Why Marketers Need to Incorporate AI into Their Strategy Plans and Departments

In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) into marketing strategies is no longer optional—it's essential. AI empowers businesses to understand customer behaviors, personalize experiences, and optimize campaigns with unprecedented precision. Given the evidence of enhanced operational efficiency and return on investment, one must ask, “Should marketers make AI a focal point in their marketing plans/strategies?” Let’s examine this question.

Source: Statista

The Importance of AI in Marketing

AI transforms how businesses engage with their audiences by analyzing vast datasets to uncover patterns and insights that inform strategic decisions. This data-driven approach enables marketers to craft personalized experiences, predict consumer behaviors, and allocate resources more effectively. 

According to a Harvard Business Review article, companies leveraging AI in their marketing strategies have seen significant improvements in customer engagement and ROI. Tedious manual tasks with a high risk of human error become automated and efficient with AI, enabling marketing teams to devote more time to high-priority tasks that need their attention.

Everyone understands how AI can streamline efficiency for teams and businesses, but how do professionals know where to start, depending on the subject? Popular AI software like ChatGPT offers AI solutions, but it can be very generic and ineffective to specific needs.

Marketing Is Fun and Exciting, but It Can Be Daunting

According to Salesforce, more than 80% of consumers across B2B and B2C value personalization in efforts to win business and partnerships. With diverse personalities, backgrounds, industries, and many more target demographics, Marketers often find it challenging and time-consuming to personalize campaigns for each individual target audience. But with AI, it doesn’t have to be hard. 

AI has become the marketer’s secret weapon in driving comprehensive personalization practices that deliver real value. AI’s algorithms analyze user behavior and engagement patterns to tailor the entire buyer experience to their preferences, leading to a more personalized experience for the target. These same tools can deliver data-driven insights to marketers, enabling them to understand their user’s behaviors better to enhance the customer experience continuously.

Source: Salesforce

Types of AI Marketers Need in Their Arsenal

With AI’s benefits made clear, what are examples marketers should know? Each AI type has resources and guides on how to accurately implement it within your department’s ecosystem, enabling a smooth transition to operational efficiency:

• Machine Learning: Analyzes data to predict customer behaviors and optimize campaigns. For instance, Netflix uses machine learning algorithms to recommend content based on user preferences. 

• Natural Language Processing (NLP): Enables chatbots and virtual assistants to engage with customers conversationally, improving customer service and engagement. The most crucial aspect of NLP is the consumer insights marketers obtain, with access to understanding consumer feedback and brand sentiment. Once deemed extremely difficult to comprehend, these insights can assist marketers in predicting potential future issues, capitalizing on opportunities, and continuously improving strategy. Companies like Amazon employ NLP in their Alexa devices to interact with users seamlessly. 

• Predictive Analytics: Utilizes historical data to forecast future trends, aiding demand forecasting and inventory management. Predictive Analytics is a “cheat code” that allows marketers to stay one step ahead of their external environment, enabling a higher chance of success in competitive markets—retailers like Walmart leverage predictive analytics to optimize stock levels and meet customer demand efficiently. 

• Content Generation: Let’s take a pause real quick. Yes, AI can create content like articles, images, etc., but it shouldn’t be your solution. Search engines have cracked down on AI-generated content, leaving negative SEO scores. Personalized and human-made content is still the breadwinner for successful content, but AI can still help. Balancing the human touch with AI’s benefits can help generate quality content that resonates with users, leading it to stand out in competitive markets. Readers value creativity, emotion, and unique perspectives, and that is something AI does not offer. 

• Programmatic Advertising: Automates the ad bidding processes, leveraging algorithms to drive smarter ad placement decisions. AI’s influence in Programmatic Advertising has revolutionized marketers’ thinking and will likely be the strategy moving forward. Instead of purchasing ad space, programmatic tools can bid on ads in real-time, targeting users more precisely. In other words, Programmatic Advertising reaches the right people at the right time, maximizing return on ad spend and creating a higher chance of conversion. 

Source: Harvard Business Review

AI in Action

Still skeptical about how AI can help transform your marketing department? Don’t take my word for it; learn from actual use cases where AI helped marketers reach targeted levels of success. 

• Persado: With data spanning over 2 million messages and almost 100 million customer touchpoints, Persado utilized its AI creative strategy to analyze and implement its creative process for personalized campaigns. The results? Valuable insights into how to generate creative campaigns for tailored audiences and saving time for the team. 

• Persado Pt. 2: Persado then trained its AI platform to detect emotions, the most complicated language to master. AI categorized phrases and the components of languages to be reimagined and reassembled to deliver more compelling messages to audiences. Critical details like brand voice and segmented audiences were automatically incorporated into the messaging, aligning with Persado’s brand. 

• Nutella: Nutella wanted to stand out better in a competitive market, enjoying their products to be more desirable and talked about. Nutella partnered with an agency to utilize AI’s benefits to make it happen. AI generated 7 million one-of-a-kind labels from a dozen design patterns from Nutella’s team. The results? The 7 million jars manufactured for the campaign sold out as soon as they hit the market. 

• Volkswagen: Volkswagen has become an industry leader in utilizing automation as a critical feature for their vehicles, and they decided they wanted to automate more than just their cars. Marketers at Volkswagen trusted AI to automate its ad-buying decisions, hoping to invest less and maximize their sales with the help of AI’s Predictive Analytics. As a result, Volkswagen cut excess internal and external advertising costs while seeing a 20% increase in dealership sales. 

Marketing’s Relationship with AI Moving Forward

AI’s influence in marketing has proven that it is here to stay, and marketers need to adapt to its capabilities. The goal isn’t to replace human creativity but to enhance it, make it more sophisticated, and take it to the next level. Think of AI as your new personal assistant, helping you look your best at work. 

AI and humans go together like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or milk and cookies; one cannot thrive without the other. AI needs humans to be more specific and provide clarity when generating quality content and solutions. In other words, humans must give AI a comprehensive step-by-step blueprint to see real value. 

Would you be interested in discussing how I can help incorporate AI into your marketing plan? Let’s talk!