It’s an unquestionable fact that AI tools in marketing have hit the mainstream and s changing how customers and marketers perceive digital marketing.
If you’re not yet aware, chances are you’ll be pressed to know that AI is extensively employed by businesses of all sizes to promote their brand across and beyond the internet.
In fact, 61 percent of all marketers agree that they use an AI Tool as part of their data and marketing strategy.
But have no worries, you’re still early to the party. The penetration of AI is still in its nascent stages. With the proper guidance, it isn’t much time before you can leverage the power of AI tools for your marketing strategies.
In this article, we walk you through everything there is to know about AI in marketing and the best AI-powered marketing tools currently available.
Let’s get started.
What is an AI Marketing Tool?
AI marketing tools are software platforms that employ Artificial intelligence to automate the decision-making process for marketing campaigns. These decisions are based on accumulated data gained through real-time market analysis.
The end goal of all AI marketing tools is to optimize the accuracy and precision in anticipating the customer’s next move.
Why Use AI-Powered Marketing Tools?
Marketers are smart.
But how wide can they cast marketing efforts to maximize customer acquisition?
Limited.
With 76% of customers expecting companies to understand and cater to their needs and preferences, it takes a bit beyond the top-tier marketer’s skillsets to get those numbers up in terms of customers and better ROI.
AI technology enables marketers to have a more comprehensive view of customer behavior. By crunching data through a wide multitude of sources, AI marketing provides deep-tier insights that would be difficult to obtain through conventional means.
AI-powered tech can also help identify warm leads and guide them through the sales process, ultimately leading to increased revenue for your business.
The Benefits of Using AI in Marketing
Smarter and faster decision making
AI can help marketers make decisions faster and more accurately, freeing time to focus on strategic initiatives.
AI-powered reports can also provide real-time insights into campaign performance, allowing marketers to course correct on the fly.
By leveraging the power of self-learning solutions, businesses can stay ahead of the competition and keep their finger on the pulse of the latest trends.
Increased ROI
AI-powered marketing enables businesses to create a predictive customer analysis and design customer journeys more targeted and individually tailored, effectively increasing ROI on each customer contact.
Simply put, through AI, marketers can gain greater customer insights and know how to group them and drive them to the subsequent steps with a top-tier customer experience.
By deeply analyzing customer insights and understanding what they want, marketers can maximize ROI without wasting budgets on efforts with no effects.
Enhanced marketing measurement
Organizations have been working on maintaining a constant sync in pace with all the data produced through digital campaigns for a long time.
With dashboards that leverage AI solutions, it’s no longer a hassle. It provides a comprehensive view of segmented data that works for the campaign and replicates it across multiple channels through pre-calculated budget allocation tactics.
Performance Max campaigns by Google Adwords are one example of AI and Google’s incredible depth of data to improve advertising strategy, bringing ads to the right audience at the right time.
How can AI be used in Marketing?
Implementing such technology with something as advanced as AI gives rise to the need for a solid roadmap for leveraging AI for marketing and business operations.
Here are a few factors to consider –
Establish Goals
Marketing teams looking to implement AI-based solutions should start by establishing clear goals and analytics.
First, identify areas where AI can improve campaigns or operations, such as segmentation. Then, establish KPIs that will help measure success through qualitative factors that would enrich customer experience on the go.
Selecting an AI Platform
As marketers look to adopt AI solutions, it is essential to select a platform that will best meet their needs.
As such, it’s crucial to take ample time to evaluate each option and select the one that best meets your needs.
Key factors to consider include –
- Ease of use – Some AI platforms can be quite complex, making it difficult to get started. Others are more user-friendly, making it easier to get up and running quickly.
- Cost – AI platforms can have wide margins when it comes to price, so be sure to select one that fits within your budget.
Acquire Data Science Talent
Many marketing teams lack employees with the necessary data science and AI expertise, making it difficult to work with vast amounts of data and deliver insights.
To fully take advantage of AI-based marketing solutions and get programs off the ground, organizations need to work with third-party organizations that can assist in collecting and analyzing data to train AI programs and facilitate ongoing maintenance.
Sales forecasting
Marketers need reliable data to make the best out of digital campaigns.
AI-enabled systems can predict customers’ intent as in their likelihood of buying a specific product in what quantity, helping businesses define the right set of products to promote and to whom to drive higher sales in the long run.
All of this is done through pre-accumulated data based on customer interactions and past purchases.
This way of creating business intelligence enables businesses to avoid selling out-of-stock products by balancing inventory levels.
Get AI-powered customer insights.
As a marketer, you always seek that extra edge to help understand your customers and create more targeted campaigns for them.
By collecting data from billions of interactions, AI provides customized insights into your customers, what they like and don’t like, and how they behave.
This information can then be used to create customer personas and more effective customer segmentation that would further assist with making better decisions for your campaigns.
