More than 80 percent of marketers across the globe use some form of artificial intelligence (AI) in their online marketing activities. Are you thinking about joining them?
If you’ve been interested in integrating AI into your online marketing strategy, this guide is for you. Here are some dos and don’ts to keep in mind when using AI in digital marketing.
AI in Digital Marketing: Pros and Cons
Many benefits come with using AI in digital marketing, but there are also some significant drawbacks to keep in mind. Here are some essential pros and cons to be aware of before you start incorporating AI into your marketing plan:
Pro: Increased Productivity
Busy marketers can use AI to boost productivity in several ways, including the following:
- Automating Repetitive Tasks: AI can handle repetitive tasks like data entry, scheduling, email filtering, and report generation, freeing up your time for more complex and strategic work.
- Data Analysis: AI can analyze massive datasets to identify patterns, trends, and correlations that humans might miss.
- Enhanced Collaboration and Communication: AI-powered tools can translate languages in real-time, transcribe meetings automatically, and facilitate virtual collaboration, resulting in better team communication and project management.
Pro: No Guesswork
With its extensive data analysis capabilities, AI can help marketers make data-driven decisions. In other words, rather than making guesses about what will resonate the most with audience members, you can use AI to evaluate actual data and make informed decisions that will yield better long-term results.
Pro: Superior Segmentation and Targeting
AI can accurately segment audiences based on demographics, interests, and online behavior, leading to more effective and relevant marketing campaigns.
AI also allows for dynamic adjustments based on changing customer behaviors and preferences. This real-time analysis ensures your segments remain relevant and capture your audience’s evolving needs.
Con: Potential for Bias
While AI presents exciting opportunities in various fields, its potential for bias is a crucial concern. The following are some examples of sources of bias in AI:
- Data Bias: AI models learn from the data they are trained on. If this data contains historical biases, the AI model will likely perpetuate those biases.
- Algorithmic Bias: The design and development of AI algorithms can introduce bias, even if the training data is unbiased.
- Human Bias: Humans involved in the development, deployment, and interpretation of AI can introduce their own biases, consciously or unconsciously.
Con: Potential for Inaccuracy
AI promises remarkable achievements, but its potential for inaccuracy is still a significant concern. Potential sources of AI inaccuracy include the following:
- Limited Data and Understanding: AI models learn from data, and their accuracy is limited by the quality and volume of data they’re trained on.
- Overfitting and Generalization: If an AI model focuses too much on memorizing training data (“overfitting”), it might fail to adapt to new, unseen situations, leading to inaccurate predictions or outputs.
- Algorithmic Complexity: Some AI models, incredibly complex ones, can become like “black boxes,” where the reasoning behind their outputs is unclear.
AI in Digital Marketing: Dos and Don’ts
Plenty of marketers are using AI as part of their digital marketing strategy, but not all of them are using AI correctly. The following are some of the most important dos and don’ts to consider when choosing and using AI tools:
Do: Use AI for Brainstorming
AI can supercharge your brainstorming sessions and bring out your marketing team’s best ideas. Using AI during brainstorming can help in various ways, including these:
- Break down mental blocks: AI can suggest unexpected ideas and associations..
- Expand your scope: AI can analyze vast amounts of information and data, bringing in ideas and perspectives you might otherwise miss.
- Generate ideas quickly: AI can churn out a large number of ideas in a short time, saving precious time during brainstorming sessions.
- Streamline the brainstorming process: AI can automate tasks like note-taking and idea organization, freeing up your team to focus on higher-level thinking and discussion.
- Promote collaboration: AI-powered brainstorming tools often include features for real-time collaboration, allowing team members to build upon each other’s ideas and work together seamlessly.
- Provide inspiration: AI can give you prompts, questions, or examples to kickstart your brainstorming session.
- Document and record ideas: AI tools can capture and organize all the ideas generated during your brainstorming session, ensuring nothing gets lost and providing records for future reference.
Do: Use AI for Content Outlines
Using AI for content outlines can make your writing process more efficient, effective, and creative. Here are some key advantages AI offers:
- Overcome Writer’s Block: AI can analyze your topic, existing content, and target audience to suggest relevant keywords, subheadings, and talking points.
- Improve Structure and Organization: AI can understand logical flow and suggest how to arrange your content in a clear and compelling way.
