According to a recent survey by Fit Small Business, 98% of marketers already use Artificial Intelligence (AI) in some capacity, highlighting its role in modern marketing strategies. But how can you use it to its fullest potential?

From content personalisation to speedy data analytics all the way to promoting collaboration within your team, AI can enhance your marketing efforts and drive better results for your business. Discover more below.

Key highlights

• AI can help you deliver tailored content and experiences based on individual user preferences and behaviours.
• It can also process large datasets to uncover insights and predict customer behaviours.
• Specific generative AI tools can assist in creating engaging content while ensuring brand voice consistency through human review.
• To effectively use AI tools, you need to train your staff. Encourage ongoing collaboration through knowledge-sharing sessions and review work processes monthly or quarterly.

Understanding AI for digital marketing

Given you’re reading this article, we’ll assume you probably don’t need a definition on what AI is. Instead, let’s pinpoint how AI can enhance your digital marketing strategies. Involving various technologies, AI can help streamline tasks which have traditionally been time-consuming (we’ll describe these tasks in detail further on in the article).

But while the capabilities of AI are truly impressive, it’s important to understand that it does have its limitations. Understanding the context of your request, a dependence on high-quality data, and a lack of human touch are just a few we can think of. But let’s not dwell on that too much, instead let’s get into some key applications you can start using.

How to use AI for digital marketing

Customer personalisation

AI-driven personalisation fits content and experiences to individual users based on their preferences, behaviours, and past interactions. By feeding your AI tool with quality customer data, it can potentially generate:

• customised product recommendations
• personalised email campaigns, and
• dynamic content.

Higher Ranking Hot Tip: Use tools like Amazon’s Personalise or similar platforms to automatically suggest similar products or services to your customers based on their browsing history and past purchases. A great starting point is by integrating these tools into your website to enhance user experience.

Data analytics

AI can process vast amounts of data quickly, identifying trends and insights that inform marketing strategies.

Higher Ranking Hot Tip: Use AI analytics tools (e.g., Google Analytics with AI features) to track customer interactions and predict future behaviours. Review these insights once a month to adjust your marketing strategies accordingly.

Content brainstorming and optimisation

AI can assist you and your team when brainstorming content ideas. There are countless free online generative AI tools with can help you conceptualise blog posts, social media content, and ad copy based on user data and trends.

Higher Ranking Hot Tip: Use generative AI content tools (like ChatGPT, Perplexity AI, or Jasper) to streamline your brainstorming sessions – for example, prompt the AI to provide you with ten unique blog post topics.

Then, get a content writer or copywriter to refine your prompts, or edit the AI topics to align with your brand voice or audience. With this content, they can then craft an engaging piece of work.

Customer segmentation

AI enables effective customer segmentation by categorising users based on shared characteristics or behaviours. This targeted approach helps you see if your marketing messages are relevant and engaging.

Higher Ranking Hot Tip: Use AI tools (like Funnel) to segment your audience into different groups based on demographics or behaviours. Develop tailored campaigns for each segment to increase engagement rates.

Chatbots for customer support

AI-powered chatbots can provide real-time customer support, answering queries and guiding users through their purchasing journey. This not only enhances customer experience but also reduces the workload on human agents.

Higher Ranking Hot Tip: Finances permitting, develop and integrate an AI chatbot on your website or social media channels. Start with basic FAQs and gradually expand its capabilities based on user interactions and feedback.

How to effectively use AI tools

It’s perhaps no surprise to hear that to truly benefit from the capabilities of AI, you and your staff must be equipped with the skills to use them. Effective training ensures that you staff have the knowledge to understand how AI can enhance their workflows.

Conduct a skills assessment

Start by evaluating your team’s current understanding of AI technologies. Use surveys or one-on-one consultations to identify their self-assessed abilities and areas for improvement.

Focus on AI literacy, not technicality

Rather than overwhelming your staff with technical jargon, focus on building from their foundational understanding of AI. This can include:

• explaining what AI is
• how it works, and
• its potential to enhance their roles.

Organise training sessions that focus on tackling these basics, then narrow down the needs of each department and train appropriately. For example, the marketing team could learn how AI analyses customer data to create targeted campaigns, while customer service representatives could explore how chatbots can assist them.

Encourage ongoing collaboration

They say teamwork makes the dream work. Hackneyed expressions aside, there is substance behind this statement. Once you have given your staff the knowledge needed to skilfully use AI tool, urge them to discuss challenges and share best practices. Hold monthly ‘lunch and learn’ sessions where each team member discusses what they’ve been using AI for during the month. Keep it informal and unstructured – you may learn something game changing. 

How to maintain AI effectiveness

Monitor performance

Assess the efficiency of your AI tools through clear Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) like engagement and conversion rates. Reviewing these metrics every month or quarter helps identify trends and areas for improvement. This can help you guarantee your AI strategies remain successful and aligned with marketing goals.

Collect feedback

Gathering feedback from customers and team members offers valuable insights into the performance of AI-generated messages. A great way to capture this data is through post-interaction surveys. These can capture customer experiences and encourage team members to share their thoughts on AI tools. This can highlight strengths and weaknesses, and promote an ongoing culture of improvement.

Gain insights from data

Regular review meetings – held monthly or quarterly – allow teams to discuss performance data and brainstorm improvements. This process ensures that your AI strategies can evolve in response to customer needs and market trends.

Stay updated with AI advancements

AI has advanced at a remarkable rate in an equally remarkable short time frame. While it may seem daunting to keep up to date with the technology’s advances, it’s much easier than you think.

Schedule monthly knowledge-sharing sessions where team members can present insights from recent learning experiences or industry trends – like the ‘lunch and learn’ sessions we mentioned earlier.

Then, based on what you learn from these meetings, update your AI training data is to improve its effectiveness and relevance. Incorporate new trends, customer insights, and successful message examples to guarantee your AI tools remain accurate and responsive.

By analysing recent customer interactions and feedback, you can refine the data that informs your AI models, allowing them to deliver more personalised experiences.

We also suggest you set up a quarterly review process to assess and refresh your training data based on the latest customer insights and performance metrics.

Let Higher Ranking do your heavy lifting

If you’re looking to get the most from lead-generation using AI but aren’t sure where to start, we can help you out. The friendly team at Higher Ranking can help you develop a B2B strategy involving AI to increase your conversion rates and skyrocket your business’s potential. Ask us about it – book a chat today!