Imagine a world where you don’t have to spend hours and hours coming up with different marketing concepts and messages. Where you can focus all your time and energy on one idea that you know will resonate with your audience.

Now, stop imagining it. Because this is now possible.

With access to large-sets of complex data and at our fingertips, you have the potential to completely transform the way that you market your business –- all you need is the insight and understanding of how to use it. When you start using data to inform your decision-making and creative processes, the results can be revolutionary.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) plays a significant role when it comes to empowering in-house marketing teams to get the most from the data that they hold. With the ability to analyze huge volumes of data quickly and efficiently, it’s even easier to gain insight into customer data, market trends and campaign performance. And this is just scratching the surface.

Read on to find out how your team can leverage AI to take their marketing to the next level.

Understanding AI in Marketing

Many companies are starting to see the benefits of incorporating AI as part of their business-as-usual processes, helping to automate some of the more time-consuming tasks and improve efficiency across the board. It can also be transformative when it comes to understanding your audience and customers – helping you create hyper-personalized and targeted campaigns, serving your customer’s needs more than ever before.

So what AI technologies are most applicable to marketing? Here are the top-three AI technologies you should consider adding to your tool stack:

1. Machine learning

This involves developing algorithms that enable computers to learn and improve from the data it receives without the need to be explicitly programmed. This can be used in areas such as customer segmentation and advertising optimization to help your campaigns deliver real value to your audience.

2. Natural language processing (NLP)

NLP enables computers to understand, interpret and respond to human language. This type of technology is often used in AI chatbots and virtual assistants, as well as with AI content creation tools (such as ChatGPT). This technology is great for supporting your marketing team with brainstorming activities, ideation and first-draft creations.

3. Predictive analytics

Predictive analytics leverage statistical modeling and machine learning algorithms to forecast future outcomes based on historical data. This can be used to identify customer behaviors and trends, understanding pricing optimization and to forecast product demand.

7 Benefits of AI for In-House Marketing Teams

Now that you understand what AI is, let’s take a look at why you can’t avoid implementing AI into your daily routines. Here are a number of ways that AI can be used to enhance your  marketing team’s capabilities and produce more effective outputs, fast.

1. Data analysis and insights

AI can help to analyze large sums of data quickly, uncovering patterns and identifying correlations that may be harder for the human eye to pick up on. These can then be collated into actionable insights and recommendations, empowering marketing teams to make more informed decisions.

2. Personalization

Data can be leveraged to create tailored experiences for individual customers, taking into account their personal behavior, preferences and historical actions. By creating personalized content and offers, you can enhance their engagement and increase your conversion rates.

3. Automation

AI can be used to automate repetitive and time consuming tasks, such as email marketing, social media posting and content creation, freeing up the team’s time to focus on high-value activities such as creative and strategic initiatives.

4. Forecasting

Use predictive algorithms and machine learning to forecast future trends, behaviors and outcomes, allowing the team to anticipate customer needs and optimize their strategies accordingly.

5. Content creation

Use AI-powered tools such as Natural Language Processing tools like ChatGPT to aid in content creation and optimization, building personalized experiences and streamlining processes.

6. Customer service

AI-powered chatbots can be used to handle customer enquiries and provide real-time assistance. Insights gleaned from these conversations can also help with future product development – helping your team to always stay ahead of the curve in this competitive landscape.

7. Competitive analysis

You can also use AI to automatically gather industry market insights and data by compiling competitor information and giving your team a comprehensive understanding of the landscape. This can help to guide decision-making and product development processes and help you stay ahead of the competition.

Unlocking Data-Driven Creativity

So what does AI mean for humans behind the marketing campaigns? No, AI is not taking your job.

Instead, in the modern marketing world, there is nothing that consumers want more than messages that are targeted specifically to them - and AI can help with that by unlocking data-driven creativity for your teams Data-driven creativity combines data and insights with creative thinking, generating innovative and effective marketing strategies that are aligned to the needs and wants of the audience.

By leveraging data insights, marketers can create campaigns and content that resonate with the end user and inspire them to trust their brand’s message faster than ever before, building a stronger and stickier relationship between the brand and its audience.

