AI in Marketing 2024: A Quick Guide to Business Automation
Discover how AI is transforming marketing in 2024. Find out what AI in marketing means, as well as advantages and how to implement AI in your business.
Getting started with AI marketing is simple. Just pick a tool, subscribe if necessary, and start using it.
But if you want to do it right, well… that’s a different story.
For that, we’ll be taking a little journey into what AI in marketing means, advantages of AI marketing, myths about AI, and steps for implementation.
Let’s get started.
What is AI in marketing?
A common misconception is that AI can only generate articles that barely scratch the surface and pictures that have something off about them, like an extra finger or two.
That’s not all though.
In fact, 53.8% of marketers plan to use AI in their work in the next 2–3 years, and for good reason.
When it’s used well, AI tools boost efficiency, improve targeting, and provide a more personalized customer experience.
But integrating AI into your marketing is easier said than done, and shiny AI marketing apps are everywhere, saturating the market.
So where does that leave you?
Advantages of using AI marketing tools
Before you turn away from AI marketing software, there are several ways for digital marketing AI to optimize your workflow.
Content creation
For a while, ChatGPT was the AI for many of us. But it isn’t the be-all-and-end-all of AI tools, let alone GPTs. After all, there are plenty of other options for content marketing AI:
- GenAI chatbots – These are many alternatives to ChatGPT: Claude, Copilot, Gemini, and Perplexity (to name a few). However, since these language models are structured differently, you might get different outputs for the same input.
- Article generators – These are tailored for generating blog articles (some even come with the option for SEO optimization). Common options include:
- Image generators – Great images still need a human touch but that takes time, so if you’re in need of artwork at a moment’s notice, you can turn to tools like:
- Video generators – AI videos are useful if you lack the proper camera equipment yet you want to create a video. Common options include:
- AI email writers – Email generators are able to create, personalize, and send emails with little to no human input. Some even send responses to incoming emails. Common options include:
Even major software tools like Canva and Photoshop offer special AI features as part of their free or premium plans.
Lead nurturing
Generally speaking, there are two ways for AI to streamline lead nurturing: (1) as an AI-powered template generator or (2) as an independent AI writer.
| AI template generator | Independent AI writer |
| You tell AI to generate email templates and sequences for different purposes and insert personalization placeholders. You then mix and match templates to build a sequence for the AI to run through. | You create a sales persona for the AI writer to use when drafting emails. You configure the AI by stating your brand voice, example templates, and current campaign goal. An AI writer like AiSDR then creates unique, personalized emails tailored to each lead. |
Functionally, an AI template generator would work like a copilot as you’d be responsible for selecting templates, structuring the sequence, and scheduling emails.
An AI writer in the meantime would fill the role of an autopilot that runs outreach for you, from drafting to sending and replying without requiring your input.
Campaign management
Companies are oftentimes limited by their time zone’s typical hours of operation.
For example, a New York-based company will typically be available from 9 am to 5 pm, which would be 6 am to 2 pm in Seattle and 2 pm to 10 pm in London.
Companies generally have one of three choices:
- Force potential clients to accommodate the company’s schedule
- Assign employees to work outside normal hours
- Hire new employees for night shifts
All of these are less than optimal (and are likely to increase costs or lose revenue).
That’s where AI can come in handy as AI isn’t limited by time zone or weekends. For instance, an AI email writer will continue sending and responding to emails any time of day you set it for.
ROI improvement
Probably the biggest advantage of AI in marketing is its ability to boost your return on investment by lowering your initial costs or unlocking more revenue. You can then allocate the extra money and manpower to other high-value projects.
AiSDR, for example, can reduce your SDR spend by up to 93.5% compared to hiring one human rep. Since a typical in-house SDR salary can cost upwards of $139K annually, this means you save $130K for other purposes.
CRM integration
AI is great at managing CRM data. Some examples include:
- Data synchronization to keep information identical across platforms
- Enhanced lead scoring to help sales teams spot high-value clients
- Automated data entry to free up SDR time and minimize human error
For instance, AiSDR has a two-way native integration with HubSpot, meaning it automatically syncs your active and static lists and updates your contact data on the fly, reducing the time you spend on data management (and giving it back to you!).
Customer communication optimization
AI marketing software can quickly and accurately respond to user queries with personalized messages, boosting your services and improving user experience.
