16 Ways Artificial Intelligence Can Be Used in Marketing in 2021

Artificial Intelligence, in its most basic definition, refers to the capability of computer programs to predict and mimic human thoughts and actions. Thus, Artificial Intelligence for Marketers becomes increasingly helpful, as it allows you to better observe and predict consumer behavior and create delightful customer experiences.

AI allows for personalized communication for each consumer, which makes consumers connect with the brand better. This change in perception makes consumers feel valued, and a good customer-care experience means they will come back for more. 

In addition to the above, the use of AI and AI-based tools can help marketers automate a lot of their repetitive work, become more productive, and increase their marketing ROI.

The potential of AI in Marketing is massive. The applications of AI in marketing include, but are not limited to, chatbots, voice and image search, consumer profiling, etc. 

Let’s talk about 16 ways to use AI in marketing:

AI in Marketing: Before & After Impact Example Table

1. Create Better Content Faster

While AI cannot be used to write contextual pieces like Political Op-eds or an in-depth blog on industry-specific issues, it can prove useful for generating elementary content to bring in more traffic for your website. 

AI can also be used for editing content. If you have ever used Grammarly, you have already been using AI in your everyday work to make your content clearer and more impactful

Tools suggestion:

• Quill – Have a marketing dashboard on data viz tools like Tableau or Power Bi that you want to summarize? Quill automatically converts your data into a story.
• Automated Insights – Similar to Quill, it is another tool that generates millions of articles a year by transforming data into insightful narratives. 
• Articoolo – With Articoolo, all you need to do is enter your topic and word count. The tool then creates unique content from scratch, just like a human writer would!
• MarketMuse  – Marketmuse, an AI-powered content research and optimization tool, has launched “First Draft”, which, as the name indicates, automatically creates the first draft of the article when you give it a topic with a basic brief.

Prompt Library:

“Act as a [industry] expert. Create a 1,500-word blog titled ‘[Topic]’ with:  

• 5 H2 sections  
• 3 data points from [source]  
• 1 case study example  

Tone: [professional/conversational]. Include 3 FAQs at the end.”  

2. Write Better Ad Copy

Most digital advertising platforms today allow you to use multiple ad copies and then use machine learning to find the winner. Google’s Responsive Search Ads (RSA) are a perfect example of this. All you need to do is create multiple variations, and the system will pick the best variations, tailored for the consumer the ad is being shown to.

Tools suggestion:

• Jacquard: This where AI-driven copywriting tools like Jacquard come in. Phrasee uses data from your existing marketing campaigns to craft better data-driven messages that you can use to improve campaign efficiency. What’s more is that the tool also understands your brand voice and ensures it is consistent on all the creatives.
• Persado: Another tool that helps with coming up with the best messages to connect with your target audience in your brand’s voice is Persado. It continuously learns from your data and keeps creating better data-driven messaging over time. And it works to create messaging across all your marketing channels.

Prompt Library:

“Generate 10 Facebook ad copies for targeting [audience]. Include:  

• 1 emotional hook  
• 2 pain points  
• 1 social proof element  

CTAs: [Shop Now/Learn More]. Max 125 characters.” 

3. Create a Better Content Strategy

Another application of artificial intelligence in marketing is using it to come up with better content strategies.

Tools suggestion:

• MarketMuse: MarketMuse for content creation also helps in building a full-fledged content strategy
• Cobomba – Cobomba helps marketers with the entire content marketing process right from content recommendations to audits and planning. It also helps optimize existing content and track the performance of all your content marketing activities.
• Atomic Reach: Atomic Reach uses AI to help you edit and optimize your content. It helps you create better titles and also auto-generate content summaries, which you can use for meta descriptions and social media captions

Prompt Library:

“Analyze [competitor URL]’s top 20 pages. List:  

• 5 underserved topics with <500 word counts  
• 3 high-traffic keywords they rank for (that we don’t)  
• Recommended content clusters.”  

4. Automate Repetitive Tasks

Applications of AI in marketing also include using or building programs and tools that allow you to automate tasks that were previously being done manually. 

Let’s take an example – let’s say you are an SEO or content marketer and you are working on a site that has 20,000 pages, most of which have no meta description.

If you had to read content on each of these 20,000 pages and summarize it to write a meta description, it would take weeks to get this done. And you’ll be mind-numbed at the end of it!

