Since the first digital computer was made in the 1940s, technology has evolved rapidly. We had our first microprocessor in the 1970s, early days of the internet was born in the 90s, and thankfully, our first iPhone was introduced in the early 2000s. Remember having a brick-solid cellphone with a tiny green screen, trying to beat the game of snake?

Computers have come a long way, but what about artificial intelligence (AI)? The timeline of AI is interesting and where we are now can impact digital marketing forever.

Artificial intelligence (A), is a branch of computer science that aims to create machines that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and language understanding.

The first system that came to light was in 1950 and called Theseus – a remote-controlled mouse that was able to find its way out of a labyrinth and remember the course.

Since then, in the late 1950s the Perceptron Mari I was created (the first artificial neural network that could visually distinguish cards marked on the left side from those marked on the right).

From there, the 90s brought us TD-Gammon, a software learned to play backgammon at a high level, just below the top human players.

After 2010, AlexNet was introduced which was a pivotal early “deep learning” system the could recognize images of objects such as dogs and cats at near-human level. Now, SnapChat has a “scanner” on the app that recognizes and tells you the breed of an animal, type of plant, etc.

Now, we are at a stage of artificial intelligence that has language and image recognition capabilities, systems that determine whether you can get a loan, self-driving cars, virtual assistants, and much more.

AI has already and continues to transform the digital world. It seems as though every day there’s a new form of AI in digital marketing and we’re here for it. With that said, AI can be used for:

• Marketing Automation: The use of AI for tasks like lead generation, lead scoring, and customer retention. This helps marketers identify potential customers and engage with them.
• Personalization: AI will create a profile of the customer based on the data collected from their purchase. Marketers can use this information for targeted advertising, offers, promote new products, etc. This helps improve engagement, conversions, and ROI.
• Forecasting: Predictive analytics uses data from past customer interactions to predict what actions they may be likely to take next.

One impact of AI in enhancing the functionality of digital marketing includes raising the return on investment (ROI).

AI takes the time to learn about your product or service, helping marketers put together the right content that will attract to your audience. It essentially helps make smarter decisions using structured data related to campaigns and turning that into performing content. With all of the collected data, marketers can analyze a customer’s needs and adapt the AI used in order to boost sales.

Almost everyone that uses the internet has had a run-in with a chatbot. Whether you’re looking for more information on a product, service, or trying to ask a question/get help. Chatbots have been here for a while and in the past, they had the tendency to make people fairly angry, pounding on their keyboards, “CUSTOMER SERVICE. NEED HUMAN!”

Fortunately, AI chatbots are much more experienced and skilled now. The AI systems have studied many human interactions and conversations to learn what it needs to relay to a user.

The best part about chatbots is the fact that they go beyond the traditional “one-to-one” form of customer service. Now, they can deliver “one-to-many,” providing support to a number of customers at the same time. PLUS, they don’t need to sleep like us humans do. This means, you can have your chatbot talk to a potential customer or client at any hour of the day.

Can you imagine hiring someone to sit in front of your company’s email account and wait for specific triggers? Meaning, if someone signs up for an email newsletter subscription, that person would need to send them a “thanks for signing up” email.

This is giving us a headache just thinking about it.

AI helps brands personalize email marketing campaigns based on user behaviors and can automatically send out those trigger emails when necessary. AI takes on the job of sending relevant emails to customers with subject lines, product recommendations, and messaging – all chosen based on the customer’s behavior.

There are also many AI tools that allow marketers to optimize their email campaigns to take a deep dive into what works and what doesn’t work. This helps the marketer understand what the campaign needs and helps our client with successful results.

One of the most successful areas of AI is in digital advertising. Platforms like Facebook, Google, Instagram, and TikTok have AI capabilities that analyze users’ information, gender, age, interests, and can even use machine learning to check out what you’ve clicked on and engaged with.

For example, when you’re on social media, you’ve probably reacted to a post, liked an ad, or something along those lines. The social platform’s AI algorithms learns this behavior and presents this information to marketers that are advertising similar products or services.

According to Insider Intelligence, this year, digital advertising growth will hit 10.5% and spend will reach $626.86 billion.

ChatGPT, by OpenAI, can help you determine which leads are most likely to convert into consumers by analyzing data and information about the lead. It can help you determine whether they are a good fit for your products or services so the marketer knows how to target the consumers and when.

AI can now create content for you. ChatGPT uses a natural language processing-based model, meaning, it’ll respond to the text you input and then generate outputs based on the data it gathers. What does that mean? – You may ask.

If you open ChatGPT and you’re looking to learn more about how coffee is made, simply type, “give me a paragraph about how coffee is made.” The AI will give you the information you’re looking for. However, if you want a more creative response, type, “give me a paragraph about how coffee is made with a creative tone.”

I (TSC’s content writer) have played with this system for a number of different things. From creating a silly rap about our company to finding an introduction to a blog for a client. I will say, in my experience, it’s a great tool to find out information that you’re not completely educated on.

For example, I’ll use it to find some good content for a client that does home restoration. Although it’s a great tool for sparking ideas and inspiration, I don’t think it can replace a human – at least not at this level. But, if you’re a writer and you’ve hit the infamous writer’s block – this will help.

Creating graphics with AI is the fun part. Well, it’s all fun for us – but if you want to play around with the new AI capabilities, this is the place to start. Midjourney allows you to type out anything you want to see and they’ll give you AI-generated images of what you may be picturing in your mind.

For example, we typed in, “an alien drinking coffee” and this is what we got:

• Use a good quality AI system. There will be hundreds of companies coming out of the woodwork with subpar AI systems. Be careful which you choose. We suggest you start with OpenAI to get a feel for it.
• When it comes to data, low quality or inaccurate data can cause more issues than no data – so avoid the guesswork.
• Just like any type of technology, AI comes with challenges. Whether you’re hoping to get a full blog out of the content creator that makes sense and flows, or you’re trying to find the right targeted audience without inputting accurate data, these challenges show us that although AI does a lot of the heavy lifting, it takes experienced professionals to set the weights for it.
• Provide training to your team when you have chosen the AI system you want to work with. It’s important that your team understands how it works before utilizing it for your company or clients.

Artificial intelligence continues to develop what seems like every day. There are many AI tools that you can learn and utilize now to help you market your brand. However, it’s important that you know the ins and outs of these artificial general intelligence systems, how they work, why they work, and how they can help you successfully market your business.

AI marketing can help you deliver personalized messages to customers at the right points in the consumer lifecycle. It can also help digital marketers identify at-risk customers and target them with information that will get them to re-engage with the brand.

Three Summers Creative has a team of experienced, skilled, and educated content writers, researchers, designers, strategists, etc., that understand how AI can impact your digital marketing strategy. If you’re looking to improve your ROI, digital advertising, website, social, branding, video, or all of it – you’ve found the best full service marketing agency for you.

Let’s chat.