AI is a key behind building data-driven marketing, allowing you and your marketing team to test and learn on a much larger scale than ever before. By leveraging data and analytics, you can gain valuable insights to make data-backed decisions and optimize your creative efforts based on empirical evidence, rather than guesswork.

AI Applications in Marketing

AI usage in the marketing spectrum isn’t necessarily a new concept, but it’s a trend that shows no signs of slowing down. Some of the biggest names out there have used AI to drastically improve their marketing strategies and results, including Netflix, who use AI to provide personalized recommendations for TV shows and films to their users, and Sephora, running a chatbot service that gives beauty advice and product suggestions to visitors on their website. Disney is even in the process of training artificial neural networks to mimic human brains and gain an understanding of what makes different stories appealing.

When it comes to finding the right applications for your business, there are loads of different AI tools available for marketing teams to take advantage of.

These include:

1. Customer segmentation

Understanding the different segments within your client base is pivotal to creating communications and campaigns that work for them. Tools such as Peak.ai, Glance and Clearbit are game-changers when it comes to dividing your clients up into groups according to their shared traits, whether that be by the products they use, their location or the actions they’ve taken with your brand.

2. Content generation

Since ChatGPT’s explosive entrance onto the scene in 2022, AI content generation has been at the forefront of many marketer’s minds. And while this may be one of the most well-known, there are plenty of other applications out there that offer similar services for teams that are looking for help with their content marketing strategies. This includes Jasper, Copy.ai and Copysmith.

3. AI video assistants

Video has long been one of the most effective ways to capture your audience’s attention, with short-form explainer videos taking a front seat for many brands’ content strategy. Unfortunately, video hasn’t historically been the fastest or cheapest way to communicate with an audience. But this is all about to change. PlayPlay has recently announced the launch of a new AI Video Assistant service, allowing users to simply type in a prompt for the kind of video they want to create and watch the magic unfold. With the ability to refine your request by adding filters that specify your industry, target audience, tone or desired language, you can have a professional highly-targetted video in a matter of seconds. Create an AI video completely aligned with your customer needs.

Unleash your creativity with PlayPlay's platform, the game-changing software that enables you to effortlessly create marketing videos, bringing your brand's message to life.

4. Chatbots

Chatbots have been around for quite a few years now, with many people quite familiar with seeing a help box pop up when they land on a website. But while they’re not necessarily a new technology, they have been upgraded over the past few years to offer  more support and guidance to users than ever before. Take a look at Intercom, Drift and LivePerson for further insight into how AI technology powered Chatbots could help your business.

5. Recommendation systems

Recommendation systems use a set of data science algorithms to help find personalized, targeted recommendations for your customers, helping to increase engagement rates, conversions and customer satisfaction. While there are a load of great examples on the market, we recommend starting with Coveo, Adoric or Monetate.

6. Predictive modeling

As the name suggests, predictive modeling uses historical data and statistical algorithms to make predictions about future outcomes or events. In the marketing world, this will usually relate to understanding customer behavior; using it to predict purchase intent, churn probability or response to certain marketing campaigns. With the predictive analytics market set to hit $35.5bn by 2027, this is a great time to get involved. Take a look at tools such as Improvado, Sisense and Tableau to get an idea of how this type of application could work for your business.

Overcoming Challenges and Ethical Considerations

As with many new technologies, there are some common challenges and concerns that come alongside the usage of AI within the marketing industry. For example, as AI systems usually rely on large amounts of data to train and make accurate predictions, there is always a concern around data protection and ensuring any sensitive information is encrypted and kept safe. It’s crucial to implement robust data privacy measures, such as data anonymisation and encryption, as well as complying with the relevant regulations in your location (such as GDPR) to safeguard people’s data and ensure it’s used lawfully.

AI models are also capable of inadvertently inheriting biases present in the data they’re given, leading to discriminatory outcomes and reinforcing societal biases that may exist. Regular audits of your AI systems can help to prevent this, as well as ensuring that you include input from other teams and departments within the business to ensure a broader perspective.