Even if you get an army of 10 interns to do this for you, it would still take at least a week and you would also have to coordinate and follow up with each of them

A better solution here is to use an AI-powered tool to automatically generate meta descriptions for you. 

Tools suggestion:

• Smacient’s Meta Descriptions Writer Google Sheets add-on: This tool uses AI-powered Natural Language Processing, which allows it to extract text from the given URLs and summarize it to generate a meta description soon
• Python: Python has a lot of marketing applications to help you automate a lot of your day-to-day boring, repetitive tasks.

Prompt Library:

• “Summarize this article into a 155-character meta description with primary keyword ‘[KW]’:  [Paste text]. Tone: [informal/urgent/authoritative].” 

5. Target The Right Audiences With Your Ads:

Most digital advertising platforms today use machine learning to help you show the right ad to the right person at the right time and in the right context.

As a marketer, if you understand the fundamentals of how these systems work, you can use them to your advantage.

A simple example is Lookalike audiences in Facebook ads. These are audiences that Facebook builds, which are similar to a source audience (custom audience) that you provide.

If you understand the fact that machine learning algorithms are only as strong as their input data (learning data), you will work to ensure that the source audiences that you use are the most powerful.

For example, if you had to create a lookalike of three custom audiences -180-day website visitors, 180-day add-to-carts, and 180-day purchasers- which one of these would give you the most accurate lookalike? Well, obviously, the purchase audience (provided the size is large enough), since these are people who have the highest probability of buying from you. 

This might seem basic to those of you who are pros at performance advertising, but for those of you who are beginners, these are very important concepts to understand, which will help you use the platform’s machine learning capabilities to your advantage

Tools suggestion:

• Albert AI: This tool supercharges your performance advertising across platforms – search, social, and programmatic. 
• Facebook Lookalikes: Build audiences from your best customers

Prompt Library:

“Identify the 3 most valuable customer segments from [dataset]. Prioritize by:  

• Lifetime value  
• Engagement frequency  
• Purchase recency.” 

6. Use Chatbots For Real-Time Interactions:

Chatbots are customer-interactive applications that solve consumer queries in real time. It is not humanly possible to interact with consumers all day long and immediately respond to their queries manually. This is where the chatbot applications of AI in marketing come to a marketer’s rescue. 

Consumers can use chatbots to solve multiple FAQs or any complaints they might have. This not only makes it easier for consumers to navigate through the website, but it also makes them feel valued. Since their troubles can be solved almost immediately, they are more likely to return to the same brand in the future as well. 

However, chatbots need to be used with caution. A consumer should be allowed to switch between chatbots or human customer care executives if they so wish to. This allows for a flexible and accommodating experience for the consumers. 

Tools suggestion:

• MobileMonkey: No-code chatbot builder
• TARS: Creates conversational landing pages

Prompt Library:

“Create a 5-step conversation flow for handling ‘[common query]’. Include:  

• 1 empathy statement  
• 2 solution options  
• Escalation path to human.” 

7. Derive Better Social Media Insights:

Markets today have to engage with customers across multiple social platforms, which makes monitoring it all very challenging. And deriving actionable insights is all the more challenging.

Tools suggestion:

• Linkfluence: This helps track brand equity, detect social trends, monitor online reputation, and identify the best social influencers to amplify the brand message.
• Hootsuite Insights: Monitors cross-platform mentions

Prompt Library:

“Analyze the last 7 days of [brand] mentions on Twitter. Flag:  

• 3 emerging themes  
• Top 2 influencers discussing us  
• Sentiment score (1-10).”  

8. Ensure Your Ads Are Showing in The Right Places:

Sifting through placement reports in Google Ads and other platforms to find placements that perform and exclude those that are not can be a mammoth task, especially when you have hundreds of thousands of placements to analyze.

Tools suggestion:

• GumGum: This tool uses computer vision and natural language processing to scan images, videos, audio, and text and ensure ads are served dynamically where users are most likely to see them. It also ensures brand safety by preventing ads from showing on sites that could harm your brand’s reputation.
• Google Ads Placement Reports: Identifies top-performing sites

Prompt Library:

“Scan [campaign report] for sites with:  

• <0.5% CTR  
• >80% bounce rate  

Export as CSV for exclusion.” 