AI-enhanced PPC advertising
AI tools have given rise to a new era for PPC.
AI-enhanced PPC can significantly boost any marketing campaign by automating key tasks and increasing efficiency.
Here are just a few ways how AI can help with PPC campaigns-
Automated bid management
AI can help you optimize your bids for maximum ROI by constantly monitoring data points like click-through rate, conversion rate, and search engine rankings.
This ensures that you’re never overspending on your PPC campaigns and that each click brings you closer to your goal.
Greater targeting accuracy
You can target ads with unprecedented precision based on demographics, user behavior, and even past conversion data with AI.
This allows you to approach your ideal customer with laser-like focus while dramatically improving your chances of conversion.
Automated A/B testing
One of the best ways to improve your PPC campaigns is to test different variables and see what works best constantly.
AI can automate this process by running multiple tests in parallel and quickly identifying which variations are performing best. This saves you valuable time that can be better spent on other areas of your marketing.
Chatbots
By creating a chatbot for your website or social media, it’d be easier to provide customers with a 24/7 support system to answer their queries, provide information about products/services, and even make recommendations about potential purchases.
On top of that, chatbots also help collect customer data and feedback, which can be used to optimize your marketing tactics.
Dynamic Pricing
Dynamic pricing refers to a pricing strategy wherein a product’s price is determined by demand and supply.
A good example of dynamic pricing is the prices of ride-sharing apps that increase as demand rises.
While this may sound unfair to some consumers, dynamic pricing can be beneficial for businesses, as it allows them to optimize their prices in real-time based on customer demand.
Best AI marketing tools
AI Content Marketing Tools –
MarketMuse
MarketMuse is a high-end AI Content Marketing tool that can help you create authoritative and comprehensive content that is fully optimized for search engines.
Using machine learning and self-learning algorithms, MarketMuse provides personalized suggestions for your domain to produce the most effective and relevant results.
Features
- Content optimization
- Competitive analysis
- Topic research
- Content auditing
- Content strategy planning
Pricing
The prices range from $249/month to $999/month.
Pros
- Article Optimization
- Unique Questions
- Competition Analysis
Cons
- Expensive Plans
- Limited Credits
- Limited Queries
- Lack of Sharing Features
Jasper.ai
Jasper, previously known as conversion AI, is a powerful AI-powered marketing tool that provides users with real-time insights and recommendations to improve their marketing efforts.
Jasper uses machine learning algorithms to analyze data from multiple sources, including social media, web analytics, and email marketing platforms.
Based on this data, Jasper provides users with high-quality content and suggestions that can help improve their marketing strategies.
Features
- Content improver for high-quality rephrasing.
- AIDA and PAS marketing framework.
- In-built plagiarism checker.
- Supports 25+ Languages.
Pricing
Pricing starts at $59/month for 50k credits/user.
Boss mode offers the highest credits of 300k/month at $247/month.
Pros
- Reduces research time.
- Advanced AI based on GPT-3 by Open AI.
- Multipurpose.
Cons
- Expensive.
- Mediocre output content.
- Generic output for Blog posts.
AI Email Marketing Tools
Phrasee
Phrasee is a cloud-based solution that uses AI to automate email marketing processes and help businesses increase clicks, conversions, interactions, and impressions.
The AI-enabled solution helps retailers evaluate key metrics to identify the highest performing email subject lines and facilitate decision-making to increase customer engagement.
With Phrasee, businesses can promote digital campaigns across Instagram and Facebook, accelerating their reach and Results.
Features
- Dynamic content
- Predictive analytics
- Brand management
- A/B testing.
Pricing
The prices range from $49/month to $499/month and can be availed upon a demo request.
Pros
- Generates high-performing subject lines.
- A/B testing capabilities.
- Offers a free trial.
Cons
- Limited integrations.
Smartwriter.ai
Smartwriter.ai is an AI-powered email marketing tool that helps businesses create and send personalized, targeted emails to their customers.
Smartwriter uses machine learning algorithms to analyze customer data and identify patterns that can be used to create targeted email lists.
Features
- Email personalization
- Dynamic content
- Advanced segmentation
Pricing
Smartwriter.ai offers three different pricing plans, depending on the size of your business.
Basic plan – $49/Month.
Popular plan – $124/Month.
Pro plan – $299/Month.
Pros
- Offers a free trial.
- Easy to use interface.
- Advanced segmentation capabilities.
Cons
- Limited integrations.
- Lack of phone support.
AI Marketing tools – Customer service and Monitoring
Chatfuel
Chatfuel is a chatbot builder that helps businesses to automate FAQs and qualify leads before they are transferred to a live sales agent.
The tool makes use of natural language processing (NLP) to understand customer queries and accurate responses in real-time.
It also provides integrations with various third-party tools, such as Calendly, Shopify, or Google Sheets.
Features
- 24/7 uptime for customers.
