I recently sat in a presentation where the speaker said, “AI is coming for marketing agencies.”

I replied, “AI is coming TO marketing agencies, and it has already arrived at ours.”

We have been embracing, testing and analyzing AI tools in every department of the agency — from analytics to creative to video production to media.

First impressions? I believe that AI is not replacing jobs or companies (yet). But rather, the early AI adopters will outshine those who are slow to adapt to AI.

Is AI a fast-moving disrupter? Absolutely, it is.

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, leveraging artificial intelligence will be essential for achieving marketing success.

That said, for small and even mid-sized businesses, the prospect of incorporating AI into your marketing plans can be challenging if not nerve-wracking. But inevitably, integrating AI solutions into areas such as ad placement, copywriting and email personalization are going to be mandatory marketing functions.

The good news is, it can be done — and it can yield a tangible return on the investment.

Related: Why Artificial Intelligence is Revolutionizing Marketing

AI in digital marketing strategy

At EGC Group, our digital marketing strategy encompasses a holistic approach, wherein AI serves as a powerful tool to enhance various aspects of our campaigns. With AI, we can analyze massive volumes of consumer data, identify patterns and generate actionable insights in real time. This helps us understand our target audience better, personalize messaging and deliver relevant content across different channels.

Ad performance optimization

AI plays a crucial role in optimizing our ad placements. By leveraging machine learning algorithms, we can analyze historical campaign data, identify high-performing segments and allocate our advertising budget to realize the lowest cost per acquisition and essentially increase our client’s ROI while also lowering their cost per acquisition. AI algorithms continuously learn and adapt, ensuring our ads reach the right audience at the right time and leading to improved conversion rates and cost efficiency.

Copywriting assistance

The power of AI extends to improving our copywriting efforts. Natural Language Processing (NLP) models enable us to analyze vast amounts of text data, identify language patterns and generate compelling ad copies tailored to specific audience segments. AI-powered copywriting tools enhance our content creation process, leading to improved engagement and conversion rates.

Related: How Artificial Intelligence is Changing the Landscape of Digital Marketing

Email personalization

Personalization is key to effective email marketing, and AI enables us to take it to new heights. By leveraging AI algorithms, we can dynamically personalize email content based on individual preferences, behavior and demographic information. AI-driven email personalization improves open rates, click-through rates and overall campaign performance.

Excitement and caution

We are particularly excited about the potential of AI marketing. The ability to unlock actionable insights from vast amounts of data in real time empowers us to make informed decisions and adapt our strategies swiftly. AI also allows us to automate routine tasks, freeing up valuable time for our team to focus on more strategic initiatives.

However, with great potential comes great caution.

Data privacy in AI is murky, at best. When entering your prompts and data info into AI, you are giving your information to an outside server. At our agency, we have crafted policies to be sure that no client data, information, email addresses or financial data are ever entered into an AI tool, and I’d caution every business owner to implement similar policies.

AI can be inaccurate, biased and just plain wrong, just like us. ChatGPT is very bad at math and can’t process financial or data inputs. It also can make things up based on what it thinks the next word should be. There’s a recent case where a lawyer used ChatGPT to cite trial cases. ChatGPT completely invented fictional cases and the attorney, not knowing they were fictional, submitted them to court, where the case was subsequently thrown out.

We also remain vigilant about the ethical implications and potential biases that can arise from relying solely on algorithms. We need to ensure that the data we feed into AI systems is diverse, unbiased and representative of our target audience.

Related: How Marketers Can Ensure They’re Using AI Ethically

What’s next

AI has transformed marketing practices, significantly improving efficiency, accuracy and outcomes. By embracing AI assistance, we can save time, increase accuracy and deliver exceptional results to our clients, team and community. It is crucial for marketers and AI to work in synergy, leveraging the strengths of both humans and machines to create the best, most accurate and client-pleasing outcomes. By harnessing the power of AI, marketers can unlock new possibilities, fuel creativity and propel their marketing efforts to new heights. Embrace AI, and empower your marketing strategies with unparalleled efficiency and effectiveness.