AI in marketing examples are everywhere these days. But for many marketers, bridging the gap between idea and application is still a struggle.
Let’s change that.
Artificial intelligence and data analytics offer huge potential for businesses and brands. Along with obvious benefits like automation and time savings, AI can also personalize content and experiences, make predictions, and find hidden connections buried in data — all of which can help you run more impactful campaigns.
Let’s explore five specific use cases for AI in marketing and how marketers can apply these concepts to create tangible results.
Contents:
Introduction to AI in Marketing
AI-Powered Marketing Automation and CRM
AI for Ecommerce
AI-Enhanced Advertising and Campaigns
AI in Social Media Marketing
AI for Content Creation
Create Your Own AI in Marketing Examples with Meltwater
Introduction to AI in Marketing
We define AI in marketing as the use of artificial intelligence technologies (think large language models, predictive analytics, generative AI, etc.) to perform marketing-related duties.
One minute, chatbots are connecting with website visitors around the clock. The next, your AI marketing tools are extracting snappy snippets from your blogs to use as social media posts.
But it doesn’t end there.
AI and marketing are becoming increasingly intertwined. These technologies take on some of the heavy lifting so that human teams can focus on more strategic work. AI tools excel at:
- Faster data analysis
- Automating repetitive tasks
- Improving experiences with customization and faster response times
- Providing actionable insights based on data
To harness these and other benefits, marketers are pushing the boundaries of what AI tools can do. AI can support one-off tasks and ongoing workflows alike, and businesses continuously discover more use cases.
Use these five AI in marketing examples to inspire your own efforts.
AI-Powered Marketing Automation and CRM
AI technologies can offload tasks that were once highly hands-on and repetitive for marketing teams, specifically in CRM systems.
Your CRM is packed with customer data — demographics, preferences, buying behaviors, spending, and more. AI analyzes all that info to create hyper-personalized experiences for each customer.
Done the “human way,” it would take hours of data analysis, guesswork, and testing just for one customer. AI can do this at scale and in a fraction of the time.
AI-powered CRM systems analyze your leads to figure out who’s most likely to convert. It evaluates data like engagement history, website visits, email opens, and even sentiment from past interactions.
With this data, your sales and marketing teams can find and connect with the most engaged audiences and avoid wasting time on cold leads.
You can also more easily spot trends and patterns in customer behavior that humans might miss. These trends can indicate what customers might need next and suggest the best time to reach them so you can offer additional (and timely) support.
As a result, AI in CRM automation can:
- Predict customer needs and intentions
- Improve sales and retention with personalization
- Make real-time decisions
- Prioritize customers who are most likely to buy
AI turns your CRM into more than just a database. CRMs become strategic partners by automating tasks, offering real-time insights, and personalizing every interaction.
AI for Ecommerce
Some of the benefits of AI in marketing automation and CRM spill over into the ecommerce space. With better personalization, real-time insights, and predictions, brands can better meet the needs of their customers.
For example, a customer who just browsed your website for winter jackets might get a timely promo for outerwear. Not every customer will receive this promo, just those who have expressed interest in a relevant product.
This kind of personalization doesn’t just build strong impressions and positive relationships; it also inspires action. Six out of 10 customers say they become repeat customers after a personalized shopping experience, while 89% of marketers say they see a positive ROI when using personalization in their campaigns.
Moving beyond sales, ecommerce brands can also use AI to power online customer service. Human service teams are limited in terms of how many customers they can serve at a time. Some needs are more complex than others, which require more time to solve — and keep other customers waiting longer.
Ticketmaster is a prime example of AI in customer service done right. They use AI-powered chatbots to provide human-like responses to customer needs. Chatbots can handle requests around the clock and handle more than one request at a time.
Customers have another way to get in touch with Ticketmaster and don’t have to endure long hold times, while the company can scale its customer support and even make recommendations to customers.
TIP: Learn more about how AI-powered technologies can help you analyze data and personalize campaigns in our free Guide to Personalization at Scale.
AI-Enhanced Advertising and Campaigns
Marketers are looking to AI to optimize ad creative and make every dollar count. With digital ad costs on the rise, marketers are scrutinizing more aspects of each campaign to ensure they’re connecting with the right people on the right channels at the right time.
AI can help in this area by improving targeting and analyzing multiple campaigns to see what’s working and what can be improved. AI reviews vast datasets in real time to make sense of patterns and recommend the next best steps.
In advertising and campaign optimization, AI can:
- Alert you to shifts in sentiment or trends that might impact your ad’s effectiveness
- Optimize ad spend and placements to get better results
- Segment audiences based on behaviors like purchase history, interests, demographics, and other fine details
- Predict the campaigns that are most likely to perform the best based on data
- Automate A/B testing so you can double down on your highest-performing campaigns
There’s plenty of evidence to support AI’s role in advertising optimization. For instance, Imagine Business Development uses AI to improve email open rates. AI optimizes send times per individual rather than sending emails out in bulk. The company doubled its open and click-through rates and saw a 100% increase in conversions.
