AI Marketing: What It Is and How to Use It
Learn everything you need to know about AI marketing from what it is to how to use it to our step-by-step on getting started.
Posted 9 months ago
Written by
Mackenzie TaylorPosted 9 months ago
AI marketing is the talk of the town recently—from ChatGPT to AI integrations into all social media apps to Google releasing its own AI chat, AI is taking over the world of marketing. But … what exactly is it and how can it help you as a social media marketer? That’s what we’re all here to find out today! In today’s blog, we go through everything you need to know about AI marketing from what it is to how to use it to our step-by-step on getting started.
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What is AI Marketing?
AI marketing is when marketers use artificial intelligence (like ChatGPT or Flick’s latest and greatest AI Social Media Assistant) to improve and optimize their marketing processes and strategies.
AI marketing comes in different forms, but the biggest ones are using algorithms and analytics to help brands and businesses figure out what their audience wants from them.
But … how is AI marketing used? It is used to automate a lot of tasks for marketers that take a lot of time a marketer might not have. Things like lead generation, customer segmentation, personalized advertising, and email marketing are some of the best ways that a marketer can use AI.
One of the best things about AI marketing is that it can provide personalized recommendations to someone. Think of Instagram and TikTok’s algorithm—that’s all based on AI. And the more you engage with certain content on your algorithm, the more personalized your feed becomes because the app’s AI has realized what content you like and want to see more of.
Another great tool that AI helps with in marketing is analytics reporting. Manually figure out all of your metrics and what has done well vs. what has done poorly for your account. Using AI for reporting in marketing can help streamline a marketer’s workflow and save them a lot of time in the long run.
@rileybrown.ai ChatGPT is the most insane piece of tech I’ve ever seen. #chatgpt #openai #dalle2 ♬ original sound – Riley Brown
How can marketers use AI?
If you’re a marketer looking into AI and wondering where you should start or even how you could use it in your marketing strategy, here are some ways you can implement it:
Personalization
It’s time to get personal! The best way for you to reach audiences new (and old!) is to make sure that your content is personalized to your audience—and AI can help with that!
If you’re looking to personalize your marketing strategy or ads for your social media, using AI can help you by gathering data on your customers (their behavior, their preferences, their likes, and dislikes) and you can take that information to better target your audience in the future.
Predictive analytics
One of our favorite AI tools around here is being able to know what trends people are going to be into next and one of the ways to do that is by predictive analytics!
AI tools can analyze data from a variety of different sources and can figure out certain patterns to help marketers figure out a better strategy for their future content.
What are Predictive Analytics?
Predictive analytics refers to the use of machine learning or AI to forecast marketing outcomes and audience behavior. This data is based on large quantities of customer data and market data, and it can help you predict how customers will behave in the future and whether they’re likely to convert.
There are various technologies involved in predictive analytics, such as:
- Data Mining: Assessing large amounts of data to discover trends or patterns.
- Predictive Modeling: Making behavioral predictions based on historical data and creating a model for these forecasts.
Machine Learning: The program analyzes data and makes suggestions or forecasts based on these insights with the help of techniques such as natural language processing.
Customer service
If you’re constantly responding to guests’ DMs and not having enough time to work on things outside of that, using AI-powered chatbots can seriously help you with that.
Set up a chatbot that responds to frequently asked questions that your guests and followers might be asking. This will help you increase your conversion rate and save you time by not spending hours and hours answering the same questions.
Content creation
If you find content creation a struggle and spend hours upon hours working on it, AI can help you with that. There are a lot of content creation AI tools to help you with creating content like product descriptions, blog posts, social media captions, and more.
💡 Flick’s tip: If you are looking to streamline your workflow when it comes to social media content, start a 7-day free trial with Flick to get access to our AI Social Media Assistant. It will help you generate endless content ideas and create social media posts in seconds.
Ad targeting
AI can help marketers target their ads to the right audience by analyzing data on their customers’ behavior, interests, and demographics. If you use AI in your ad targeting, it can help you with creating a more effective ad campaign with even higher conversion rates.