- Automate Repetitive Tasks: AI can handle tasks like generating basic introductions, conclusions, and transitions, freeing up your time for more critical writing tasks.
- Enhance Creativity and Diversify Perspectives: AI can offer unexpected suggestions and alternative angles you might not have considered on your own.
- Research and Fact-Checking Support: Some AI tools can find relevant sources and data to support your claims, saving you research time.
Do: Use AI for Keyword Research
AI can identify relevant keywords based on your topic and target audience, helping you optimize your content for search engines. This increases your content’s visibility and potential to attract organic traffic.
Here are some additional advantages of using AI for keyword research:
- Increased efficiency and speed: AI algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data much faster than humans, allowing for quicker identification of relevant keywords.
- Increased accuracy and precision: AI tools can provide more accurate and precise keyword suggestions based on advanced algorithms and machine learning models. They can also analyze user intent, context, and emerging trends, resulting in more targeted and effective keywords.
- Competitive analysis: AI can help analyze competitors’ keyword strategies, identifying market gaps and opportunities. It can also provide insights into the keywords your competitors are targeting, allowing you to adjust your strategy accordingly.
- Semantic understanding: AI systems can better understand keywords’ semantics and context, helping generate more relevant and contextually appropriate suggestions.
- Adaptability to trends: AI can quickly adapt to changes in search trends and user behavior, ensuring your keyword strategy remains up-to-date. It can identify emerging keywords and topics, helping you stay ahead of the competition.
Do: Experiment with Different Tools
You can use many different AI-powered tools in your digital marketing strategy, from generative AI platforms to help with content creation to tools that check facts, assist with data analysis, and more.
It can take time to find the right tools for your team. Not every solution will be the right fit for every marketer. Experiment with a variety of options to find the ones that help your team accomplish their specific goals.
Don’t: Trust AI to Write Full Articles
Many marketers have good luck using AI to write short-form content, such as social media captions or email subject lines. When it comes to full-length articles, though, as well as other long-form content types like white papers and case studies, you probably shouldn’t trust AI to do the whole job for you.
If you rely on AI to write entire articles, you’re more likely to deal with issues like these:
- Lack of creativity and originality: AI models generate text based on patterns they’ve observed in existing data. This can lead to articles that resemble existing content and lack the unique voice and perspective that human authors bring.
- Limited understanding of context and nuance: AI excels at processing large amounts of information but can struggle with subtle nuances, cultural references, or complex emotions. This can lead to articles that miss the mark in terms of relevance, tone, or cultural sensitivity.
- Lack of critical thinking and judgment: AI cannot replicate human writers’ critical thinking and judgment skills. These tools may struggle to assess the validity of information, identify arguments for and against different viewpoints, or draw insightful conclusions.
Don’t: Use Vague Prompts
The results you get from AI-powered tools are only as good as the prompts you feed them. If you use brief, vague, overly generalized prompts, you’ll struggle to get good content or good results.
Here are some tips for better AI prompts:
- Target a specific type of output: Specify whether you want the AI to write a paragraph, email, social media caption, etc.
- Use clear and concise language: Avoid jargon or overly complex sentences that might confuse the AI. Stick to simple, direct language for better understanding.
- Provide relevant references: Share examples, keywords, or even existing content related to your desired output. This gives the AI a precise reference point and understanding of your expectations.
- Structure your prompt properly: Try breaking down your desired output into smaller parts. This helps the AI process the information and generate a more coherent response.
Don’t: Use AI for Sensitive Topics
As we mentioned earlier, when you use AI-powered tools, there is potential for biases. AI also lacks the capacity to understand nuances, context, and complex emotions. Because of these factors, it’s not recommended to use AI when dealing with a sensitive topic.
For example, you may not want to rely on AI to write your company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion statement or write a press release responding to a sensitive issue that occurred between your company and a client. These are situations in which a human touch is typically needed.
Final Thoughts
AI isn’t going anywhere — in fact, it’s only going to become more prevalent and powerful in the future.
An essential part of embracing AI is learning how to use it correctly, especially if you want to include it in your marketing plan. The dos and don’ts shared above can help you ensure you’re making wise decisions that will benefit your company now and later.
Do you need more help with your digital marketing strategy? If so, our team is ready to assist you. Schedule a consultation today to learn more about our digital marketing services.