9. Use Voice Search To Your Advantage:

Voice Search allows consumers to simply voice their queries into their digital devices without having to type it out. 

With voice-activated services like Alexa, Siri, Google Home, etc on the rise, marketers can leverage these to create voice-focussed experiences for their target audience.

This would include optimizing for the answer box on search as well as creating Google Home Actions and Alexa Skills.

Tools suggestion:

• AnswerThePublic: Finds voice search queries
• Google’s Natural Language API: Analyzes conversational intent

Prompt Library: 

“Rewrite this content for voice search queries: [Current text]. Focus on:  

• Question formats  
• Concise 29-word answers  
• Local intent (add [city] if relevant).” 

10. Automate SEO Processes:

A lot of day-to-day SEO processes involve a lot of manual, repetitive work.

Apart from the example of writing meta descriptions mentioned above, there are many other tasks where using AI can help.

For example, we all know how important internal linking is to SEO. Let’s say you have started working on a new SEO project and want to get ideas on which internal pages you could link to. If you are not too familiar with the site and its contents, this could take you a very long time. A tool like Smacient’s Interlinking Opportunities Finder can help you save a ton of time. All you need to do is enter the page URL, and the tool will suggest relevant anchor text and pages it could link to.

Another use case is paraphrasing. When you have to create multiple variations of text on your pages to prevent duplicate content issues, you could use the Natural Language Processing algorithm to your advantage and get the same done much faster than getting a team of people to do it.

Tools suggestion: 

• Smacient’s Interlinking Tool: Suggests internal links
• Frase.io: Automates SEO briefs

Prompt Library:

“Suggest 5 relevant internal links for ‘[page URL]’. Use:  

• Exact-match anchors  
• Supporting pages (not competitors)  
• Priority order by SEO value.”  

11. Profile Your Audience Better: 

Customer Profiling refers to marketers making extensive profiles on their customers by extracting and analyzing as much data about them as possible. These profiles include data like their demographics, expectations, beliefs, behavioral patterns, etc.

These data points can be used to analyze the customer’s purchasing patterns and then group customers on the basis of shared patterns. These groups, called segments, can be used to create customized communication strategies with the customers, to identify target audiences, to predict the purchase decisions a group might make, and then to use that knowledge to come up with strategies that increase average customer purchase value, and so on. 

Tools suggestion:

• Segment.com: Unifies customer data
• Bloomreach: AI-driven personalization

Prompt Library:

“Divide [customer list] by:  

• Purchase frequency (1x vs 3x+)  
• Product category affinity  
• CLV tiers (<$100 vs $500+).” 

12. Leverage Predictive Analytics:

While it is important for businesses to gain new customers, it is also equally, if not more, important for them to keep their existing consumer base. Statistically, strategies to get new customers cost more than keeping the pre-existing customers happy. Marketers can work out how to use AI in marketing by using predictive analytics – that is to say, you can use available data and common trends to predict if any of your existing customers are on their way to stop using your product/service. You can then deploy tactics to keep them engaged/happy and prevent them from leaving.

Apart from predicting customer churn and reducing it, you can also use tools like Pattern89 to predict which creatives would work, even before you launch your campaign! Imagine how much marketing money this could save you if you didn’t have to run an A/B test and wait for the data to help you find the winner. All that money and time spent testing could now be deployed elsewhere to increase your marketing ROI.

Tools suggestion:

• Pattern89: Creative performance prediction
• Pecan AI: Churn forecasting

Prompt Library:

• “Analyze these 5 ad concepts for :  
• [Describe ads]. Predict CTR% for each based on [past campaign data].” 

13. Create Personalized Website Experiences:

Another way to use artificial intelligence in marketing is by making the website experience itself something that is suited to the consumer’s taste. 

You could ensure that each site visitor gets content based on their past interactions on the site. This keeps them engaged and makes them want to come back for more.

Imagine what your website could do if it recommended content to your users, just like how Netflix does – in a highly personalized manner! 

Tools suggestion:

• PathFactory: creates AI-driven content journeys based on the individual’s content consumption data.
• Dynamic Yield: Real-time personalization

Prompt Library:

“If visitor comes from [source], show:  

• Hero image variant [X]  
• Testimonial from [industry]  
• CTA button ‘[action]’.” 

