Is AI the next best marketer? Learn about the top AI marketing tools around the globe and find out which are worth the hype and what's best left to the humans.
This just in: AI marketing tools are trying to replace you.
Well, not exactly.
In this post, we'll dive in and discuss what AI marketing tools are, what segments of marketing they can improve, and how you can prevent the prophesized AI tech-pocalypse by working with AI instead of against it.
We'll also cover the top AI tools in every category so you don't have to (which is something even AI can't do yet ;))
This will be a long one, so let's get started!
What is an AI marketing tool?
Before discussing AI marketing tools, we must learn what AI is and how it's different from Machine Learning (ML).
AI, or Artificial Intelligence, is the overarching practice that enables computers or machines to do tasks that usually require human intelligence. It's a general term that covers various techniques for making computers think and learn.
Machine Learning, on the other hand, is a part of AI. It's a way to teach computers by giving them data and letting them find patterns and rules by themselves. So instead of programming a computer with specific instructions, machine learning helps it learn from examples and improve its performance over time.
In the marketing lens, AI marketing tools are those that enable businesses to gather insights, develop strategies, and execute marketing campaigns more effectively and efficiently (which we'll be discussing below).
The importance of AI marketing tools
If you haven't been living in a cave this year, you might have noticed that AI marketing tools are becoming increasingly popular and important.
The analytics side of AI marketing tools can help businesses optimize their marketing efforts, enabling them to understand their customers better, create personalized experiences, and make data-driven decisions.
By automating repetitive tasks, AI marketing tools save time and resources, allowing marketers to focus on strategic and creative work. As a result, businesses can improve their marketing strategies, achieve higher ROI, and gain a competitive advantage.
There's also the creative side to discuss as well. Given that tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E are taking the creative weight off of teams, it can also make a stark difference in cost for boot-strapped startups.
One report states that using AI tools like chatbots or financial analysis software can save businesses north of $42,000 every year.
In a time when we're seeing businesses cut back expenses and introduce mass layoffs more than before, properly implementing AI looks like a promising way to save businesses a lot of money and time.
AI advertising tools
An AI advertising tool is a program that's specifically programmed to leverage artificial intelligence to enhance and automate different parts of your digital advertising efforts.
These tools are designed to help businesses create, manage, and optimize advertising campaigns across ad platforms like Meta and Google more effectively and efficiently. Since AI advertising tools can analyze large amounts of data, uncover patterns, and adapt to changing trends in real time, they can provide a huge competitive edge in a landscape where wasted time literally is wasted money.
Typical functions of AI advertising tools include:
- Ad creation. AI-driven tools can generate ad copy and visuals, ensuring that advertising content is relevant, engaging, and tailored to the target audience.
- Audience targeting. On the other side, AI can analyze customer data to identify the most relevant (and profitable) target audience for campaigns, ensuring that ads reach the right users at the right time.
- Campaign optimization. Since humans can't work 24/7, AI tools can step in to continuously monitor and optimize ad performance, adjusting variables like bidding strategies, ad placements, and targeting parameters to maximize return on ad spend (ROAS).
- Performance analysis. Some of the best uses of AI for advertising are detailed insights into ad performance, which then help businesses understand which ads and strategies are most effective and inform future marketing strategies.
Examples of AI advertising tools
Madgicx AI Marketer
The reason why we know so much about AI advertising tools is simple: we have our very own AI Marketer ;)
Madgicx's AI Marketer acts as your very own media-buying magic genie who constantly checks your account to find areas that could use a tweak, guides you on the precise steps to amp up your performance, and sets everything ready for you to implement those suggestions with a single click.
Unlike other tools that have black-box algorithms, Madgicx will tell you why it recommends that specific change, show you the exact parts that are being edited, and let you have the final decision on what to implement.
As we learned earlier, knowing exactly why and how your AI tools work will prevent you from making choices that end up costing you more in the long term.
In addition to AI Marketer, we also have an entire suite of tools dedicated to automating and improving your Facebook ad strategy:
- User-friendly creative tools for whipping up high-performing ads in no time
- Automated campaign management that's got your back even when you're not working
- Efficient tracking services that boost your data by 20% and includes a free trial
- In-depth account audits and analytics that reveal hidden issues in your ad accounts
- Supercharged audience targeting that zeroes in on your ideal crowd quickly
In fact, you can try these out during a 7-day free trial of Madgicx, so you don't have to take my word for it.
AI-powered analytics tools
Next up is AI analytics tools. Much like the name implies, these tools are technology-driven solutions that collect, analyze, and interpret data related to marketing efforts. These tools help businesses gain insights into their marketing campaigns, customer behavior, and overall performance, enabling them to make data-driven decisions and optimize their marketing strategies.
