AI is very much a hot topic at the moment. Its use seems to be increasing everywhere. In fact, AI is one of the fastest-growing markets of 2025. Over half of UK businesses see AI playing a very big role in their business and are planning to invest in it.
And if your business is digital marketing, there are many aspects of AI which can be used effectively in your business. For example, data collection and analytics, machine learning, and natural language processing.
But is it all good news? What are the drawbacks of using AI for digital marketing?
In this article we take a quick look at five ways AI can be used effectively in digital marketing, and some of the advantages and disadvantages of doing so.
Five ways to use AI in digital marketing
As our familiarity and comfort with Ai increases, the options to use it seem endless. Here are five of the most common ways AI is currently being used in digital marketing.
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Creating content
Content creation is one of the more widely known and used abilities of AI. In 2023 we published an article called Ten Things you need to know about ChatGPT, one of the first AI content generators to gain public recognition. At that stage, the main function of ChatGPT was to provide written answers to questions, and it was used mainly for research and for creating, essays, and emails.
Since then other content creators have entered the market, including Jasper, Rytr, GrowthBar, Writesonic and Hubspot, and they are increasingly used for creating content for blogs, social media and email marketing.
Whilst there is a wider choice of content creation tools available, many experts still prefer the latest version of ChatGPT – ChatGPT4. It is thought to produce more nuanced content than some of its competitors, as long as you give it good prompts in the first place.
Used wisely, a content creation tool can enable you to save time and money, but still needs careful setting up and checking to ensure that it has the accuracy and voice expected of your brand.
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Personalised customer interactions
Our article “Making it Personal” explains the importance of personalising your customer interactions as much as possible. Whether it’s through an email marketing campaign, perhaps where follow up emails are triggered by customer action, or through targeted landing pages on your website, there is a lot you can do to make customers feel known and loved.
AI can make a valuable contribution to customer personalisation. For example, it can apply algorithms to your customer base to enable you to segment customers and prospects by various different criteria then target them with personalised messaging, offers and recommendations. Overall, AI can take the leg work and drudgery out of segmenting your data, so that you can maximise the benefit of the personalisation process and interact more effectively with your customers.
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Customer support
AI’s ability to segment and process customer data can also reap dividends in the areas of customer support and service. It can streamline the purchasing process and improve efficiency and responsiveness to any customer queries or issues along the way.
Many customers will already be familiar with AI-driven chatbots. Although they have been around for some years now, they are continually becoming smarter, and more able to provide quick answers and solutions to a range of customer queries. This increase in smartness is due to advancements in AI software enabling an improved understanding of the nuances of natural human language.
And with effective chatbots providing a great first impression to customers and prospects, your brand has a strong foundation on which to build a successful ongoing relationship.
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Data analysis
To quote marketing writer Dan Zarella, “Marketing without data is like driving with your eyes closed.”
The problem is, there is just so much data around that it can quickly feel overwhelming to try and identify and effectively use the best data for each particular marketing campaign.
The strength of AI here is its processing power. It can handle large volumes of data with ease, revealing insights, patterns and trends and highlighting any anomalies. Harnessing this power can enable you to gain the edge over your competitors in any area of your business.
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SEO
Another area in which AI can be invaluable for digital marketing is SEO. AI is becoming more closely incorporated into Google’s search algorithms through AI overviews. AI overviews provide an AI-generated snapshot in SERPS with key information and links to follow for further details.
In parallel with this, using an AI SEO tool can identify the keywords which are most relevant for your content and help to optimise that content – for example creating meta tags and headings – to achieve better rankings. They can also be used for competitive analysis, for example identifying any gaps in your SEO strategy when compared to your competitors.
Examples of AI SEO tools are ChatGPT, Jasper, Surfer and SEMrush.
Advantages and disadvantages of AI in digital marketing
Nothing is perfect and, although AI can be of tremendous help in the above areas, there are also some pitfalls to be aware of. We’ll look at three of the main advantages and disadvantages of using AI in digital marketing:
Advantages of AI
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It can increase efficiency
One of the key advantages of AI is that it can automate a variety of routine tasks to enable you to use human time and effort on more strategic tasks. Such tasks might include data input, lead generation analysis, customer segmentation, email tracking and basic reporting.
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Its greater availability of data enables personalisation
We have already seen that one of the strengths of AI is to enable greater customer segmentation and personalisation, enabling you to create more specific and relevant messaging and offers etc. If this is done well, it will greatly enhance customer experience.
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It can generate content
Another area we explored earlier is the ability of AI to generate content across a range of channels. Whilst this will still need human input for the perfect finishing touch, it can be a useful and time-saving first step in your content creation.
Disadvantages of AI
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The risk of losing authenticity
Still on the topic of using AI for content creation, we would stress that there is still the need for human involvement to retain authenticity and the voice of your brand.
Not only that, but the rise and rise of AI-generated content could trigger a whole new array of issues such as ownership and plagiarism. So it’s essential to maintain a balance between using the power of AI to help create content but without completely removing the human element.
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Inaccuracies or bias in data
The old IT slang word GIGO is just as relevant today as it was years ago. GIGO stands for Garbage In Garbage Out. It emphasises the point that technology – even AI – can’t come up with a good result if it has poor data fed into it in the first place.
Mistakes or inaccuracies in data feeding into AI could cause incorrect analysis and poor business decisions as a result. Also be aware that data may include various kinds of bias, which could also affect the outcomes.
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Overtargeting
Many have the concern that AI is somehow a bit sinister. For example, feeling suspicious that smart devices are listening. And who hasn’t had the experience of talking about something one day, only to be shown a related ad the next?
The increase of manipulation of user data and behaviour through AI could potentially lead to unethical overtargeting of customers without their consent and that violates their privacy.
This is a developing area that needs to be kept under review.
We hope that the information in this article provides a helpful introduction to some of the ways AI could be used in your digital marketing strategy, and also some of the pitfalls to be aware of.
We shall return to the topic of marketing-related AI again in the near future, so do remember to check back here with us soon at Xcite Digital.