14. Create Hyper-Personalized Emails:

Artificial Intelligence can be used to compose personalized emails for one-on-one interactions with customers. 

Dell reported a very high return on investment rate after employing artificial intelligence in marketing for their emails. Doing so involved dividing their wide consumer base into multiple segments based on their purchase patterns, age group, and other such data that would impact their buying decisions. These segments were then sent customized emails and newsletters with headlines and subject details that were most suited to catch their attention. Once a target audience had been set, Dell could further entice them with customized discounts and offers. After employing this AI technology, Dell reported an increase in both click-through rates and conversions. 

Customized emails not only provide consumers with deals best for them, thereby increasing chances of them remaining loyal buyers, but also provides a human element in an otherwise technical industry. This human element, which can make consumers feel valued can be all the difference between customers who return for further purchases and customers who don’t. 

Tools suggestion:

• Rasa IO: helps brands create “Smart Newsletters” to boost customer engagement and sales 
• Persado: Emotionally optimized subject lines

Prompt Library:

“Create 3 email versions for [segment]:  

• Cart abandoners → “Your size is still available!”  
• Loyal buyers → “VIP early access to [new product]”  
• Inactive → “We miss you! Here’s 20% off.” 

15. Qualify Your Leads And Nurture Them: 

As a marketer, one of your key goals is to send quality leads to the sales team and also nurture those leads until they convert.

Tools suggestion:

• Exceed AI: This is an AI-powered lead conversion automation platform that automatically qualifies your leads by asking them relevant qualifying questions in human-like conversations before passing them on to sales. This could help bring sales and marketing in perfect alignment and grow revenues for the organization.
• Drift: AI-powered sales bots

Prompt Library:

“Rate leads 1-10 based on:  

• Page visits (>5 = +3 points)  
• Demo requests (+5 points)  
• Job title match [list] (+2 points).” 

16. Create Unique Marketing Campaigns

With every brand trying to engage customers on digital media, there is a lot of noise and clutter out there.

If you want your marketing campaigns to drive real impact, you need to be creative and unique.

If you think creativity is only within the ambit of humans, think twice! You could use AI to your advantage when it comes to creativity as well – take a look at this example from Nutella in Italy. The Nutella Unica campaign used AI to generate millions of unique package designs, which acted as prized collectibles that consumers rushed to buy. Apart from driving sales the campaign also created a lot of social media chatter that helped the brand drive awareness and recall.

Tools suggestions:

• Runway ML: Generative AI for visuals
• Adobe Firefly: Brand-safe AI imagery

Prompt Library:

“Brainstorm 5 viral campaign ideas for using:  

• AR filters  
• User-generated content  
• Limited edition AI art.”  

In this day and age, when consumers are spoilt for choice between multiple brands in the market, it becomes necessary to make them feel valued to ensure their loyalty.

Human capital alone is no longer enough to drive delightful customer experiences in the fast-paced world that we live in. With the pace only going to increase, marketers need to realize that it is not marketers vs AI but marketers plus AI that would allow marketers to be more productive, drive better impact, and improve marketing ROI while ensuring that our marketing campaigns continue to have the most important human touch. 

How have you been using AI to power your marketing? Which are some of your favorite tools? Do let us know in the comments below.

If you’re interested in knowing more about AI tools to enhance your marketing, do not forget to read our other informative blog posts. Stay ahead and be part of the future of content creation today!

• 15 Social Media AI Tools You’ll Need in 2023
• Top 15 AI Video Generator Tools
• How to Use Predictive Analytics in Data-Driven Marketing
• Top AI tools for task automation

FAQs 

1. How can AI qualify and nurture leads more effectively?

AI-powered lead qualification tools like Exceed AI and Drift analyze interactions, score leads, and automate follow-ups to improve conversion rates.

2. How does predictive analytics help marketers?

Predictive analytics tools like Pattern89 and Pecan AI forecast customer behavior, ad performance, and churn rates, allowing marketers to make data-driven decisions.

3. How does AI ensure brand safety in digital ads?

AI-powered tools like GumGum scan online content to prevent ads from appearing on harmful or irrelevant sites, ensuring that brand reputation is maintained.

4. Can AI automate repetitive marketing tasks?

Yes, AI-powered automation tools like Smacient’s Meta Descriptions Writer and Python scripts can generate meta descriptions, schedule social media posts, and optimize workflows.