Some common features include:
- Supreme efficiency. These tools take care of all those boring, repetitive tasks, so marketers have more time to work on the fun stuff, like brainstorming creative campaigns.
- Data analysis and pattern recognition. AI-driven tools can analyze large amounts of data quickly and efficiently, identifying patterns, trends, and correlations that may not be easily noticeable through manual analysis.
- Predictive analytics. AI marketing analytics tools can use historical data and machine learning algorithms to forecast future outcomes, such as customer behavior, sales trends, or campaign performance, helping businesses make proactive decisions.
- Customer segmentation. You can use these tools to collate customer data and group customers into segments based on their behavior, preferences, or demographics, enabling businesses to target their marketing efforts more effectively and provide personalized experiences.
- Sentiment analysis. AI marketing analytics tools can analyze text data, such as social media posts or customer reviews, to determine the sentiment behind the text, helping businesses understand how customers feel about their brand, products, or services.
- Attribution modeling. AI-driven tools can help businesses determine the effectiveness of various marketing channels and touchpoints, attributing the right amount of credit to each in driving conversions and sales.
- Real-time analysis and optimization. These apps traditionally analyze data in real time and adapt marketing strategies accordingly, ensuring that campaigns remain relevant and effective in the face of changing trends and customer behavior.
Examples of AI-powered analytics tools
SEMrush
SEMrush is one of marketing's heaviest hitters, and for a good reason. SEMrush provides a suite of digital marketing tools designed to help businesses improve their online presence, optimize their marketing strategies, and gain insights into their competitors. The platform offers tools for search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, content marketing, social media marketing, and competitive analysis.
On the AI side, they have several tools like their content outline builder, SEO Writing Assistant, and ImpactHero (which identifies gaps in your content strategy) that can take your online presence to the next level.
AI email marketing tools
Moving on, we now come to the all-important email marketing section.
AI email marketing tools typically use artificial intelligence to enhance and automate various aspects of email marketing campaigns. These tools help businesses create, manage, and optimize email marketing efforts more effectively, ensuring that their messages resonate with the target audience and drive results.
Some of the key functionalities of AI email marketing tools include:
- Personalization. AI-driven tools can analyze customer data, such as behavior, preferences, and demographics, to create personalized email content that is more likely to engage recipients and drive conversions.
- Subject line optimization. AI email marketing tools can generate and test multiple subject lines, identifying the most effective ones that maximize open rates and engagement.
- Send time optimization. These tools can determine the optimal time to send emails to each recipient based on their past behavior, increasing the likelihood of the email being opened and read.
- Content creation. AI-powered tools can assist in generating email copy, including product recommendations, promotional messages, and personalized content, ensuring that each email is relevant and engaging for the recipient.
Overall, these tools help marketers create more relevant, personalized, and timely messages, which ultimately lead to stronger connections with their target audience and higher conversion rates.
Examples of AI email marketing tools
Lavender AI
We've all sent a terrible email to a prospect before—that's part of being a novice salesperson. But with Lavender AI, you won't have to worry about that much longer.
Lavender AI focuses on creating AI-powered tools to help professionals improve their email communication. Their flagship product, Lavender, is an email assistant that integrates with popular email clients, such as Gmail and Outlook, to provide real-time suggestions and insights to users as they compose emails.
Lavender uses natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithms to analyze email content, offering recommendations on tone, readability, and clarity. The tool also suggests subject lines, optimal send times, and follow-up reminders, all aimed at enhancing email effectiveness and productivity. By using Lavender AI's tools, professionals can save time, improve their communication skills, and increase the overall impact of their email outreach.
Graphic design AI tools
Graphic design AI tools, as you may have guessed, use AI to assist in the creation, editing, and optimization of visual content. These tools simplify the design process and make it more efficient by automating various aspects of graphic design, making it easier for both experienced designers and non-professionals to create visually appealing and effective graphics.
Some key functionalities of graphic design AI tools include:
- Automatic layout generation. These tools can automatically generate design layouts based on the user's input, such as text and images, streamlining the design process and reducing the time spent on manual adjustments.
- Image enhancement and editing. AI-powered graphic design tools can automatically enhance and edit images, such as adjusting colors, removing backgrounds, or resizing elements, ensuring that the final design is visually appealing and polished.
- Content generation. Some graphic design AI tools can generate original visual content based on user input, such as creating logos, illustrations, or social media graphics, providing users with unique and tailored design elements.