@flick.social This goes for all ad platforms. Nailing your targeting is huge but without great creative and copy for that target audience, an ad is never going to perform the way you want it to! #facebookads #facebookadstips ♬ original sound – Flick
Pros of AI Marketing
While there are loads of different advantages to using AI marketing, here are some of our top pros:
Improved customer experience
Psst: AI can help your business deliver a personalized and engaging customer experience by providing tailored content, offers, and recommendations based on customer preferences and behavior. If you want to start having a higher conversion rate of your customers actually completing a purchase with you, using AI can help streamline it all for you. No more pain points with purchase.
Increased efficiency
One of the best things that AI can do is help automate repetitive marketing tasks like email marketing, social media management, and data analysis. And you know what that means? You’ll be saving lots of time and reducing your costs while letting you focus on creating a better marketing strategy.
Better targeting
Want to have better and more targeted ads? AI can help you there by analyzing vast amounts of customer data to identify patterns and predict behavior, allowing businesses to deliver targeted marketing messages to the right audience at the right time. No more wasting time.
Higher ROI
Oh, what’s that? If you optimize your marketing campaigns and target the right audience you’ll have better ROI? Yup, it’s true. And by using AI in your campaigns, you have a better chance of streamlining your campaigns to hit a higher ROI.
Competitive advantage
This one ties into all of the ones above. If you want to be a step ahead of your competition, using AI will give you that competitive advantage by delivering a more personalized and engaging customer experience, improving efficiency, and increasing ROI.
Challenges of AI marketing
Yes, while there are a lot of pros when it comes to AI marketing, there are some cons to using AI which we break down for you:
Data privacy concerns
Uh-oh. AI collects and uses customer data for marketing purposes which could raise some privacy concerns for users—especially if the data is ever misused or mishandled.
Lack of human touch
While AI can automate many marketing tasks, it cannot replace human creativity. You do not want to over-rely on AI as you might lose your personality and what makes your brand specifically you in the content. Use AI to help you kickstart content ideas for the month ahead or to help with your reporting and analytics. Not every piece of your marketing needs to be automated. Make sure there is still some of you in each of your content pieces.
Bias and inaccuracies
Yes, sometimes AI can be wrong (hello, Google Bard anyone?). AI algorithms are only as accurate as the data they are trained on, and biased data can lead to biased results. This can impact the effectiveness of AI marketing campaigns and potentially harm brand reputation. Make sure to cross reference anything you’re putting on marketing materials to make sure nothing is inaccurate.
Complexity and learning curve
If you’re not familiar with AI marketing tools, they can be complex and require specialized expertise to use effectively. This can make it challenging for smaller businesses with limited resources to adopt and implement AI marketing solutions.
How to use AI marketing
Now that you know the basics, how do you actually use it in your own strategy? Here are some basic steps to help you get started:
Define your marketing goals
Start by defining your marketing objectives and the specific tasks you want to automate or optimize using AI.
For example, you may wish to streamline your social media content creation with AI post generators. Or, you could focus on optimizing your articles with AI marketing blog writers.
Different AIs have different areas they specialize in, from social media to e-commerce. It’s important to identify your marketing objectives early on so you know what tools to look for.
Gather and analyze data
Collect and analyze data on your target audience, including their behavior, preferences, and purchase history, to identify patterns and insights.
This will help you learn what appeals to your audience and what kind of content they interact with. You can then use this information to inform your marketing decisions later on to achieve high conversion rates and online engagement.
Audience Insights to Look Out for
- Top Performing Posts: Look at your previous content to see which ones received the highest engagement from your audience. Compare them to your lowest-performing posts to identify what specifically attracted your audience.
- Demographic: If you’re unsure about what kind of people make up the majority of your existing audience, you can find out by looking at details such as their location, age, gender, and so on.
- User Activity: View your audience’s activity data to determine when they’re usually online, so you know when to launch your marketing campaigns for optimal engagement.
- Interests: Find out how sizable your potential audience is using tools such as Meta Business Suite. Search for users with interests related to your brand or content, like plants or fashion.
- Sentiment Analysis: Assess your brand mentions to determine what your audience thinks about your content. Are they positive or negative? What requests or complaints do they have? This also helps you discover any threats to your reputation so you can prepare to defend your brand.
