Your Complete Guide to AI Marketing
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has taken center stage as one of the most disruptive technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Some people love it, some hate it, some are terrified of it, and some don't really know what to do with it.
Despite warnings from AI pioneers and attempts to slow development for the sake of establishing regulations, AI continues to grow in capability and popularity. The number of ChatGPT plugins increases by the day; Google Bard, Microsoft Bing, and ChatGPT consistently improve their tech in the race for superiority; and spending on AI is expected to reach beyond $300 billion in 2026.
All this for a technology that, despite its reputation for causing the demise of the future human race, has really only reached widespread availability in the past decade. This speaks to the incredible power of AI-driven technology — and its potential to become an integral tool in everyone’s lives.
This applies especially to marketers. While marketers have been using AI technology for quite some time for predictive analytics, intent-based marketing, and other applications, the release of ChatGPT democratized access to AI intelligence. Suddenly, marketers everywhere are asking how they can best leverage the technology, when and where it's appropriate to use it, and what potential impacts it can have on the day-to-day lives of their teams.
Scripted is no exception. We've been experimenting with AI functionality and benefits so we can widdle down where it provides the most value to a content marketing team. We've uncovered its greatest powers — and its most confounding weaknesses — and built our platform to play to its strengths.
We've created this guide to share what we've learned throughout this process and give you a jumpstart on your AI journey. Keep reading for an overview of the AI marketing landscape, a look at the opportunities and limitations of AI, and tools and use cases that can make your job easier today.
Introduction to AI Marketing
If you mention “AI marketing tools” over the water cooler (Slack channel?), chances are, most will assume you’re talking about ChatGPT — aka the end of the world as we know it. And while ChatGPT has caused a lot of disruption and controversy in marketing circles — particularly for content marketers — AI has much broader uses in evaluating and predicting consumer behavior, preferences, and trends.
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Chatbots – The friendly little pop-up that says, "Hello!" when you visit a website also helps marketers generate pre-qualified leads.
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Predictive analytics – Machine learning algorithms crunch through historical data to help you predict future industry trends, customer behavior, and purchase patterns.
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Customer segmentation – AI analyzes large datasets to identify patterns and segment customers so you can deliver highly targeted, personalized campaigns. This is especially useful for account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns.
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Recommendations – Provide personalized product and content recommendations based on a specific target’s previous actions and interests.
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Content creation – The ChatGPTs of the world can brainstorm, outline, and write short or long-form content for blogs, websites, and ads.
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Operations automation – AI can simplify and streamline marketing operations across campaigns, data management, content, and creative to keep teams in sync.
Benefits of Using AI in Marketing
Artificial intelligence offers a number of opportunities for marketers to hone their craft, increase their connection with target audiences, and reduce the time and effort of generating leads. Here’s a snapshot of the ways AI can make marketing easier, faster, and more effective.
AI has great potential to reduce repetitive tasks. From categorizing data to generating blog topic ideas to qualifying leads, AI can make the jobs of marketers across disciplines much easier and less monotonous.
AI can crunch data much faster than humans can. Analysis across industries, customers, target audiences, and campaigns becomes more effective when an AI tool recognizes patterns in real time.
AI can (mostly) have a conversation with a human. AI can engage with individuals and give them answers so marketers and salespeople can focus on a website's qualified leads. IBM reports that businesses using AI in marketing have seen a 10% increase in customer engagement and a 20% increase in sales leads.
AI can learn from its own experience. Training language learning models (LLM) is not a skill set that everyone has, but many marketing platforms offer the opportunity for marketers to train in LLM to meet their needs. This means it will cater to the data, context, and target market you provide.
Low-cost AI Tools You Can Start Using Today
New technology, in most cases, is expensive. Many marketers are interested in testing or implementing AI tools but get stalled by the sticker price that comes with some of the more sophisticated platforms.
Luckily, several tools available today come at a low cost or no cost. Here are a few favorites, specifically focused on our area of expertise: content marketing.
ChatGPT
It’s impossible to write about AI marketing without discussing ChatGPT. It is the primary tool for marketers who want to speed content development, idea generation, and research and training processes. ChatGPT can answer your questions on any topic, brainstorm new ideas, write ads, emails, or social media copy, and do pretty much anything else you ask it to that requires a text-based output. Oh, and it’s free — with a paid subscription option for those who want faster responses and additional plugins.
Microsoft Bing
Bing is one of the major competitors to ChatGPT. Bing has previously been a major Google browser competitor, but it now comes with GPT-4 capabilities — which means, in theory, it can do what ChatGPT does, plus search the internet for additional information. It is an ideal tool for finding reputable sources, stats, and case studies to back up your content. It is free, just like any search engine, for the time being.
WNR.ai
Not many marketers are aware of WNR.ai, but it’s incredibly powerful. While platforms like Jasper and Writer charge a premium for access to their pre-built ChatGPT templates, WNR.ai allows you to build your own. If you have some understanding of how to write logical prompts, you can create templates for just about anything your marketing heart desires — and at no cost to you.