- Design suggestions and optimization. Better still, some can even analyze design elements and provide suggestions for improvement, such as recommending font pairings, color schemes, or layout adjustments, to enhance the overall design.
Examples of graphic design AI tools
DALL-E
DALL-E is probably one of the most well-known tools on this list, next to ChatGPT.
DALL-E is an AI model developed by OpenAI that generates original images from text descriptions. It's a creative tool that combines natural language understanding with image generation capabilities, giving it the power to produce unique visuals based on user input.
While DALL-E isn't free ($15 for 115 credits), you can use it to create a host of interesting images for social media posts, email campaigns, and even ads just by typing your idea into the generator. You can also upload a picture and start from it as a base.
Note: There is reason to be wary of using tools like these in business, as the U.S. has vague laws when it comes to the ability to copyright creative assets created by computers.
Copywriting AI tools
Next up are our artificial storytellers. AI copywriting tools leverage natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) to assist in the creation, editing, and optimization of written content.
These tools make the copywriting process more efficient and accessible, enabling both professional writers and non-experts to produce high-quality text for various purposes, such as marketing materials, blog posts, social media updates, and more.
These apps usually feature the following abilities:
- Content generation. Generate original written content based on prompts from the user.
- Text optimization. Analyze and optimize written content to improve readability, tone, and style, ensuring that the final copy is engaging, clear, and suitable for the target audience.
- Grammar and spelling checks. Automatically detect and correct grammatical and spelling errors, helping users produce polished and professional content.
- Content suggestions. Provide suggestions for improvement for copy, such as alternative phrasings, synonyms, or sentence structures, to enhance the overall quality and effectiveness of the written content.
Examples of AI copywriting tools
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is an AI-powered text generation model created by OpenAI (who also created DALL-E), which can understand and generate human-like text in a conversational manner.
It's useful for marketers because it can help with tasks like content creation, ad copy, customer support, social media management, creating blog posts and outlines, and generating ideas for marketing campaigns.
If you can write it, ChatGPT can help improve it or even create it for you.
Just as with DALL-E, there are a few things to consider when using it—including the fact that it can spread false information without any disclosure. For this reason, make sure to fact-check your content for accuracy (especially when asking for strategic advice) to make sure you're not getting any false positives.
Recommended: 80 genius ChatGPT prompts for marketers
Jasper AI
Both Jasper AI and ChatGPT are AI-powered language models, but they are developed by different companies and have slightly different focuses. Jasper AI is primarily a copywriting tool, while ChatGPT is a more general-purpose conversational AI model that can be used for a broader range of applications, including copywriting.
Jasper AI, formerly known as Jarvis, is developed by Conversion.ai. It's a copywriting tool designed to help businesses and individuals create high-quality content for various purposes, such as blog posts, social media updates, and marketing materials. Jasper AI provides users with content templates and prompts, streamlining the content generation process and saving time.
Video and audio editing AI tools
Last (but certainly not least), we have come to AI video and audio editing tools. This suite of apps assists in the creation, editing, and optimization of video and audio content. They make the process of editing and producing video and audio content more efficient and accessible, allowing both professionals and non-experts to create high-quality videos and audio files for various purposes, such as marketing materials, podcasts, or social media posts.
Some key attributes of these apps are:
- Automatic editing. Automatically generate video or audio edits based on user input, such as selecting the best clips, creating transitions, or trimming unwanted segments, making the editing process faster and more streamlined.
- Object and scene recognition. AI-powered video editing tools can recognize and track objects or scenes within a video, enabling users to apply effects, remove unwanted elements, or create dynamic animations with ease.
- Noise reduction and audio enhancement. AI audio editing tools can automatically detect and remove background noise, enhance voice clarity, and optimize audio levels to produce clear and professional-sounding content.
- Video and audio synthesis. AI-driven tools can generate realistic video and audio content, such as creating lifelike animations or synthesizing human-like voices for narration, providing users with unique and tailored multimedia elements.
- Transcription and captioning. Transcribe spoken words into text and generate captions or subtitles for videos, making content more accessible and user-friendly.
Examples of AI video and audio editing tools
Synthesia
Synthesia is an AI-powered video creation platform that enables users to generate personalized, professional-looking videos with ease. It utilizes cutting-edge technologies like AI-generated avatars, text-to-speech, and video synthesis to create realistic and engaging video content without the need for cameras, actors, or complex editing software.
If you're camera-shy but still want to create engaging videos for product demos, employee training, or marketing promotions, Synesthesia is the tool for you.
Descript
Descript is a powerful and user-friendly audio and video editing tool that allows users to edit their media files by editing the transcribed text directly and even syncing them as captions to the video. The format looks like a cross between YouTube and a Word document, making it super easy to learn in just a few minutes.
