Artificial Intelligence (AI) has dramatically transformed various industries, including digital marketing. It delivers sophisticated capabilities that allow businesses to provide a more personalised, customer-centric experience. With advancements in AI, marketers have tools at their disposal that can precisely predict customer behaviour and preferences, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of their marketing strategies.
AI’s impact on digital marketing is multifaceted. It enables personalisation at scale, allowing businesses to tailor their offerings based on individual customer’s preferences and behaviours. Brands can analyse large volumes of data to provide customised content, product recommendations, and targeted marketing messages, fostering a deeper connection with their audience.
In this article, we’ll dive into how artificial intelligence can potentially impact SEO and digital marketing, and what the potential drawbacks are.
Where Can AI Be Used In Digital Marketing?
Given the broad applications that artificial intelligence can be used in, it’s no surprise that it can also be used for digital marketing and SEO. Below are some examples of how AI is already being deployed in the digital marketing space.
AI’s potential in content generation lies in its ability to analyse vast amounts of data and produce intelligible content in a fraction of the time it takes a human. Tools like GPT-4 can generate a wide variety of content, from blog posts to social media updates, and can do so at a scale previously unimaginable. According to Statista, over 890 companies across a variety of industries have already been using ChatGPT in 2023 and this number is expected to grow.
There are also a variety of AI tools, such as natural language processing and generation (NLP and NLG), assist in creating SEO-friendly content. They can suggest optimisations, make recommendations for keyword relevance, and generate content, reducing the time and effort required from the marketing team. Automated content generation reduces the need for manual work, thereby significantly speeding up marketing processes.
Artificial intelligence can also be used in content optimisation. Through machine learning algorithms, it can analyse engagement metrics and predict what type of content will resonate with a particular audience. This allows marketers to tailor content more effectively, increasing its reach and engagement.
Tools such as AI-powered content editors can provide real-time feedback on SEO performance of the content, including keyword density, readability scores, and grammatical errors.
AI tools can aggregate data from a multitude of sources in a fraction of the time it would take a human to perform the same task. This includes data from social media platforms, online reviews, and consumer feedback forums, providing marketers with a comprehensive view of their target audience’s preferences, habits, and feedback.
There are tools out there already that can help you speed up the keyword research process by completing the bulk of the initial research, effectively finding relevant keywords for your industry in a matter of a few minutes. As a result, this can help digital marketers to roll out SEO and PPC campaigns quicker.
Moreover, AI automates routine marketing tasks, such as email scheduling and social media posting, freeing up time for marketers to focus on more complex and creative tasks. Automation can help streamline business processes helping digital marketers to save time.
For example, another thing you may have noticed a lot more of recently is the use of chatbots on websites. AI-powered chatbots can help improve customer service by providing instant responses to customer queries, effectively operating a 24/7 support service. These chatbots can be trained with AI to provide quicker responses to generic questions, and they are also capable of pre-qualifying potential customers to save your team time and effort in gathering initial information.
AI-powered chatbots are redefining customer service in the digital marketing space. They provide instant responses to customer queries, improving customer satisfaction and freeing up time for human customer service representatives to handle more complex issues.
Despite these benefits, the adoption of AI in digital marketing raises questions about whether there is too much automation. However, rather than replacing humans, AI is more likely to augment human capabilities. AI can handle repetitive, mundane tasks, freeing marketers to focus on strategic thinking and creativity, which are distinctly human traits.
What Are The Drawbacks Of AI On Digital Marketing?
While it provides several benefits like personalised customer experience, predictive analytics, and chatbots, it also brings with it some challenges and drawbacks.
Another drawback is the risk of over-reliance on AI. While AI can help automate many tasks, it cannot replace the human touch required in digital marketing. Emotional intelligence and creativity, which are fundamental to marketing, can’t be replicated by AI.
Over-reliance on AI may lead to a lack of personalisation and creativity in marketing efforts. This dependence, coupled with the unpredictability of AI algorithms, can sometimes result in unexpected outcomes or mistakes that can adversely affect the brand image.
AI implementation in digital marketing also comes with costs. The technology itself, along with the necessary infrastructure and training for staff, can be expensive.
Many tools that are available to the digital marketing industry are on a subscription-based model which means that you can expect to be paying recurring costs to use a piece of software. This needs to be factored into your forecasting and is also another recurring expense. This might be a significant deterrent for small to medium businesses.
AI solutions, while intelligent, lack the personal touch and emotional intelligence inherent in human interaction. This can lead to communication that feels sterile or impersonal, which can potentially harm brand-customer relationships.
Having a personal touch is particularly important with SEO services or any type of customer-facing service as it helps to foster trust and enables you to build relationships with clients. When you sell a service, part of what makes your business stand out is the communication, and it’s so important to retain this human touch if you want to provide a good service.
Future Predictions for AI
AI-Powered Predictive Analytics
AI predictive analytics is predicted to automate customer segmentation, an area that is usually more complex. Through machine learning, AI can identify patterns and trends in data sets, automatically segmenting customers based on their behaviour and interactions, and predicting future actions. This will allow marketing professionals to save time and tailor their strategies to each customer segment, resulting in more targeted marketing campaigns.
Moreover, AI predictive analytics may streamline the way marketers measure campaign effectiveness. Instead of relying on post-campaign data, predictive analytics can forecast the outcomes of marketing strategies before they are even implemented, enabling businesses to make data-driven decisions and allocate resources more effectively.
Better Media Content Generation
While AI can already produce detailed images and artwork from a simple text prompt, the next step will be AI-generated videos. Similar to how AI can generate a unique image from a text prompt in a few minutes, AI-generated videos can help save a considerable amount of time on media production.
With further advancements in deep learning algorithms, we can anticipate AI tools producing high-resolution, ultra-realistic images and videos. This technological leap will save significant time for digital marketers, who may be spending a lot of resources on graphic design and video production. Instead of creating visuals from scratch, marketers will be able to input simple descriptions into AI software, which will then generate striking and relevant images and videos.
However, one area that remains to be unchanged for now with AI-generated content is copyright law. AI relies on being trained in order to know what to generate based on a given prompt, and this training content is, more often than not, sourced from copyrighted work. Depending on where the source of the training content comes from, there could be copyright infringement issues which prevents commercial usage.
In summary, AI holds significant potential for the future of digital marketing. It is not a question of whether AI will impact digital marketing, but to what extent. As technology continues to evolve, businesses that adapt to these changes and leverage AI’s capabilities are likely to thrive in the ever-competitive digital marketing landscape.
About Robert Stoubos
Founder & CEO of Odyssey New Media
With over 10 years’ experience in Digital Marketing, Robert has become a results-driven marketer with the skills required to successfully implement cross-channel digital marketing campaigns that generate increased brand awareness, sales and ROI. Robert also founded Odyssey New Media in 2010 which has become a leading full service Digital Marketing agency in Birmingham.
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