Asking the Audience
You can also research your target audience via social media posts. Make a post asking people about topics related to your brand. For example, ask them what their favorite plant is and give them a list of options to choose from.
Or, you can directly ask what they think about your brand or content to see if they make any suggestions you could incorporate into your AI marketing.
Choose the right AI tools
Identify your AI solutions that can help you achieve your goals, such as predictive analytics, chatbots, or personalization tools.
💡 Flick’s tip: Use Flick’s AI Social Media Assistant to help you kickstart your content ideas. Learn more here and start a free 7-day trial today!
Flick is an AI marketing tool that helps grow your brand with faster content creation. With Flick AI, you’re able to streamline your brainstorming and caption writing, as well as schedule content to post at optimal times.
Brainstorming: Break past any creative block with unique AI content suggestions. Simply input a topic of your choice and watch Flick AI generate a list of engaging ideas for you to browse through.
Caption Writing: Write social media captions 10x faster with Flick AI — you can generate personalized and on-brand captions in just a few clicks. Customize your AI content creation by editing the writing style, tone of voice, POV, length, and more.
Scheduling: Flick AI also allows you to schedule your marketing content to release at high-activity hours. We analyze when your audience is most active online and give you suggestions for the best times to post on your content calendar.
Hashtag Tools: You can also use Flick AI to auto-generate suitable hashtags for your content or captions. View suggested hashtags as you create or schedule a new post to streamline your hashtag selection.
Implement the solution
Now that you have the AI tools, it’s time to integrate them into your marketing strategy and ensure it is configured correctly to deliver optimal results.
Decide where it fits best in your workflow — for example, if an AI tool specializes in brainstorming content ideas, it works best near the beginning of your content creation process.
Similarly, if it’s an AI analytics tool, you could use it post-launching a campaign or preemptively use it to gauge your audience activity so you know how to appeal to your target demographic.
Monitor and optimize
Monitor the performance of your AI marketing campaigns, and use the insights to continuously optimize your strategy and improve results.
AI Marketing Metrics
Track your AI marketing metrics to get a sense of how well your campaigns are doing on different channels. When utilizing AI in your marketing strategy, you have to keep a close eye on your AI activity to ensure no errors occur. AI-generated content can be prone to grammatical mistakes or inaccuracies, so some human interference is necessary.
Tracking each metric manually is very time-consuming, so it’s worth investing in a tool such as Flick Analytics to automate your reporting and receive actionable insights more efficiently.
We allow you to monitor over 20 key AI marketing metrics in real-time, some of which we’ll be discussing below.
Flick AI showcases analytics for every area of your social media account, including reach rate, conversion rate, and click-through rate (CTR). You can compare your performance data against previous months to see how your stats have increased or decreased over time.
You also have the option of viewing AI marketing metrics for individual pieces of content or hashtags, such as engagement rate, hashtags ranked, impressions, and so on.
Flick compiles your weekly data into reports you can view at any time. You can look at your website clicks, overall likes and comments, and posting streaks for each week.
Flick also allows you to benchmark your AI marketing metrics against other similar accounts in real time. Take a look at your competitor’s account performance to see how well you measure up.
How do you use AI Marketing Metrics to Elevate Performance?
AI marketing metrics allow you to properly assess your campaign performance and understand which areas need improving. You can identify issues in your marketing strategy early on and devise solutions to those problems. Use this experience to optimize your future campaigns and avoid encountering the same issues again.
Gaining such insight also lets you forecast your performance data, which can help you set realistic goals and prevent certain issues from occurring. For example, if your AI predicts your conversion rate will decline by 4% the following month, introduce a strategy to increase sales and prevent the decline from happening.
Ensure data privacy and security
We will say this a million times: Protect your customers’ data! You have to make sure that customer data is collected and used ethically and that appropriate measures are taken to protect data privacy and security.
Train your team
This is SO important! Because how in the world are you going to do marketing with AI well if you don’t teach your team how to use it? Ensure your marketing team is trained on how to use AI solutions effectively and integrate it into their day-to-day work.
It’s time to start using AI for your marketing strategy. Want to know which tools we think you should add to your toolkit? Click here for our must-have AI marketing tools.
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