How Can We Leverage AI To Improve Our Marketing Strategies?

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) can be revolutionary for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and startups. AI tools can potentially transform your marketing strategies, making them more efficient, targeted and impactful. Let’s explore how using AI tools can enhance your marketing efforts and how the Digital Solutions Program can help you harness this powerful technology, even on a small budget.

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To effectively integrate AI into our processes, we must first understand its capabilities

Let’s first understand what AI is capable of so that we can leverage AI in our marketing strategies. First, we’ll explore some key areas where AI can make a significant difference, and look at some affordable and free tools we can integrate into our existing processes.

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1. Understanding buyer behaviour

Brands and businesses use deep learning, machine learning and AI to analyse data on their products and customers. This helps us get accurate insights and better understand buyer behaviour, allowing for more targeted and effective marketing strategies.

Example Tool: IBM Watson

IBM Watson’s AI capabilities include deep learning and machine learning tools that help businesses analyse consumer behaviour, understand their preferences and improve targeting. SMEs can use Watson to analyse large datasets, identify trends, and gain insights into customer preferences and buyer behaviours. This allows you to precisely target and personalise your marketing efforts. There are various pricing plans including a free tier available.

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2. Audience segmentation

AI allows us to segment our audience more effectively by identifying patterns and opportunities with our data. This helps us tailor marketing campaigns to specific segments, optimising content creation and targeting the right audience with the right message. 

Example Tool: HubSpot

HubSpot’s built-in AI tools assist with audience segmentation by analysing customer data to create detailed segments based on behaviour, demographics and engagement. SMEs can leverage HubSpot to create personalised marketing campaigns, track customer interactions, and improve targeting. By using HubSpot’s segmentation features, businesses can ensure their marketing efforts are more focussed and effective. HubSpot offers a free plan with essential CRM and marketing tools, making it accessible for small businesses.

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3. Predictive analytics

AI-driven predictive analytics helps you understand what your visitors are doing on your website. It can forecast future trends and behaviour based on historical data such as engagement metrics, purchases, time on page and email opens. This insight lets you make informed decisions about product launches, marketing campaigns and inventory management. 

Example Tool: Google Analytics

Google Analytics provides free AI-powered insights that can help you understand user behaviour and predict trends. Understanding customer behaviour on our websites means we’ll know how effective the information on our website is. We can use these insights to guide and tailor relevant website content that will keep our audience engaged and inspired to take action.

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4. Content creation and optimisation

AI can assist in creating and optimising content that’s tailored to your audience’s preferences. From generating blog post ideas to optimising your website’s SEO, AI can enhance your content strategy and drive more traffic to your site.

Example Tool: Canva

Boost Juice’s VIBE Club loyalty program offers points for every purchase that can be redeemed for free drinks and exclusive rewards. This encourages customers to make repeat visits and stay engaged with the brand. Canva’s AI-powered design tools help you create on-brand, customised visual content for your marketing campaigns. Its AI, called Magic Design, suggests design elements, layouts and colour schemes that align with your brand. You can use Canva to quickly produce professional-quality graphics for social media, email marketing and websites. Canva offers a free plan with extensive features making it a great tool for small businesses to enhance their visual content without a big investment.

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5. Personalised marketing

AI can analyse large amounts of data to understand your customers’ preferences, behaviours and purchasing patterns. This allows you to create highly personalised campaigns that resonate with your audience, increasing engagement and conversion rates.

Example Tool: Mailchimp

Mailchimp’s AI-powered tools help you personalise your marketing efforts by predicting the best times to send emails, suggesting the most effective subject lines and automating follow-up emails based on user interactions. By using Mailchimp, SMEs can ensure their emails are more engaging and relevant, which can lead to higher open and click-through rates. The free plan includes essential features.

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6. Social media management

AI can analyse social media trends, schedule posts at optimal times, and even create content that aligns with current trends. This ensures that your social media presence is always relevant and engaging.

Example Tool: Buffer

Buffer’s AI-powered tools can manage your social media accounts, analyse performance, and suggest the best times to post for maximum engagement. SMEs can use Buffer to schedule posts, track performance, and adjust strategies based on AI-driven insights. Buffer offers a free plan that includes essential features, perfect for startups, home businesses and small businesses.

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7. Automated customer support

AI-powered chatbots can handle routine customer inquiries, provide instant responses, and gather valuable data. This not only improves customer satisfaction but also frees up your team to focus on more complex tasks.

Example Tool: Tars

Tars is an affordable chatbot builder that uses AI to understand customer queries and provide accurate responses. SMEs can use Tars chatbots on their websites to handle FAQs, guide users through product selections and even assist with booking or ordering processes. By automating these interactions, businesses can give their customers timely assistance, improve overall satisfaction and reduce their staff workload. Tars offers various pricing plans including a free trial making it accessible for small businesses.

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Embrace AI to enhance your marketing efforts

Constantly developing, AI is making leaps and bounds in how it can help us in our business. With AI tools, you can significantly enhance your marketing strategies, making them more personalised, efficient and impactful. While it makes complete sense to leverage AI to improve our marketing strategies, it can also be daunting. This is where the Digital Solutions Program can help. Our expert mentors have extensive experience in digital marketing including AI technologies. Get the guidance you need through the process from understanding AI tools to implementing them effectively in your business. 

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Words by: Audrey Lee is a mentor in the Digital Solutions Program. She’s also the Director at Never Vanilla, helping businesses create compelling website content with brand strategy and SEO.