It's an innovative solution that combines transcription, editing, and collaboration features in one platform, making it easier for marketers to create, edit, and share multimedia content. As a Marketing Manager myself, I'll even add that it produces some of the best transcriptions I've ever seen from video editing software.
Ethical implications of AI marketing tools
We’ve learned a lot today about the perks of AI marketing tools and how incredibly useful they can be for marketers.
Now here's where things get a little bit tricky.
While AI marketing tools can do a lot of good, there are several incredibly valid ethical concerns when it comes to using them.
One of the most important is the topic of data privacy. Since AI allows us to process data faster than before, it's imperative that we stop and consider how the data is collected, stored, and used and if it complies with data protection regulations like GDPR.
For example, while AI is making huge inroads in detecting cancerous skin lesions, one woman was surprised to find her private medical photos were being used to train AI despite her never giving consent to the creator.
Samsung was also surprised to learn that its source code was made public by an employee who used ChatGPT to help them fix bugs and create presentations based on private meeting notes. They were presumably even more surprised to learn that that code and those presentations are now part of OpenAI's intellectual property, as ChatGPT retains input data to improve its algorithm.
Another dark side of AI is unintended bias and discrimination. Amazon experienced this firsthand when they used an AI tool to help find the perfect match for job applicants. In this case, the AI ended up filtering out applications that contained the word "women's" and even downgraded 2 applicants who attended an all-women university due to problems with data that 'underpinned the judgment' of the model.
While you may think you're safe with content creation, there are a few reasons to give that thought pause as well.
Since AI/ML models are typically trained with data that already exists, this can create issues about ownership over these materials. Getty Images has filed a lawsuit with the owners of Stable Diffusion, an AI art app, over this very thing.
Getty claims that they copied 12 million images without permission or compensation to use for the company's image training models. It's comically easy to tell in this case, as the generated images still had the Getty Images logo on them.
It's clear that AI and ML tools are doing some incredible work for humanity. It's also true that they raise ethical concerns that businesses must address.
Before diving in headfirst with these AI marketing tools, you need to adopt responsible AI practices, prioritize transparency, and ensure compliance with relevant regulations to minimize potential negative impacts and maintain your customer's trust.
Conclusion
The future of AI marketing tools looks promising and transformative as advances in artificial intelligence and related technologies continue to shape the way businesses approach marketing.
In my opinion, here are a few trends and considerations we need to keep an eye out for:
- As AI algorithms become more sophisticated, they will enable even more personalized and tailored marketing experiences for consumers, anticipating their needs and preferences with greater accuracy. As our audiences get used to this personalization, companies that don't offer these experiences will likely be ousted from their positions by those that do.
- AI-powered tools will be able to analyze vast amounts of data more efficiently and extract deeper insights, helping businesses better understand customer behavior, predict trends, and identify new opportunities for growth and engagement than ever before.
- AI marketing tools will evolve to support more creative tasks, such as content generation, design, and video production, enabling marketers to push the boundaries of their work and focus less on the details and more on the overarching story of their brand.
- In an ideal world, all these tools will facilitate seamless integration across marketing channels, allowing businesses to create more coherent and consistent customer experiences, optimize channel performance, and improve overall marketing effectiveness. (The attribution nightmare turning into a tracking utopia)
- AI marketing tools will continue to automate a wide range of marketing tasks, from data analysis and audience targeting to campaign optimization and content generation, freeing up time for marketers to focus on strategic planning and creative work.
- As AI becomes more prevalent in marketing, businesses will need to address ethical concerns, such as data privacy, algorithmic bias, and responsible AI use, to maintain customer trust and ensure compliance with evolving regulations. Every company in 2023 should start working on these asap.
- The future of AI marketing tools will involve a more collaborative approach, where AI assists human marketers rather than replacing them. AI won't replace marketers, but marketers using AI will replace those that don't.
In short, AI is helping marketing teams everywhere do more with less. As long as we make sure to account for the pitfalls and are able to pivot quickly from downturns, we're sure to end up in a world that's more Starfleet than SkyNet. (Hopefully)
Maximize your ad results while saving hours of work. Madgicx’s AI Marketer audits your ad account 24/7, tells you exactly what to do to improve performance, and prepares everything you need so you can optimize your entire ad account at the click of a button.
Tory is a digital marketing specialist and the current Marketing Manager of Breadcrumbs.io. She's been featured in various high-profile marketing blogs like Hootsuite, AdEspresso, and Databox and holds certificates for both Google and Facebook Ads. In her spare time, she gardens and paints from her house in the Florida panhandle.