22% of marketers are currently using AI-based apps for their marketing efforts. Whereas 57% more are planning to use them in the coming years. – Salesforce’s State of Marketing Report (Fifth Edition)
One can easily judge from this data that Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) is going to play a huge role in marketing in the future. Now, you might be wondering how these two technologies can prove to be helpful in marketing?
Well, the answer lies in decision making. With AI-based systems, marketers can make more learned decisions based on BIG DATA, and quickly respond to changes using machine-learning platforms. In this post, we are going to talk about some of the major ways in which AI and ML are changing the landscape of digital marketing, with some simple examples, to help you understand everything better.
Let’s take a look at some examples of AI already being implemented in marketing:
Dynamic Ads in Google
Back in 2018, Google came up with dynamic ads. As it is evident from the term itself, dynamic ads are nothing but ads that adjust automatically to match users’ searches.
This was looked upon as a step by Google to help businesses save time that they were earlier spending on optimizing their ads manually to match their user’s requirements and search trends. Since the ads were more relevant for the users, it instantly brought an increase in the number of clicks, up to 15%, from the users.
Google’s official website says that it is the easiest way for businesses to find customers on Google without them having to do too much. In fact, it also says that even well-managed accounts can miss out on potential customers if it is not for these dynamic ads.
How Does Targeting In These Ads Work?
These ads work simply by using the content offered on your landing page. Here’s how you can easily set up a campaign for these ads in Google Ads Manager:
Campaign Setup
∙ Simply go to the campaign tab in Google Ads and click on ‘+’ icon
∙ Select your goal (you can also select campaign without a goal) and hit continue
∙ It will show a list of campaigns type for you to select. You can select a type and it will take you to the next page
∙ On this page you will have the option to name your campaign and set a target locations (just like you do for normal ad campaigns)
∙ The only difference is that under the ‘Network’ section, you now have to select ‘Search Network’ and then hit continue
∙ On the next page change the Ad group type to ‘Dynamic’
∙ Once you’ve selected the option, you will get a new screen on which you can enter your website’s address
Ad Group Setting
Choose Targets for your dynamic ads, for which you have three options:
∙ Pre-selected categories by Google based on the content on your website
∙ Specific webpages that you want to target
∙ All web pages
Once you have selected the target, your ad will be created.
It is worth mentioning here that the manager will automatically generate the headline for the ad based on the content it will find on your website. However, you can create the description content for the ad as per your choice.
Once you have completed all these steps, you can simply click ‘Done’, and your dynamic ad is ready!
Dynamic Ad Groups
Just like it is with normal ads, there are Ad groups for targeting a set of shared keywords, there are dynamic ad groups for dynamic ads. In a way, Google has segregated the standards ads and dynamic ads. Regular ad groups will focus specifically on text ads, call-only ads, whereas dynamic ad targets and dynamic search ads will be targeted using dynamic ad groups.
There’s still an option to split an ad group that contains both dynamic as well as text ads. You can check more about it here.
Automated Bidding in Google Ads
To maximize the results of ad campaigns for businesses, Google gives you this automated bidding option. What this means is that instead of you picking what’s the best bid, Google will automatically set the bid amount based on the following data: a user’s device, OS, demographics, time of the day, and location.
With automated ads, marketers don’t have to carry out the manual updates required for specific keywords or ad groups. Thus, it saves them a lot of time.
In a similar way, Facebook has also developed its automated ad system that allows marketers to get maximum results from their ad budget with minimal effort. If you have ever run a Facebook Ad, you would have noticed that if you don’t have a specific target in mind the ads manager automatically does everything to get maximum CPAs for your business. Now, there is a school of thought that says manual bidding is best when you want to remain in total control of the campaign costs, and don’t want to overspend money. However, how can you maximize your efforts by balancing the two, we’ll leave that topic for another day to cover in detail.
Conclusion
From the information that I have presented above, you will have had a fair idea as to where the future of marketing is headed. AI and ML are changing the landscape, automatic things for marketers so that focus more on building effective targeting strategies instead of worrying about bid costs and so on. However, what’s in store for the future – this only time will tell.
As of now, just remember that AI and machine learning is here to make your job easy as a marketer – so use it to good effect.
All the best!