating content more seamless while producing quality and relevant content at a rate never before seen.

AI algorithms process a huge amount of information to detect trends and keyword data, allowing businesses to create content that is relevant to their customer base. This not only increases interest but also improves SEO ranking with the inclusion of suitable keywords and correct content format.

As an illustration, platforms like Jasper.ai or Writesonic offer recommendations depending on the evaluation of relevant keywords or the interests of customers. There are also other applications, such as Copy.ai, that can be used to maintain your content’s tone and conserve time on redundant activities.

Additionally, there are AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity that are good at all-around content tasks. As an example, when businesses are often looking at compliance needs, AI can assist in formulating specific content that would answer those questions.

AI tools can also identify when the technical content should be refreshed. Once a blog post regarding a particular topic begins to lose its momentum, AI suggests adjustments depending on new trends in the industry.

Customer support

The use of artificial intelligence to create automated chatbots has transformed the way companies reach out to their clients for providing prompt support at any hour of the day. These chatbots understand what the customers are asking and give them the right responses through natural language processing technology.

In the case of common questions, automated workflows like WhatsApp chatbots provide instant replies so human representatives can focus on more problematic cases. This strategy enhances satisfaction and shortens waiting time, while also building awareness around the company.

AI-powered virtual assistants are working around the clock to prioritize incoming customer messages and handle a fluctuating number of requests better than human employees. They can manage frequently asked questions by themselves and pass hard-to-handle problems to the human reps.

Artificial intelligence can sometimes help support staff by evaluating customer emotions and recommending tailored solutions, instructing them on how to best meet customer requirements, or showing when a manager should be involved.

Ready to streamline your marketing with AI?

Artificial intelligence is obviously transforming the way companies are advertising, and it is crucial that organizations keep pace with the changes and adapt to them.

The companies that do not integrate AI into their marketing strategies and programs will be gradually losing the race to their competitors who apply it to revolutionize content creation, tailoring communication, and enhancing campaign performance using predictive analysis.

The only difference between AI adopters who succeed and those who fail is not access to technology, but having the correct solutions, which will allow them to utilize and apply AI to their goals.

Zixflow is an AI-based customer engagement platform that integrates AI capabilities directly into your promotional processes. It has features like adaptive campaigns, where responses vary with how the recipient interacts, and intelligent audience grouping that automatically identifies warm leads that could result in quick conversions.

Want to find out how AI can help in your promotions? Get your free Zixflow account today or book a tailored demo to see how the AI functionality of the platform can meet your marketing requirements.