Source: HubSpot
Whole Foods also uses AI to deliver tailored messaging to its customers. In its Just Walk Out stores, AI tracks each customer’s shopping patterns and purchases to predict future behaviors. The company can use this data to send personalized offers or promos.
One more example: Pepsi uses its proprietary AI platform, Ada, to improve its TV and digital advertising. Ada tests creative elements throughout the development stage and helps the brand build on its ideas so that it can deliver the most impactful ads.
TIP: For an in-depth exploration of how AI can help your advertising campaigns, check out our blog on Generative AI for Ads!
AI in Social Media Marketing
AI is also taking on the role of social media marketing assistant. It engages with users at scale, learns who your audience is, and helps you understand user sentiments online. It can be everywhere on social media at once, learning the top trends and the meanings behind them so you can engage with your audience authentically.
Marketers are finding plenty of ways to test the limits of AI on social media, including:
- Social media scheduling automation. AI figures out the best times to post on each channel and can schedule posts in advance to keep conversations flowing.
- Content creation and curation. AI tools can generate content ideas, draft copy, and recommend content that will resonate with your audience.
- Sentiment analysis. Understand what people are saying and how they’re saying it to know where your brand (or a competitor) stands.
- Chatbots for instant support. Be responsive to customers at all hours by letting AI chatbots provide quick answers.
- Collective insights. Get a bird’s eye view of your entire social media performance and maintain agility with data-driven insights.
The World Wildlife Fund uses Meltwater’s AI to drive engagement on social media. AI helped the organization identify key audiences for a specific event and send them targeted messages. Applied on multiple social media networks in different ways, AI helps the non-profit reach people who are most likely to drive action and change.
Mailchimp also uses Meltwater to manage its social media presence. A leader in marketing automation, the brand gets support from Meltwater to find relevant themes and trends that will inform its content creation. Meltwater automates social media activities so teams can focus on strategic work.
TIP: Download our free, comprehensive resource The Ultimate Guide to AI for Social Media Management, full of tips, tricks, and prompts to supercharge your social strategies!
AI for Content Creation
The last of our examples of AI in marketing, content creation continues to create a deeply divisive buzz. The general consensus is that AI cannot and should not replace human creatives. Still, the allure of having AI create first drafts or time-consuming reports cannot be ignored.
AI can generate content creation faster, more efficiently, and sometimes more effectively. It can synthesize information from multiple sources and distill it into easy-to-understand terms. This can give marketers a better jumping-off point rather than poring through Google search results, articles, or social media feeds.
In marketing, AI works best for these use cases:
- Brainstorming content ideas
- Repurposing existing content
- Coming up with ideas for improvements
- Writing first drafts for humans to edit
- Suggesting ways to optimize content for search
- Adapting content for different audiences or use cases
Heinz is a prime example of using AI in content creation the right way. In a recent campaign, it asked AI to draw ketchup, then asked its audience to use AI to do the same. The results were pretty spot on, underscoring Heinz’ strong stance in the ketchup market. As a bonus, the campaign resulted in tons of user-generated content for the brand.
TIP: Check out our blog AI Content Creation: The Future of Creativity for a deeper explanation and more examples of how you can leverage generative AI in your own creative endeavors!
AI offers many advantages, from scalability to speed. But humans will always be an essential part of the process. Humans can build emotional connections, align with your brand voice and values, and infuse cultural context into content.
Most importantly, we still need humans to generate new ideas. (AI can only produce content based on existing data.)
Before going all in on AI content creation, there are a few things to be aware of:
- AI is a tool, not a strategist, so leave your overarching goals, direction, and creativity to your human team members.
- Always refine AI-generated content, as this will help you avoid unintentional plagiarism while adding your own unique insights.
- Trust your instincts when it comes to publishing good content; don’t be too reliant on AI outputs.
- Train your team on how to work with AI while relieving any fears that AI might replace them.
AI can be an incredible ally when it comes to creating content. But it’s not a silver bullet, especially if you want your content to be meaningful and original.
Create Your Own AI in Marketing Examples with Meltwater
AI and marketing examples are growing fast as more businesses and brands learn how to use AI tools to improve marketing outcomes. It augments the work of your human teams so they can focus on strategy and contribute to results rather than simply engage in busy work.
Meltwater puts AI in your hands by helping you learn more about your audience and online performance. Discover who your core demographics are, how they feel about you, what they’re sharing online, and what drives them to act.
Leverage AI to decide how and when to engage with them for maximum results and prove the ROI of your efforts, all from a single platform.
Learn more when you request a demo by filling out the form below!
