Digital marketing is continuously adapting and evolving, driven by increasingly intelligent technologies adopted by competitors, it's a field that's sure to keep you on your toes. If you don't keep up, you'll lose out! One of the most exciting and game-changing trends in digital marketing is the incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline and automate various aspects of the marketing process.
Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard about at least one of the recent AI tools that have taken the world by storm: the text generation tool ChatGPT that exploded onto the scene in late 2022 and the text to image generators Dall-E and Midjourney are probably the most popular.
But there are dozens of others including Bing and Microsoft's upcoming Microsoft 365 Copilot which will leverage ChatGPT and Microsoft's own software to create mind-bogglingly advanced results like data analysis. Not to be left behind, Google Bard also launched in some parts of the world (not Ireland, yet) and they've announced a Copilot competitor which will integrate into Google Workspace which will be able to not only create text and analyse spreadsheet data, but create full presentations with text and generated images too.
The world is moving fast! ChatGPT is already expected to achieve Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) by late 2023 with it's GPT 5 model. Whether we'll be looking at a Terminator / Skynet situation in a few years is still up for debate. For right now though, AI is here to stay and if you're not using it, you're going to be losing out to those who have already adopted it.
Here are some of the ways digital marketing practitioners can integrate AI into their day to day work:
This is powered by AI tools like ChatGPT, Bard and Bing that generate content based on keywords, topics, or data. These tools help marketers create engaging, relevant content for blogs, social media posts, ads, emails, landing pages, and more.
Tools that integrate the power of ChatGPT into your website using an app like Message Bird can help provide always on customer service, support, guidance, or information. Chatbots can be integrated with websites, social media platforms, messaging apps, or voice assistants to interact with customers 24/7 and offer personalised, timely responses.
AI tools like Midjourney, Dall-E and Adobe Firefly, and other applications that generate content based on keywords, topics, or data, helping marketers create engaging visuals for various channels. These tools can be used by marketers to create engaging, relevant content images for blogs, social media posts, ads, emails, landing pages, and more, like the image I created in Midjourney for this blog post.
Microsoft's Copilot and Google Workspace will be able to summarise content in an email, for instance, and create a custom-designed presentation from scratch at the click of a button.
This is perhaps one of the more interesting applications of AI that will change how marketers use all the data they have access to. AI tools like those being built into Microsoft 365 & Google Workspace will allow you to analyse data to provide insights could be a game changer for those without experience analysing data.
As well as writing content, ChatGPT can act as an expert in many fields, providing relevant information for just about anything you can think of. This can help with understanding complex topics, learning new skills, and – once ChatGPT gets access to information beyond 2021 – keeping up to date on the ever evolving world of digital marketing.
While AI is a powerful way to augment a digital marketer's abilities, it isn't a magic solution that resolves all marketers' challenges... not yet at least. For now, it still needs human input and supervision to ensure accuracy, reliability, and any more nuanced social, political, and ethical considerations that algorithms aren't yet able to grasp. That said, AI can be a formidable ally for marketers striving to stay ahead of the curve and deliver outstanding customer experiences.
