The Role of AI and ML in Digital Marketing

A comprehensive marketing strategy is the power behind business profitability. And Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) have become an integral part of any successful modern-day approach. While many traditional methods still work, they make up a smaller and smaller part of a successful marketing strategy.

By taking full advantage of what the newest technologies have to offer, businesses are able to streamline their marketing efforts and improve their company’s bottom line. Let’s take a closer look at the role of AI and ML in digital marketing.

Paid Search Advertising

When you set the budget for paid search ads, you want them to generate high-quality leads that result in conversions. Placing the right ad in front of the right person at the right time involves processing a huge amount of data.

While paid search advertising still needs a human to make critical decisions, a big chunk of the process is automated. All you need to do is provide information about your target audience, set target keywords, and outline a budget. The rest, from making bids to placing the ad, is done by an algorithm.

AI is taking over tasks such as:

• Bidding 
• Reporting 
• Competitor analysis in real-time 
• Trend identification 
• Split testing reports 

Depending on the complexity of your campaign, you may need to do some of the above tasks manually. However, leaving the majority of them to the AI is likely to generate a higher ROI (return on investment). 

Remarketing

Only about 2% of visitors convert after the first interaction with a website. Even if they find the necessary services or products, these potential clients can be distracted or leave to search for other options. Eventually, after gathering all the information, they may buy from your competition simply because their website is the last one they look at.

That’s where remarketing comes in. This fully automated process involves attaching tracking pixels to website visitors and showing your ads to them after they leave the website.

These people will continue seeing your ads while they browse other websites and social media platforms. By the time they move down the funnel, your website will be just one click away.

You can take advantage of remarketing on such platforms as:

• Google Ads 
• Facebook 
• LinkedIn 

Remarketing programs analyze your visitor’s behavior and use it in tandem with other data to serve up the right ads in the right place and at the right time. All you need to do is to set the audience parameters. AI does the rest.

How does IOS 14 Affect Remarketing?

As it stands, IOS 14 users can opt out of tracking while using their iPhones. However, if the user is using a Macbook, Android Phone, or Windows Computer, browsers can still track their page visits and marketers can retarget them if they haven’t manually opted out through their privacy settings.

As a result, in spite of the recent iOS 14 update, remarketing continues to be a valuable tool for advertisers. 

A/B Testing

A/b (or split) testing is an integral part of marketing. From testing different types of landing pages to checking various combinations of ad copy, you need to go through numerous options before choosing the best one.

A/b testing is also highly important for your email and content marketing campaigns. AI collects the data from each test and uses ML to create the right copy for the visitors to click on. Thanks to artificial intelligence, you can test a huge variety of combinations instead of just two or three.

One of the most efficient examples of ML helping with a/b testing is Google’s Smart Shopping. It’s an excellent option for e-commerce retailers. All a marketer has to do is provide product details. AI uses this information in different combinations to demonstrate relevant ads across multiple Google Networks. It tests different mixes of text and images to come up with an ad that has the highest conversion potential.

Search Engine Optimization

The importance of search engine optimization (SEO) in growing your business is tough to underestimate. By implementing AI into your SEO strategy, you can improve its performance, accuracy, and efficiency.

Besides helping with keyword search, AI is irreplaceable when it comes to content creation. Long gone are the days when getting to the top of SERPs (Search Engine Page Results) involved stuffing a bunch of keywords into the text. Today, Google uses artificial intelligence to recognize the real value of content on your website.

Marketers can take advantage of AI to collect information about the target audience and adjust the content to suit its needs perfectly. Additionally, AI helps with the process of content creation by:

• Testing readability 
• Catching typos 
• Suggesting headings 
• Providing content ideas 

AI offers a high-quality analysis of your SEO efforts. It creates comprehensive reports (e.g. through Google Analytics) to help adjust your marketing strategies.  

Competitive Analysis

A top-notch marketing campaign involves high-quality competitor analysis. While being a copycat is hardly a road to success, peeking at what the competition is doing can help streamline your main tactics.   

Artificial intelligence allows you to gather such important information about your competitor’s website, including:

• Target keywords 
• Backlinks 
• Content strategy 
• Product pricing 
• And much more 

AI-powered tools can collect data from thousands of websites and provide valuable business insights. They are designed to track the entire available digital footprint left by the company on and off the website.

This information can help you find loopholes in the competition’s strategy and capitalize on it immediately. Meanwhile, you can check out what works for your competitors and implement similar tactics into your strategy.

Customer Service

High-quality customer service is the key to business growth. More than 75% of consumers recommend a brand to a friend after having a positive customer service experience. Many companies are spending millions of dollars on supporting round-the-clock customer service teams. Others rely on chatbots.

Chatbots are an excellent example of how AI and ML can work for your company. They can provide support to customers during off-hours. While these programs can’t handle complex issues yet, they can improve customer experience tremendously.

Chatbots are constantly evolving. Today, they play a secondary support role, but in the future, this software could replace the majority of customer service teams.   

The Takeaway

By using ML and AI, you can increase your marketing efficiency and improve your company’s bottom line. Even though artificial intelligence has a high potential, some businesses still avoid it. Implementing these technologies into your business practice can put you ahead of the competition.

While AI provides high-quality assistance for many aspects of marketing, it doesn’t replace a human team. AI tools require human supervision to produce top-notch results.

If you’re struggling with how to implement ML and AI into your business, schedule a complimentary consultation with our expert marketing staff at Building Brands Marketing, one of the leading Texas digital marketing agencies. Whether you’re looking to build a customer support chatbot, utilize ML in your advertising campaigns, or need help deciphering huge amounts of customer data, our team has the experience and capabilities to help your business take the next step.