In addition to responding to incoming messages within 10 minutes, AiSDR also:
- Personalizes messages using the customer’s LinkedIn activity and interactions to keep conversations timely and relevant.
- Processes auto-replies and pauses messages until the lead returns.
- Manages lead statuses, such as closing or updating leads if they’re left the company or replied no.
Busting myths about AI in digital marketing
With popularity comes skeptics and misunderstandings. Along with fans, AI tools have also attracted their fair share of criticism.
Some criticisms are valid. Just recently, Copilot suggested users eat rocks and add glue to pizza. Image generators still struggle with hands. And all LLMs hallucinate, sometimes more than 20% of the time.
In such cases, the right system of guardrails can prevent AI from distributing erroneous content.
But some criticisms are less well-founded and can be described as more myth than fact.
Myth #1: AI content sucks… All of it
Probably the biggest myth is that any type of AI-generated content is terrible.
Advanced language models have been trained on massive datasets, allowing them to generate coherent, contextually appropriate, and even creative content.
One case study shared on LinkedIn showcased how the company reached 1 million monthly visitors using AI content in less than a year. They published around 7,000 website pages with minimal human supervision, along with 1,618 linking domains.
Admittedly, the quality wasn’t at the level of a New York Times bestseller, and the strategy might not be as effective today. Still, it does prove that AI content can help you meet your goals if you know how to work with it (hint: you might want to delete those “delves” and “ever-evolvings”).
Myth #2: AI violates user privacy
Mainstream AI marketing tools and responsible AI providers prioritize data security and user privacy, implementing measures like data encryption, anonymization, and strict access controls.
For example, OpenAI complies with GDPR and CCPA and has been included in an independent third-party SOC 2 Type 2 report. Anthropic’s Claude does not use your sensitive information to train its models.
While data breaches and privacy are a hot topic, this problem isn’t exclusive to AI tools. Even Netflix recently experienced a data breach.
Still, to be on the safe side, it’s always good practice to check the privacy agreement to see how your data is (and isn’t) used.
Myth #3: AI tools have a steep implementation curve
While some people think AI tools for marketing are complex and require extensive training, many modern AI marketing solutions are super easy to use.
For instance, it takes just a simple 7-step questionnaire to create a marketing and sales persona and set up a campaign in AiSDR. You can fine-tune the details after the initial setup or you can also let it run as is. Once the campaign is launched, the AI is in the pilot’s seat, and you take over whenever you want.
5 simple steps to implement AI tools in your marketing strategy
Integrating AI into your marketing can be a struggle without the right tools and plan.
Here are 5 simple steps to help you add AI tools into your work process.
Set your business marketing goal
This might seem obvious at first, but with so many shiny tools available, it’s easy to get distracted, leading to wasted time, overspending, and function overlap.
Having a clear goal in mind will help you make sure AI fills the role you need.
Good goals are best defined as specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (aka SMART goals).
Choose your software
Keep your goal in mind when shopping for AI marketing tools. You should consider factors like:
- Features
- Scalability
- Pricing
- Compatibility with tech stack
- Customer support policy
If it’s available, you should ask for a free demo or trial to see the tool in action.
Set up and connect the AI to all systems
Once you’ve chosen your AI tool, integrate it with your existing marketing stack, including a CRM, email marketing platform, social media management tools, and analytics software. Ensure smooth data flows between systems to maximize AI effectiveness and get a comprehensive view of your marketing efforts.
At the moment, AiSDR has integrations for:
| HubSpot | Sendo | Apollo |
| Gmail | Calendly | RocketReach |
| Outlook | Warmy | ZeroBounce |
And several more. AiSDR also plans on releasing a Salesforce integration this year, and users can request custom integrations.
Test the AI’s quality
Test, test, test… And when you have a chance, test some more.
Launch pilot campaigns, run A/B testing for campaign settings and personas, analyze the results, and gather feedback. This lets you fine-tune the tool’s performance, identify issues, and ensure it’s delivering expected results before scaling up.
Launch the AI
Once you reach a point where you’re (1) satisfied with the output and (2) consistently generating high-quality outputs, it’s time to launch.
Instead of switching everything over to AI at the same time, a good approach is to slowly implement AI in one or two key areas of your marketing, such as nurturing emails or automated replies.
Monitor the AI’s performance closely, and if the AI is meeting expectations, then you can gradually expand the AI to other marketing motions as you build confidence.