It’s worth noting that many AI algorithms, particularly deep learning models, can be very complex and difficult to understand, making it more difficult for them to be explained on a wider level. This can undermine trust in the process and raise concerns about unfair or incorrect outcomes. This means that additional effort should be made by the team to develop AI models that are as transparent as possible, providing clear explanations for their predictions and ensuring users understand how decisions are being made.

While some of these challenges may always exist, it’s how you react to and mitigate them that really counts. Any new technology introduced into your business should go through testing and risk analysis to understand any threats, as well as to ensure ethical AI practices within your marketing team and beyond.

Embracing AI in Your In-House Marketing Team

So, you’re ready to give AI a go in your marketing team? Great. Here are a few tips on how to get started and ensure your team is embracing this technology efficiently.

1. Identify the best places to implement

Work together to understand the tasks within your team that would be best suited to introduce AI applications, for example within your operations or content marketing functions. Take time to highlight exactly what you need the tool to do, and research what’s available on the market to complete this.

2. Develop data infrastructure

As many AI tools rely heavily on data, it’s vital that you create a robust data infrastructure with clean, structured and properly labeled data. It may be worth considering external help with data management, integration and quality assurance.

3. Leverage existing tools

Thankfully, many AI tools and platforms on the market don't require extensive technical expertise. Look for platforms that have been specifically designed for marketing applications as these often offer pre-built AI models and integrations with marketing systems and require less development and training efforts.

4. Train team members

Make sure that everyone within the team is aware of the technology that you’re introducing, how it benefits the team and the company and how to use it. Many applications offer training as part of their induction programmes, so be sure to take advantage of this if it’s available.

5. Ensure ethical use

As mentioned above, you should always ensure your AI usage incorporates ethical considerations, with special attention paid to data privacy, transparency and fairness.

6. Keep testing and learning

The AI landscape evolves rapidly. You should encourage your team to keep an ear to the ground with latest trends, techniques and best practices that could improve the way you use AI within your business, as well as allowing them to experiment and learn from any failures. This will help to foster a culture that embraces data-driven decision-making and creativity.

7. Track and measure performance

Key performance indicators (KPIs) should be established right from the start so that you can measure the impact of your AI application and understand its success. This can also help you to identify any areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions to optimize performance in the future.

Collaboration between AI and Marketers

As with many partnerships, data-driven creativity relies on collaboration. This is what helps you and your team to realize the full potential of AI in marketing, using it as a tool to augment human capabilities rather than replace them.

The important thing is to make sure the systems work for you, solving problems that you have, increasing your outputs and helping you to deliver better experiences for your customer base. Research is key here – by identifying exactly how you want the systems to work and which applications are best suited for this you’ll be able to select the right tools. Helping you leverage your insights and make informed and sturdy decisions.

As mentioned above, the world of AI is constantly evolving and changing, with new opportunities landing constantly to help marketing teams grow and progress the services they offer. Some of the key trends within this industry focus on enabling brands to offer a more personalized service to their customer base, with voice search, targeted marketing and personalized content taking up the lead positions in technological advancements.

Video, Virtual and Augmented Reality are also high up on many consumer wish lists, allowing them to experience products and services in the digital world, rather than the physical.

The opportunities for marketing teams are endless, so we highly recommend keeping a firm eye on the applications that are out there and how they can provide new and exciting opportunities for your team to develop.

Scale Your Video & Content Marketing Efforts with PlayPlay’s AI

When it comes to new technology, the marketing sphere is absolutely not one that’s being left behind. AI has catapulted many brands right to the forefront of their industry, replacing previously slow and clunky marketing methods with campaigns built specifically for their audiences - and often in less than half the time.

We strongly recommend that you take the time to explore different AI applications that can enhance and improve your own marketing efforts, embracing data-driven creativity and helping you to stay competitive in this fast-paced, rapidly evolving landscape.

To find out more about how PlayPlay can get you started with our AI-powered video assistant - taking you from zero to a video in seconds check out our recent article or book a demo with our team now.