November 9, 2023

How to Create an AI Marketing Strategy in 5 Easy Steps

For marketing professionals today, it’s nearly impossible to log into LinkedIn or Twitter without seeing thought leaders debate the merits and potential perils of leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) in marketing.

Let’s start by answering a frequently debated question: Is AI going to replace me?

The tl;dr: No, AI won’t be taking your job anytime soon. But, marketers who understand how to leverage the powers of AI will. 

As a marketer, AI can make your life easier, and make you more productive as a result. Here are just a couple of ways in which it can help you:

  • Use AI as a sounding board when trying to navigate where to start when building your strategy.
  • Use it as your editor. Let it help you rewrite sentences, write the first lines of a blank page, or inspire new perspectives you might not have considered.
  • Let it be your brainstorming buddy. You don’t have to sit there pounding your head on the desk trying to think of 10 subject lines for your newsletter. AI can just spin them out for you in under a minute.

Think of how much you can get done (and how much energy you’ll save) with the power of AI behind you!

Ready to stop ignoring AI and start using it to boost your marketing results? 

In this article, we’ll walk through how AI can be used in marketing and how you can create a unique AI marketing strategy that works for your organization and customers.

What’s AI for marketing?

AI is a type of technology that leverages customer and company data to enhance marketing results and save teams time. Using deep learning, data analytics, and other machine learning processes, AI can be programmed to automate repetitive tasks, produce content, rank leads, and make educated marketing predictions.

AI for marketing can be used at every stage of the customer journey and by all types of marketers, from product to content marketers. And considering that 95% of companies report having integrated AI into their marketing strategy, chances are that you’ve already seen AI marketing in action, including:

  • Chatbots that develop leads or upsell products
  • Marketing campaign automation
  • AI-written blog posts, emails, and ad copy
  • Programmatic ad buying
  • Lead scoring and ranking
  • Social media sentiment analysis
  • Translation and language localization
  • Review response writing
  • Customer segmentation

Considering the endless ways that AI can be used for marketing, however, you may be wondering: how do you build an AI marketing strategy that suits your team and its unique needs?

How to create a marketing strategy with AI

While we’d all love to be able to download a tried-and-true templatized AI marketing strategy, the truth is that every company needs to create their own. Every company has its own unique challenges, opportunities, and audience, and you’ll need to understand your current marketing strategy's gaps and strengths in order to strategically leverage AI.

1. Understand the different use cases of AI in marketing

Before you start implementing any solutions, you’ll need to understand the basic ways in which AI can help your marketing processes.

The list below isn’t exhaustive, but will give you an idea of the different ways AI can be leveraged in marketing.

Content creation

For many companies, carrying out a search engine optimized (SEO) content strategy takes time, effort, and cold hard cash. It requires the use of writers, editors, and strategists who are limited by how quickly they can research, write, and edit pieces.

With AI, however, you can dramatically increase your content production while cutting back on budget. Let's see what it looks like to produce content with Copy.ai's Chat product.

If you're not sure where to start, Copy.ai has a pre-built prompt library for a wide range of use cases. For the sake of content creation, let's take a look at the blog post creation prompt.

Copy.ai Prompt for creating a blog post

Now that we have a starting point, we'll want to add in some colour. Keep in mind that if you're really broad with your ask, you'll get a more broad response back. So, when possible, try to add some level of detail as you write in your prompt to Chat.

copy.ai write a blog flow
An important thing to note about content creation with AI:

While using software like Copy.ai to create content, it's important to understand that this isn't going to replace your writers or editors, but rather it's meant to tackle execution challenges that any content team faces. It's an aid for speed of production, but not a replacement. 

That said, it's important that when using AI-powered content production software you still make time for editing.

Say goodbye to feeling paralyzed by a blank page. But don't say goodbye to the unique point of view and writing style you bring to the table. After all, quality content will always beat quantity of it. For an added bonus of speed to production, you can use AI to help you rewrite sentences (you'll have to decide what sentences to re-write though!)

