“I work in marketing” can suggest any number of jobs—from ad creative to copywriter to SEO manager to programmatic expert. But no matter your role in marketing, there’s almost certainly an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that can come in handy. Here are a few ways AI marketing tools can help your business.
What is an AI marketing tool?
Across categories, AI marketing tools share the same ultimate goal: improving marketing strategies and results. By taking over time-consuming, difficult, or even impossible tasks (think analyzing large datasets), the best AI marketing tools make marketers’ jobs easier. AI marketing tools can write copy, design creative materials, and manage conversions. Some of them are specifically designed for marketers, while others have broader AI capabilities you can apply to your marketing efforts.
Applications of AI marketing tools
AI can boost marketing strategies across all parts of the process, including ideation, strategy, design, and data analysis. Here are some marketing tasks AI software can improve:
Writing copy
AI technology can aid the writing process with tools that generate product descriptions, social copy, landing pages, email newsletter subject lines, captions, articles, and SEO-optimized content. You can even produce copy for entire websites based on short prompts, or use AI tools to create summaries and snippets so users can quickly grasp the main points of your content.
AI software can also edit existing copy for grammar, readability, and brand voice, or tweak to ensure search engine optimization. Some tools can even A/B test copy and tell you what content is more likely to appeal to your target audience.
Automating workflows and data analysis
Automation is the core promise of AI: enabling businesses to reduce or eliminate the time they spend on repetitive tasks. Automation tools can generate and publish email marketing campaigns and social media posts, automate approval workflows, create personalized experiences across the consumer journey, and more. AI chatbots can also engage with customers who visit a site or social media page, resolving customer service issues or leveraging the customer data platform to follow up later and nurture the relationship.
AI tools can analyze huge amounts of data in seconds to glean valuable insights about customers. For example, some AI tools can leverage customer data to help sales teams with the lead generation process, while others allow the marketing team to personalize communications and website experiences for these customers.
Generating images, videos, and designs
Marketers can use AI to generate unique images for social posts, display ads, logos, and other assets. Some tools offer customizable templates that can create new designs with animations, fonts, and other treatments tailored to the project at hand as you keep adding copy.
Some tools can go a step further and include an AI video generator, which can aid in video creation. Upload an article, script, or other text, and an AI-powered tool will create a high-quality video by choosing stock images, B-roll, music, and an AI voiceover to complement your text.
Still, other tools can leverage AI to analyze text and suggest a layout or recommend improvements on an existing design. Image tagging, enhancement, resizing, background removal, and other features are also possible with AI.
Project management and organization
On the organizational side, several AI apps offer transcription of audio files, organizing meeting notes into sections with headers and summaries listing the main points and what percentage of time each participant spent speaking. Other tools offer centralized databases of knowledge for companies, like mission statements and software instructions that owners can edit in one spot and automatically update everywhere they appear.
Some startups have designed their project management tools with AI baked in, automatically laying out projects organized by task. You can set up AI to tag users or send emails based on certain triggers, like alerting everyone that it’s time to start the next task upon the completion of the previous one.
Technical marketing
AI can assist marketers with the back end of campaigns in a variety of ways. Conversion rate optimization tools can analyze user behavior and automatically tweak content and ads for A/B testing or personalized experiences. Other software focuses on predictive analytics, helping marketing teams plan for the future—whether it’s performing sentiment analysis (a natural language processing technique that identifies sentiments in text) or anticipating trends on paid search platforms.
AI can also help with advertising efforts: Some tools can automatically adjust keyword bidding for Google Ads and other search engines, while others can automate the process of buying programmatic ad space in real time to optimize targeting.
Best marketing AI tools for every application
Here are some of the best tools that utilize AI to help with marketing efforts:
Copywriting: Shopify Magic
Shopify Magic works within the Shopify ecommerce platform to help users generate and edit content. Whether it’s writing blog posts, editing email campaigns, or creating buzzy product descriptions, Shopify’s free suite of AI-powered tools allows you to write optimized copy for your marketing efforts. Shopify Magic is included with all Shopify plans.
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Copywriting: Jasper
Jasper is an AI content creation platform that not only aids in various types of content writing but also ensures your brand voice remains consistent across all that material. The AI can analyze existing copy like website pages, style guides, and product descriptions to learn your business’s tone and use that to generate social media posts, web pages, blog posts, and even executive speeches. Paid plans begin at $39 a month.
Automation: HubSpot
HubSpot is an all-in-one platform for marketing automation, customer relationship management (CRM), and sales. Its AI tools can automate marketing tasks like sending email marketing campaigns, sales outreach, lead-nurturing, and personalization of customer interactions. HubSpot also has a sales report tool, which offers pre-built templates or customizable options, helps you track your team’s progress, and provides actionable insights.
HubSpot offers some of the best free marketing tools, and as well as paid plans that vary depending on the product; paid marketing tools start at $800 a month, billed annually.
Images and designs: Canva
Canva is an easy-to-use graphic design platform that offers generated images, customizable templates, and automated tools to develop visuals for marketing materials. AI tools can analyze text and other assets the user uploads, and either create a layout and design, or suggest improvements to an existing one.
Other AI features include a resize tool that automatically crops and sizes images for a variety of uses, a background remover for product images, and curated pro design elements. Canva offers many free marketing tools and design features, including some AI. Paid plans begin at $119 a year.
Project management: Asana
Asana brings together multiple projects and teams on a single platform. Users can create and organize tasks so everyone can see the status at a glance, and team members can collaborate, attach completed files, or make comments. Asana’s AI-powered tools can take over where you’d like: For example, automation features can assign tasks to users based on certain triggers, like the completion of a task or a set timeline. Basic, limited plans are free, and paid plans start at $10.99 a month, billed annually.
Technical marketing: Optimizely
Optimizely enables marketing pros to orchestrate, experiment with, and monetize digital experiences based on consumer behavior. The company offers what it says is the first “AI-accelerated digital experience platform,” and the AI tools can complete a variety of tasks: real-time predictive insights, content generation, automated tagging, natural language processing and machine learning that tweaks the customer experience for each visitor on your site, performs A/B testing to optimize ad spend, conducts keyword analysis for search engine rankings, creates personalized offers, and more. Pricing depends on your business’s desired features and needs.
AI marketing tools FAQ
What is the best AI tool for digital marketing?
The best AI tool depends on the specific needs of your business. Here are a few of the top AI-powered marketing tools across core marketing functions: Shopify Magic for copywriting, HubSpot for automation, Canva for images and design, Asana for project management, and Optimizely for technical marketing.
What is the best use of AI in marketing?
AI has a number of uses to help support your marketing efforts. One of the most powerful uses of AI in marketing is personalization—creating customized experiences designed to engage members of your target audience. AI software can analyze large data sets to glean valuable insights for personalized campaigns, content strategy, and digital experiences based on individual user preferences and customer behavior to boost your engagement and conversions.
How can AI be used in social media marketing?
Social media marketing campaigns can benefit from AI in several ways. Some tools can help generate marketing content for social platforms, from tweets and captions to images and layouts. Automation tools can publish posts at specific times and analyze data for ad targeting and to examine campaign performance. Chatbots can engage users on Facebook Messenger and other platforms, and they can leverage customer data to nurture relationships and improve customer retention.