- Easy Drag-and-Drop builder.
- API for customer integration.
Pricing
The first 50 chats are free, and then the user has to resort to either of the below plans.
Pro Plan – $15/Month.
Premium – $199/ Month.
Pros
- Simplified UI for building chatbots.
- Recommended for prototyping bots.
- Can build the first chatbot for free.
Cons
- Poor Documentation.
- No support for subroutines.
- NLP isn’t good enough.
Manychat
Manychat has proven itself a prominent fixture in the AI chatbot industry. It focuses mainly on Facebook Messenger, but they do have support for Instagram Direct as well.
Manychat is a comprehensive platform that provides users with everything they need to create and manage their chatbot, including templates, tutorials, support, and more.
Plus, the parent company is always adding new features and integrations to keep up with the latest trends in the chatbot industry.
Features
- Multi-Channel Communication
- Activity Dashboard
- Email Management
- Third-Party Integrations
- Customizable Branding
Pricing
Manychat offers a free plan as well as a paid plan.
The paid plan comes at a flat rate of $15/month.
Pros
- Responsive customer support team.
- Inexpensive compared to similar competitors.
- Ease of use for creating chatbot flows.
Cons
- Unable to create chatbots for web channels.
- The free plan has very limited features.
AI SEO Tools
Frase.io
Frase.io is a popular name among content optimization tools in the SEO community. Frase is designed to help increase rankings, engagement, and conversions in the SERPs.
With Frase, you can quickly create on-page content optimized for search engines and your target audience.
You can also use Frase to analyze your competitor’s content and identify opportunities to improve your content strategy.
Features
- Citation finder.
- Content generation.
- Long-form assistant.
- Tone checker.
Pricing
Solo plan – $19.99/Month
Basic Plan – $44.99/Month/User
Team plan – $114/Month/3 Users.
Enterprise plan – Available upon request through the website.
Pros
- Faster content brief creation.
- Great customer service.
- Seamless tool usability.
Cons
- Need more guidance to add relevant keywords.
- Frase AI writer doesn’t make it up with its competitors.
Surfer SEO
Surfer is an all-in-one content intelligence tool that makes it easier to create a content strategy and write optimized content for Search engines.
With Surfer’s smart algorithms, you can quickly identify gaps in your content, find the most popular topics in your niche, and create comprehensive content strategies to help you achieve your marketing goals.
Features
- Keyword research
- Content planning
- SERP analysis
- On-page optimization
Price
Basic plan – $49/Month.
Pro Plan – $99/Month.
Business Plan – $199/Month.
Pros
- Complete package for content editing, auditing, and content planning.
- Analyze content for more than 500 factors.
- Very easy to rank for long-tail Keywords with Surfer.
Cons
- Difficult interface for beginners in SEO.
- Free trial not available.
How to choose the Best AI-Based Marketing Platform?
AI marketing tools look straight-up fancy with all that top-tier “AI and Machine-learning” features.
But often, you wouldn’t need all of those features, or the worst, the specs you need may not be offered by the fancy “AI” tool.
Therefore, it’s important to define your needs and choose a platform that syncs with the same.
With that said, here are a few major factors in an AI tool that turns out to be of crucial importance for marketers –
Easy integration with other marketing tools
Marketing is becoming increasingly complex, and businesses need to be able to manage their customer data across multiple channels effectively.
The best AI-based marketing platforms must offer features that allow businesses to easily connect with their existing marketing tools, such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems, email marketing platforms, and social media management platforms.
User-Friendly
After all, you don’t want to end up with a platform that’s so complicated and confusing to use that it hinders your marketing efforts.
Instead, look for platforms that are easy to navigate and with clear instructions.
The last thing you may want to do is to waste valuable time trying to figure out how to use the platform, so make sure user-friendliness is high on your list of priorities.
Scalability
A scalable platform will grow with your business, accommodating your evolving needs as you generate more data and expand your customer base.
Cost
Cost is always a major factor to consider when making any purchase, especially when choosing a marketing platform.
After all, marketing can be a very expensive field to throw your money into, and you need to be sure you are getting the most bang for your buck.
Some of these platforms are affordable, while others can be quite expensive.
The best way to determine which platform is right for you is to evaluate your needs and budget and compare the costs of the different options.
By doing your research, you can be sure you are getting the best possible value for your money.
Conclusion
Artificial Intelligence has had an influence on marketing for a long time. But with AI tools becoming mainstream and all major players employing AI in their marketing arsenal, these platforms have become more of a necessity than a luxury.
As a business, leveraging AI marketing tools to create a more strategized approach for years to come is crucial.
The AI marketing tools discussed in this article are merely a fraction of what’s out there. Whatever your marketing needs, you can be sure there’s an artificial intelligence platform on the market to help you transform your marketing campaigns.
Ready to learn more? Check out the best AI recruitment tools.
