5 Ways AI Is Being Used in Marketing in 2024
Well, the big initial hype wave of ChatGPT has come, and lo and behold, a human being is still writing the BNL blog (Hey, it’s Lyle 🙋🏼♂️). What does this mean for the supposed tidal wave of AI in our professional lives? Was the whole thing a big fad, never to be thought of again? Was AI an oversold, underbaked ‘innovation’ that we can safely ignore?
If that all sounds a little tongue-in-cheek, it’s because it is. While our entire lives might not be run by AI just yet, the door is now wide open for new innovations in the field of artificial intelligence—in short, AI is here to stay. It may not be the massive overnight transformation of our business world that some were expecting, but we’ll likely never know a world without AI again.
AI Isn’t a New Thing
With so much AI-related stuff in the news lately, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a brand-spanking-new invention that is only now being used. But in reality, AI isn’t a new thing at all. Sure, we’re seeing an all-new level of complexity, sophistication, and accessibility for the average person, but AI has actually already been a fixture in many professional and service scenarios and niches for some time.
It’s only in the last year or two that many AI tools have become available for use by the general public. But here are a few longstanding examples of AI being used to support human work:
Chatbots – It’s true, some of these ‘intelligent’ chatbots that pop up on business websites are smarter than others. But they’re still an example of AI that’s been used for years to save time and money on simple customer inquiries.
Data Analysis – AI is routinely used to synthesize and analyze large volumes of data. Whether it’s a big marketing firm analyzing thousands of impressions at a time or a scientific research clinic analyzing patient data, AI can make short work of this otherwise time-consuming task.
Personalized Algorithms – Your TikTok algorithm that knows you so well? Yep—that’s AI. Same goes for your Instagram Reels feed, your YouTube recommendations, and the bingeable shows that pop up on your Netflix. All of these personalized feeds depend on AI to learn about your tastes and cater to them.
Recruitment – If you’ve ever applied to a big company or hiring firm in your life, you can basically guarantee that your resume, cover letter, and application have been run through an AI program. These are used to sift through big application piles and refine the list down to top candidates.
As you can see, AI is already firmly in place as a go-to tool for many businesses. But as we mentioned, the current renaissance has given us a number of new ways to use this tool, specifically in the way we market. Here are 5 of the latest ways AI is being used for marketing.
5 Ways AI is Used by Marketers
Content Generation
The first and most obvious way that marketers are using AI is in content generation. ChatGPT is the biggest example—this powerful large language model (LLM) is capable of generating semi-original content based on any prompt you enter. For example, you could enter the following prompt:
“Write an 800-word blog post on the ways AI is being used in marketing. Use a casual tone, throw in a few jokes here and there. Use Canadian spelling.”
While the results from ChatGPT can sometimes be a bit lacklustre, they provide a great starting point to edit and rework. However, tools like ChatGPT aren’t limited to long-form content. AI can also be used to help you create and refine short-form writing. We can see this on the new AI social media caption-writer feature on Later.com or Agorapulse’s AI writing assistant. We’ve also seen AI being used as a tool to identify keywords to optimize word choice for email and social campaigns.
Beyond the written word, AI is even being used as a tool for image generation. Canva, the already popular graphic design platform, now offers an AI text-to-image program—essentially like ChatGPT for pictures. All of this means that AI can be a big help in content creation, often the biggest job for busy marketers.
2. Smart Automation
The main appeal of AI is using it for the tedious tasks that we don’t love to do. And fortunately, AI tools are already in full swing to help us out with some of the classic marketing chores.
For example, many social media publishing platforms are now offering AI tools to monitor your audience and optimize your posting times. AI is also being used by many companies to filter and categorize incoming messages on social media. Using keyword and phrase recognition, these AI tools can automatically sort messages into different groups, making things way easier on social media managers. Some will even use AI auto-responders to reply to certain kinds of simple messages, meaning a human doesn’t have to personally reply to every last message.
AI can also be used to speed up email marketing, using language models to generate hundreds or thousands of personalized emails. If you’ve ever done an email campaign yourself, you already know how much time this particular tool can save.
3. Social Media Listening
Social listening refers to the practice of searching the internet to discover mentions and anything else being said about a certain brand or individual. With enough information from social media listening, you can begin to develop insights that will guide the way you build your brand online.
Of course, this can be a big job to do manually—imagine combing through every corner of Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn for mentions of a big company! AI helps bring these insights to you by actively ‘listening’, using an ever-changing algorithm to get better at finding relevant data. When you’ve given your AI tools enough time to get a lay of the land, you can eventually use these insights to create in-depth marketing strategies and generally get a temperature check of your brand in the minds of your audience.
4. Audience Insights
As you probably know, the best way to market is with a combined approach that takes multiple channels into account. For a lot of brands, this means being active on all major social platforms, running regular email campaigns, and using other advertising streams to expand your reach.
Every marketing channel you use will have different audience breakdowns. The largest age group for Facebook, for example, is in the 25-34 range, while the largest age group for Instagram is 18-24. These are surface-level audience insights, but they should immediately change the way you think about marketing on each platform. AI can help you learn more about your specific audience niches on each channel, helping you tweak your strategy to make the biggest splash possible every time you make a post.
5. Language and Accessibility Tools
We believe in making the world a more accessible place, ensuring people can participate regardless of their ability, their location, or what language they speak. AI has already proven to be a big help in this regard. For one thing, AI can be used to gain information about audience segments from all over the world, helping you tailor your content to their tastes.
AI has also revolutionized online translation, offering a new level of nuance and complexity that older web translators simply couldn’t match. This means it’s now easier than ever to get high-quality translations of your content, whether it’s for personalized email campaigns or to offer more choices on your company site.
AI can also be a big help for those with disabilities. AI is being used today to automatically generate transcriptions for audio content and captions for videos, making your content more accessible without the need to hire someone to do the legwork. AI can also be used to analyze and describe images and video for those with visual impairments.
Make the Most of Your Marketing
As you can see, the advent of AI has seriously shaken things up in the marketing world—and we’re still in the early stages. In the coming weeks, months, and years, we can only expect the unexpected when it comes to artificial intelligence and the way it guides and shapes the marketing landscape.
Curious about AI and how it can coexist with that essential human touch for big results? The unicorns at BNL are here to help! We love keeping up on the newest advancements in AI and finding ways to incorporate them into our own work, all while keeping the personal, handcrafted touch that sets us apart. To learn more, feel free to book a call and let’s chat!