How to Use AI in Marketing in 2023: An In-Depth Guide

Wondering how to use AI in your marketing?

As an entrepreneur, you spend a lot of time marketing and creating content in your business. Whether you’re promoting your services, sharing your thoughts, or launching a new course, content marketing and social media marketing are part of the job.

But you don’t want to spend all your time marketing. So one way to streamline the process is by using AI tools, such as ChatGPT. From helping you brainstorm ideas to creating outlines and first drafts, AI tools can help you simplify your marketing and save time.

Using AI in marketing is not without caution. You want to ensure that you’re not relying on AI to create content for you, but instead using it as a tool to enhance your marketing, while keeping it in your brand voice, so that you sound like a living, breathing human (not a robot)!

So let’s dive into some ways you can use AI in your marketing without losing your essence.

Understanding AI in Marketing

To understand how to use AI in your marketing, you first want to understand what AI is in the first place.

AI is artificial intelligence: the simulation of human intelligence in machines programmed to think and learn like humans. One of the most common platforms is ChatGPT, but there are many AI tools out there.

It’s important to remember that AI tools are still in the early stages. They are limited to what they can do at this time. In fact, several of the main tools, like ChatGPT and Google Bard are known to produce erroneous facts, not know the current date, and frequently misquote history. (Just one of the reasons you don’t want to rely on it completely!)

The Benefits of using AI in Marketing

The best way to use AI in your business is to think of it like your super-powered assistant — one you have to train to get the best results. 

AI tools can be used to brainstorm ideas, assist in writing content, analyze and summarize large amounts of text, and even help analyze your ideal customer.

While AI can’t replace your skills, talents, personality, expertise, and intuition, it can help you perform time-consuming tasks, freeing up space for you to focus on the other aspects of your business, like serving clients. 

AI can help you with marketing by:

• Helping you understand your ideal client 
  
• Writing your first draft of a blog post or sales page
• Brainstorming ideas for content or offers 
• Synthesizing large amounts of information 
• Analyzing and writing in your brand voice 
• Creating a content plan 
• Writing social media captions and finding relevant hashtags
• Creating email newsletters
• Drafting your professional bio in third person format 
• Creating an outline for a new course or coaching package
  
• Creating presentation from scratch
• Repurposing long form content to short form and vice versa

The main benefits to using AI tools in marketing is that it can save you valuable time and energy by cutting down on the amount of time you spend on marketing related tasks, and freeing up your time for other business priorities.

The Drawbacks to Using AI to Market Your Business

ChatGPT and similar tools are not without drawbacks. These platforms are not perfect. They don’t know you or the nuances of your business, and they may not understand your perspective or what you’re trying to accomplish.

Here are some drawbacks of using the AI in your business:

1. It doesn’t take a POV. As an entrepreneur, you have your own perspective. That’s part of what helps you stand out in the marketplace. AI doesn’t know that perspective, and so it won’t be infused into your content automatically.

2. It doesn’t know your values. The AI models don’t know or understand your business or brand values. It doesn’t know you care about authenticity, creativity, or integrity. And even if you tell it, it doesn’t necessarily know what those things mean to you.

3. It doesn’t know your voice (unless you teach it). AI generates content in a pretty agnostic (read: boring) tone. To make it “yours,” you want to infuse your personality, your brand voice, and quirks into your content.

4. AI models are sometimes flat out wrong, especially when quoting stats or historical figures. No matter if you’re using ChatGPT, Google Bard, or Bing AI, you’ll want to double-check any figures before using them in your content.

5. AI doesn’t have your experience “on the ground”. You’ve learned from working with clients, from your courses and training, and you have LIFE experience that no AI model can match. It can’t take all of that into account which means it can’t replace you.

Ethical Considerations with AI

AI isn’t without its controversy and even legal issues. Because there are little to no restrictions on what AI can use and produce in the marketplace, it is causing concern with data privacy, trademark and copyright, and usage rights.

