A HubSpot survey found that 64% of marketing professionals now use AI tools in some capacity. At my agency, we’ve used AI to help segment audiences, facilitate web personalization and boost keyword optimization.
As digital touchpoints increase and businesses race to meet rising consumer expectations, integrating AI into your marketing will give you a competitive edge, delivering relevance at scale and redefining customer engagement. Let’s take a deeper look at how you can use AI for smarter marketing.
Get Real-Time Insights For Building Campaigns
AI can transform marketing by automating data-heavy processes and delivering real-time insights that enable faster campaign adjustments and enhance targeting precision. This not only makes campaigns cost-efficient but enables you to engage the right audience at the right time.
For example, Mastercard, with its own AI-powered tool called Digital Engine, tracks billions of conversations in real time to identify micro-trends relevant to its campaigns and engage audiences before the topic peaks. In one campaign, click-through rates increased by 37% and engagement rose by 43%, while the cost per click dropped by 29%.
Personalize Recommendations To Boost Loyalty
Personalization is no longer a luxury; many consumers expect it. AI’s ability to analyze user behavior can help you create hyper-personalized experiences that keep customers engaged and enhance lifetime value and loyalty.
Netflix using AI to personalize content recommendations for its 220 million-plus subscribers is old news. The streaming giant also uses machine learning models to adjust video quality in real time to reduce the likelihood of buffering, thus improving the overall consumer experience. It even creates personalized thumbnails for users based on their viewing habits with the help of AI.
Similarly, Spotify employs AI to tailor playlists and recommendations, contributing to its 246 million premium subscribers.
Anticipate Customer Needs With Predictive Algorithms
Predictive AI enables you to forecast customer demand and proactively manage operations so you can stay one step ahead of customer needs—whether by ensuring smooth operations or delivering timely services. In the retail space, Under Armour has tested AI-powered foot scanners to give customers personalized sizing recommendations.
Where AI Doesn’t Work: A Case Against AI Content Creation
As AI tools gain prominence, some companies are exploring AI-generated content as part of their marketing strategy. But for nuanced and creative tasks like writing about brands, AI can actually undermine the depth and originality needed to engage audiences effectively. For example, AI-generated content can result in uninspired messaging that fails to cut through the noise in a crowded marketplace. AI-generated content is inherently derivative, relying on patterns found in preexisting data. It cannot offer new perspectives or original insights, which are essential for thought leadership, branding and engaging storytelling.
Similarly, homogenization and risks to a brand’s intellectual property are other concerns that companies have with generative AI. With multiple brands using the same AI tools, homogenization is likely inevitable, resulting in messaging that is disconnected from the audience’s expectations. While it is possible to provide extensive input to help the system mimic a unique style and tone, proprietary information fed to AI models may inadvertently become part of the AI tool’s training data, leading to a loss of exclusivity as the brand’s voice becomes accessible, or even replicable, by competitors using the same tools.
AI In Marketing: Challenges And The Way Forward
AI’s reliance on user data introduces privacy risks and could lead to potential penalties, especially with regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) demanding transparency and user consent.
Beyond compliance, AI-powered personalization also runs into the “creep factor” issue—when consumers feel uneasy about how their data is used. With 94% of organizations acknowledging that failure to manage privacy effectively could drive customers away, trust-building through transparent AI systems is essential.
Additionally, AI systems can perpetuate biases present in the data they are trained on, leading to unintended discrimination. For example, skewed outcomes due to an algorithm favoring certain demographic groups over others can damage brand reputation and erode customer trust.
How do you navigate these obstacles and still harness AI effectively? It starts with balancing innovation with accountability and strategy with trust.
• Start with low-risk applications. Implementing AI strategically involves starting small and scaling gradually. Low-risk areas like email marketing automation, chatbots and recommendation engines allow you to assess the effectiveness of AI without significant investment or operational risk before rolling it out to more complex areas.
• Focus on high-impact areas. AI’s value lies in its ability to generate maximum return in specific areas. Personalization engines, for example, can enhance customer engagement. Make sure you align AI efforts with business goals, such as increasing customer lifetime value or reducing churn, to ensure the highest ROI.
• Prioritize user privacy and transparency. Establishing clear data policies is essential for balancing personalization with privacy. Communicate transparently about data usage and offer users the ability to opt out of AI-powered features if they feel uncomfortable.
• Monitor and mitigate bias. AI models require continuous monitoring and evaluation to identify and correct biases. Establish ethical AI guidelines and diversify training datasets to ensure fair outcomes. Incorporating human oversight in AI processes also can help mitigate unintended biases and ensure AI tools operate ethically and inclusively.
Start Small, Think Big And Stay Human
AI can amplify your marketing efforts dramatically, but success lies in purposeful and measured application. Begin with small, low-risk implementations and iterate as you learn. As you scale, ensure transparency in how data is used. Keep human insight at the heart of every strategy. Smart marketing is about using the latest tech to anticipate and surpass customer expectations. AI can certainly get you closer to that goal, but only when you balance it with creativity, empathy and accountability.