Copy.ai
Jasper, Writer, and Writesonic have free trials available, so you can take them for a spin, but Copy.ai has a free version you use indefinitely at no cost. It has restrictions, of course. Only 2,000 words per month and one user seat. If that doesn’t feel like enough, Writesonic’s lowest-cost subscription is only about $13 a month.
Scripted
Top Marketing Use Cases for AI
Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. There are so many use cases for AI in marketing that it’s hard to narrow it down to just a few. But here are some specific, useful (and controversial) applications of AI we have uncovered amongst our own content marketing teams — and integrated into the Scripted platform.
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Generating new content angles – Grab an article or topic of your choice, send it to your AI tool, and ask it to find new and unusual angles or topics.
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Brainstorming titles, ad copy, and social media copy – You might have a great idea for a short piece of content but are unsure how to make it short and punchy. Send the idea to your AI tool and ask it to generate ten different versions with a specific word count for you. Then pick your favorite.
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Outlining – One of the quickest wins you can achieve with AI is to have it take the first shot at an outline. Feed it the title and a short summary of your blog and ask it to generate an outline with whatever criteria you need. Take the output and refine it — and save yourself an hour of staring at a blank screen.
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Expanding on existing ideas – If you’re not a piano expert but you're writing an article that includes a section about how to purchase a new piano, you might need a little help understanding the relevant nuances. Ask your preferred AI tool to expand on the idea and provide the top features a customer should look for.
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Optimizing blogs for SEO – Take a finished blog post and ask your AI tool to optimize it for specific keywords you’ve identified. As always, verify the results, refine the article, and measure the effectiveness of the update.
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Researching a topic – Content developers often aren’t experts in the topics they write about. But they know enough to be dangerous. If you need to understand a topic better or educate yourself on how it applies to your target audience, AI can provide excellent summaries about complex subjects. If you still don’t get it, ask your tool to explain it as if they were sharing it with a sixth-grader.
Challenges and Limitations of AI Marketing
When it comes to AI, there seem to be three camps: those who believe it is the panacea of human intelligence, those who believe it is the end of humanity itself, and those who fall somewhere in between.
The truth is, “somewhere in between” is a logical place to be. While AI accomplishes incredible things and shows great potential, it still has its pitfalls. As marketers, it’s important to be aware of the limitations of AI so you can play to its strengths without falling prey to its weaknesses.
Let’s start with the most well-known pitfall: ChatGPT is not connected to the internet and does not have access to information published after 2021. This is really important because, as you know, a lot can change in just a couple of years. If you’re looking for the “latest” on any topic, Bing might be a better place to look.
All AI tools are incredibly simple-minded. They can only do what you ask them to do. AutoGPT excepted, they can’t read between the lines or make connections to new ideas. If you want a tool to fully express its creativity, you have to feed as much information as possible in your prompt.
Across the board, AI falls victim to one major weakness: the ability to lie. Remember that friend from elementary school who pretended he knew everything? And when you asked him how spaceships land on the moon, he gave a thorough explanation that, at the time, seemed perfectly valid but didn’t stand the test of time.
That’s AI. AI is programmed to give you accurate answers, but it doesn’t have a conscience or a sense of the consequences. If it doesn’t know the answer, it will often simply make something up based on the information it has.
This is why it's important to use AI responsibly. It's an incredible tool for filling in gaps or building on topics you already understand. You can catch it if its information is out of date, overly simplified, or simply wrong. But if you want it to tell you something completely new, be careful. It might not give you the exact truth of it.
In addition, the ethics of AI is a hot topic among professionals across the globe. The potential to use this technology to plagiarize, defame others, facilitate cyber attacks, or even enact war is very real. As the industry works to understand how to regulate and control the technology, we must each do our part to ensure our personal and professional uses of AI are for the good of others.
The Future of AI in Marketing
While many fear a timeline where computers become sentient or AI-driven robots take over the world, the future of AI is likely much less dystopian. Many don’t realize that the use of AI dates back as early as the 1950s. While it feels new and scary now, it has served us well for the past 70 years.
Marketers can reasonably expect AI to continue taking on more monotonous, time-consuming work, freeing up teams to focus on strategy, forecasting, and new ideas. Predictive analytics will become more accurate, personalization will become more succinct, and the steps from idea to execution will be reduced.
Overall, we can expect that AI has great things in store for us if we build, use, and control it responsibly.
This is why we've stayed at the forefront of AI, integrating it into the Scripted platform so your content marketing team can increase efficiency and results. If you're looking to take advantage of this up-and-coming technology — and we believe you should — Scripted is the place to find the tools you need to simplify and speed your workflow.
To get a jump on content marketing for your organization, schedule a Scripted demo. We provide access to top-notch content writers in all industries and specialties.