Do your due diligence before using a platform to understand how it’s using your prompts and information, whether your information will be shared and how and where it will be used. Always know what you are signing up for!

The best way to use AI in your marketing

The best way to use AI tools in your business is as your trusty, speedy, marketing assistant. This means that YOU stay in the driver’s seat and you train tools like ChatGPT to carry out tasks according to your direction.

You want to ensure you stay in charge of the overall vision and strategy with your business, such as

• Your overall brand (including your brand personality, tone of voice, and values) and your mission and vision.
• Who you serve (aka your niche and your ideal client), even if AI models can help you better understand your ideal client.
• How you show up and get visible, what you share, and how you serve your clients.

So the onus is on you to make sure that anything you use AI to create fits your brand, your customer base, and your values.

7 Best Practices for Using AI in Your Marketing

Because of all the reasons above, you don’t want to use just any response that ChatGPT or another tool spits out. Here are some best practices on getting the best responses from your AI tools:

1. Tell AI who it’s writing for. For example, give it a prompt like, “You’re a wellness coach for busy moms who don’t have a lot of time to work out and meal plan.”

2. Tell AI what your brand voice is (or have it analyze it first). “Write in a brand voice that is supportive, warm, casual, yet authoritative.”

3. Give it a job and be specific about what you want. “Write a 500 word blog post on how to meal prep on Sunday for the week ahead.” You can even give it a title or ask it to generate one.

4. Engage with AI to get a better output. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, ask for a rewrite, lengthen or shorten the amount of copy, or take a specific point of view. The more specific and directed your feedback, the better the result. 

5. Ask it the magic question. The magic question is, “What do you need from me to [get this result?” I.e., Ask ChatGPT, “What do you need from me to produce a quality written 1000 word blog post on this topic?”

6. Customize and personalize the output you get. No matter what, don’t just copy and paste the response you get from ChatGPT or anything else. Take it as a first draft. Edit the draft to fit your POV, your ideal client, and your brand voice.

7. Verify and validate the information you get from AI tools. Always double-check stats and information for accuracy. This is a known problem with ChatGPT and other tools, and you can’t just use whatever it gives you as fact.

Best AI Tools for Content Marketing 

The tools below are great for content marketing, including creating copy, social media posts, email subject lines, and website content.

While ChatGPT can be used for almost anything under the sun, these platforms are also helpful specifically for content marketing.

• Jasper.AI can generate persuasive and engaging copy for website content, blog posts, social media captions, ad copy, and email newsletters. It offers features like the “Long-Form Assistant” and “Content Improver” to help streamline the content creation process.
• Copy.ai provides AI-powered copywriting assistance for different content types. It can generate social media posts, product descriptions, blog intros, taglines, and email subject lines. It also has workflows that allow you to easily repurpose one piece of content into another format.
  
• Writesonic offers a range of AI-powered copywriting capabilities, specifically for marketing. It can assist in creating landing page copy, product descriptions, blog posts, social media ads, and email subject lines. It provides templates and suggestions that users can customize to fit their brand voice.
• Rytr is an AI writing assistant that generates copy for various purposes, such as blog posts, ads, social media posts, and email newsletters. It offers different copywriting frameworks, such as AIDA and PAS, that you can use to create sales pages.
  
• Beautiful.ai and Gamma.ai are great for greeting compelling presentations. You can provide as much or as little content as you have and then use the AI tools to generate design and content for your presentation.

How to get started with using AI in your marketing

AI tools like ChatGPT and Google Bard offer many opportunities to help you generate ideas, create content, analyze information, and repurpose your content, saving you time and money in your business.

By understanding its capabilities, limitations, and how to make it your own, you can utilize AI to simplify your marketing and amplify your brand across a broad range of marketing channels, while giving you more time to do what you love in your business.

Don’t forget that no matter how you use AI in  your marketing, you’ll still want to infuse it with your own brand voice, so that your content looks and feels like you, no matter where it is and how it was created.