Other types of AI-powered content creation

Similarly, AI can be used to create conversion-driving copy for ads, social media posts, and email marketing. According to Statista, teams using AI in their email marketing processes reported a 13.4% increase in click-through rates (CTR) and a 41.2% increase in revenue. Those are the types of results that make most marketing leaders sit up and take notice.

Statistia AI in marketing stats

Conversion rate optimization

AI can help marketers convert leads by optimizing website and landing page content for specific site visitors. Certain AI platforms, like Mutiny, allow marketers to create account-based landing pages that are matched to specific ads, so that leads see content that’s been customized to their exact persona, pain points, and needs.

Users can also A/B test website copy so that they can identify (and opt for) the option that converts the best.

Personalized recommendations

Personalization is no longer a nice-to-have in marketing—today, 71% of consumers actually expect personalized interactions from brands. And brands that personalize their content, ads, and recommendations reap the benefits, with fast-growing companies driving 40% more of their revenue from personalization.

McKinsey stats on consumer expectations with personalization

AI marketing platforms allow companies to personalize their marketing by analyzing and predicting customer purchases, personalizing marketing messages, and tailoring offers to customer preferences.

Stronger sales enablement content

Marketing and sales often work hand in hand—and AI can help marketing teams provide their sales teams with better sales enablement copy. And, when it comes to your sales communication, personalization pays off. According to McKinsey, personalization most often boosts revenue by 10% to 15%

Within Copy.ai's Chat product, you'll find prompts for generating personalized cold emails, making it easy to spin up unique, personalized cold emails based on prospects’ LinkedIn URLs.

Here's what AI-powered sales enablement copy looks like: 

copy.ai prompt for writing a personalized cold email from a linkedin profile

Using this prompt, we explored what it would look like to pitch Copy.ai to our marketing team.

copy.ai chat result for writing a personalized cold email based on a linkedin profile

Just as we mentioned with the blog post, this isn't going to do 100% of the work for you (especially when the original prompt we wrote was fairly generic). But, it will give you a solid starting point to kick things off. Unlike tools like ChatGPT, Chat by Copy.ai can scrape and pull information directly from your prospect's LinkedIn profile.

Social listening

AI allows brands to unify and monitor their brand mentions across multiple social media platforms and to analyze sentiment across them. With social listening, marketers can keep an eye on customer feedback and track industry trends, brand growth, and customer sentiment.

Monitoring social media (through tools like Sprout Social, HubSpot, and Buffer) allows marketers to interface with customers, convert leads, and use live feedback to inform future marketing campaigns.

Dynamic pricing

Dynamic pricing allows companies to fluctuate their pricing based on live supply and demand. If demand is high—as tracked and determined by AI—then prices increase; when demand is low, prices drop.

Certain AI engines, like Netrivals or Dealavo, can even personalize pricing based on consumer behavior, such as search history or product demand.

Translation

Brands today increasingly serve a global audience, and AI-powered translation makes it easier than ever for marketers to serve those audiences. Apps like DeepL allow marketers to quickly roll out their websites, apps, marketing and sales assets, and documents to new audiences in their local languages.

Churn predictive analytics

Since AI excels at detecting patterns, it can be used to help marketers predict customer churn. Using signals like survey responses, general customer sentiment, and previous interactions with a client, AI platforms can detect customers that are at risk of churning and flag them for marketers—who can then work to win them back.

Considering that a 5% increase in customer retention can lead to a 25% increase in profits for some industries, this is an area in which investing in AI can have a high ROI.

Task automation

While this use case certainly isn’t unique to marketing, it’s certainly useful for marketers today. Using AI, marketers can automate many of their previously manual tasks—such as scheduling and sending emails, organizing projects, timing customer outreach, tracking customer behaviors, and buying ads.

Any manual processes that you can remove from your team’s workflow gives them extra time back—allowing them to get more done in less time.

2. Analyze your marketing teams’ needs

Most companies can’t adopt all the AI tools all at once. So, if you need to pick, what should you choose?

