The Impact of AI on Marketing: A Look Ahead

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last couple of months you’ve no doubt heard about ChatGPT and the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI)  to disrupt all parts of our lives.

I’ve had friends in the marketing and communications industry tell me how worried they are about their long-term job security as these tools continue to evolve and get better at mimicing different styles of prose.

I remember a time when I believed, that as a writer, I was bullet-proof when it came to automation and outsourcing.  And now I’m not so sure.

AI has already begun to revolutionize the marketing industry and those of us who live in that space can either hide our heads and hope for the best or embrace this new paradigm and adapt what we do best to a rapidly changing marketplace.

Here are some of the ways AI will disrupt your marketing and how you can use that disruption to make your business stronger.

Personalization

AI enables marketers to personalize marketing messages and content to individual consumers at scale. This results in more effective and engaging marketing campaigns.

Recently I started using a tool called Reachout.ai.

This software uses life-like artificial avatars to deliver custom video messages within emails using the recievers email as the video background. It’s amazing technology that improves click-thru rates considerably.

Predictive analytics

AI allows marketers to analyze vast amounts of data and make predictions about consumer behavior. This helps us make better data-driven decisions that improve the effectiveness of our marketing strategies.

Chatbots

We’ve all been trapped at one time or another in chatbot hell. You know what I’m talking about. You want to ask a simple question of the chatbot and get stuck in an endless loop of useless answers with no way to break free and talk to a real peson.

The next generation of AI-powered chatbots are here and they will be a lot more helpful – finally fullfilling the promise of actually providing customer service, providing consumers with instant and personalized communications, freeing up human agents to handle more complex issues.

Programmatic advertising

AI will play a larger role in programmatic advertising, allowing marketers to target the right audience with the right message at the right time.

An example of programmatic advertising is an online retailer using AI to serve personalized ads to consumers based on their browsing and purchase history. The retailer’s AI system tracks the consumer’s behavior on their website and other sites, and uses that information to make predictions about what products the consumer might be interested in. The AI system then automatically buys and displays ads for those products on relevant websites and mobile apps.

Content creation

Let’s put the cards on the table. I used ChatGPT to help me write this content. What usually takes me an hour or so of writing has been cut by at least half. I was even able to ask for an example of programmatic advertising and use that in the last section.

I’ve also used the bot to create email invites for webinars and more.

Moving forward AI will assist marketers in creating and curating high-quality content, freeing up time and resources for other tasks – like actually recording the webinars!

Social media management

AI will help marketers manage their social media presence more efficiently, by automating routine tasks such as posting and monitoring. This type of automation is not new. Mailchimp will already optimize your mass email blasts to go out at a time when people are most likely to open them based on the history of your list.

This type of automation will improve the effectiveness of all your campaigns as it increases the number of eyeballs based on realtime analytics and data.

Yes, AI is disruptive and terrifying.  But the upsides are incredible for all those who choose to embrace the efficiencies that it offers. The new tools and capabilities to personalize, analyze, and automate marketing efforts is limitless. Marketers who embrace AI will have a competitive advantage in a rapidly evolving landscape.