Start by analyzing your current marketing workflows and goals. Some questions you might want to ask yourself include:

  • Where is your marketing team spending the most time? What are the current bottlenecks in your workflows?
  • What key performance indicators (KPIs) are you looking to improve?
  • What channels are most effective with your audience?
  • Where might an AI solution fit seamlessly into your workflow?

Based on your answers, you’ll have a better idea of what solutions to explore. For instance, let’s say that your marketing team has historically found your company’s blog to be a major driver of traffic and marketing-qualified leads. Your team spends a significant amount of time creating briefs, assigning them to freelancers, editing them, and distributing them across multiple channels. A large portion of your budget goes towards paying freelancers, yet you wish you had an even larger budget to ramp up content production.

In this case, investing in an AI content generator would likely be a good starting point. AI could assist you in creating briefs, as well as do most of the heavy lifting in terms of writing. This could decrease your spend and dramatically increase your content production—leading to better SEO results, faster.

Jeremy Moser, CEO of uSERP, explains how adopting Copy.ai as its AI content generator helped his team increase production while also lowering costs:

Copy.ai saves us thousands of dollars a week. We create content briefs and write 50-100 unique SEO-driven pieces per month. With Copy.ai, we now craft briefs, outlines, and full first drafts in minutes that our writers can use as the perfect inspiration for fine-tuning a valuable piece of content."

If, on the other hand, your marketing team’s main focus is working with influencers and promoting user-generated content on TikTok and Instagram, it might make more sense for you to dip your toes into AI with a social listening tool.

3. Select an AI solution

Now that you know the type of AI tool you’d like to adopt, it’s time to choose a tool.

Start by researching several options, and then whittle your list down based on the parameters that are important to you, such as:

  • Pricing
  • Usability/intuitiveness of the tool
  • User reviews
  • Ease of onboarding
  • Ability to integrate with other tools in your tech stack

If you find yourself stuck between two options, see if the tools allow you to start with a free trial. That way, you can test-drive each option and see which works best for your team. 

If you’re not sure where to start, here are some of the ways we'd recommend going about each use case:

4. Train your team

There’s little use in adopting a tool if your team never actually uses it—yet, at the average company, only 45% of apps are used regularly by employees.

There are several factors that contribute to this problem.

First of all, many companies never actually train their teams on how to effectively use new tools. Be intentional about getting your team live training, and try to make the training as engaging as possible: when employees are engaged, they’re more likely to retain information and use it later on.

Strategies to help your team adopt new software include:

  • Schedule training sessions: Be intentional about dedicating time for your team to learn the ins and outs of how to use the tools (and what to use them for).
  • Incorporate feedback from employees: Maybe there’s a more useful plan to switch to, or better use cases you haven’t thought of. Treat training as a conversation rather than a lecture.
  • Involve employees in implementation: When employees are able to have a say and be a part of the process of implementation, there’s a better chance they’ll stick with the software. This also helps them build a better sense of understanding of the software over time.
  • Make learning easy: Make it easy for your team to access step-by-step guides, demos, and any other helpful information, and make sure new hires are taught how to use the tool as part of their onboarding.

Product adoption is another reason why it’s so important to opt for a user-friendly tool. The more intuitive it is to use a product, the more likely employees are to rely on it. (Nobody wants to have to take a full certification course in order to learn how to use a new tool!)

5. Track, measure, repeat

Now that you’ve integrated your new tool into your team’s workflow, it’s time to make sure it’s having an impact. Over the next few months, track the KPIs associated with your goal to ensure that your new AI software is indeed saving your team time, driving revenue, or increasing customer satisfaction.

Once you’re satisfied with the impact an AI solution has had on your team, you can restart the process—and find another area where AI can help you save time, effort, and cash as you grow business.

Add AI into your tech stack today (for free!)

Ready to transform what your marketing team is capable of? Start with a Copy.ai free trial. We’ll let you generate up to 2,000 words of email, blog, or social media copy—on us.

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