Generative AI has quickly become the not-so-secret secret to optimizing digital marketing workflows and boosting efficiency. Over the last 12 months adoption of AI tools within marketing departments has more than doubled. Today over 70 percent of marketers report incorporating AI tools into their marketing strategies with a further 48% indicating that finding new ways to leverage AI was a top priority for the coming year.

But outside of large corporations like Amazon and Microsoft who have been pioneers in the generative AI landscape, how are smaller companies in Vancouver using this technology to enhance their digital market efforts?

Coming up, this blog will explore some of the ways companies of any size can leverage GenAI to make the most of their digital marketing efforts and increase the impact of their campaigns.

Crafting Compelling Content

High-quality content is the glue that holds your digital marketing strategy together. Without great content, the impact of everything else you’re doing is almost wasted energy. That said, continually creating, refining, and optimizing content eats up a significant amount of time and resources, which can be especially difficult for smaller companies without dedicated marketing departments.

GenAI is helping with some of the heavy lifting by dramatically reducing how much effort is required to craft compelling, original content. The caveat here is writing assistants like ChatGPT and Write sonic must be used responsibly; if you’re relying on AI to captain your entire content strategy, you’re highly unlikely to see meaningful engagement or long-term results. However, these tools can be extremely useful in brainstorming ideas, coming up with keyword targets, drafting outlines, or even tweaking existing content to make it more SEO-friendly.

Just remember who you are writing for. It’s fine to lean on GenAI for ideation or to edit the tone of a piece to keep the brand voice consistent, but no software can completely replace human insight and nuance both of which are critical to creating engaging content.

Nailing Personalized Messaging

A key focus of strategic digital marketing is getting the right message in front of the right people at the right time. But this can’t just be force-fed advertising. Customer wants to feel seen, understood, and valued by the brands they interact with. Before generative AI, ensuring marketing messages reached the right target audience required a significant amount of human input, combing through and analyzing data, interpreting results, and crafting tailored messaging. But today, we can use GenAI to streamline this process and get days’ worth of work done in a fraction of the time.

AI-powered tools like Dynamic Yield analyze customer data including browsing habits, purchase history, and social interactions to predict individual preferences and needs and use this data to implement website or marketing campaign changes based on these findings. For example, your e-commerce platform makes specific product recommendations based on a user’s previous purchases or even adjusts website content in real-time based on what other similar users are interacting with.

GenAI-powered hyper-personalization takes this concept a step further with tools that enable businesses to deliver virtually one-on-one interactions with individual customers instead of grouping them in buckets with other users. Integrating real-time data analysis and machine learning capabilities allows these models to interact and react immediately with contextually relevant and tailored content at precisely the right time. The result is a better overall experience for users and increased ROI for your business.

Creating High-Quality Image and Video Content from Text

Video content is the fastest-growing segment in digital marketing, and if you’ve been ignoring it until now, you could be severely restricting your growth. According to recent stats, video streaming, including Reels, YouTube Shorts, and TikTok, make up a whopping 82.5% of global internet traffic, and this trend shows no sign of slowing.

While some businesses have been reluctant to fully embrace video in their digital marketing strategy, the vast majority — over 90% — are actively using video content, and nearly 70% plan to increase video usage over the next year. Whether you are an adopter or are just warming up to the idea of including video content within your marketing mix, GenAI is making it easier to craft high-quality visuals uniquely tailored to specific campaigns and audiences. Where creating, filming, and editing this content may have taken a team days, AI tools like Runway and DALL-E can now produce visually rich, on-brand product demos, explainer videos, or even cinematic-styled promos with a few product images and text prompts. This has been a huge win for brands that lack the budget to consistently produce original video content.

Managing Your Social Media Presence

As any digital marketing agency worth its weight knows, a strong social media presence is a must-have part of a good digital marketing strategy, but keeping account content fresh and maintaining user engagement is extremely time-consuming.

GenAI makes it easier to stay on top of all your social media accounts with tools that allow you to create content faster. These tools include features that can analyze trending topics, what posts users are interacting with, and historical performance to generate posts that are current, relevant, and engaging. For example, with a few prompts, Inky can craft original captions and then tailor them to capture the tone of specific platforms — from professional content for your LinkedIn to attention-getting hashtags for Instagram — while ensuring that your brand’s voice remains consistent across all channels. What’s more, GenAI tools can also manage scheduling, ensuring your posts are consistent and go live at the best times to engage your audience. They will also keep track of how each post performs to help adjust future campaigns.

In short, GenAI tools streamline the most time-consuming aspects of social media management, which allows you to focus more energy on a high-level strategy without sacrificing your social status.

Applying GenAI to Data Analytics

One of the most powerful uses of generative AI in digital marketing lies in its ability to transform complex data into actionable insights. Regardless of whether you’re a 2-person team or run a large-scale operation, data is —or should be— at the core of your decision-making. Being able to interpret information like customer behaviour, campaign performance, and conversion patterns is key in enabling you to fine-tune your digital marketing strategy to effectively reach and engage your target audience.

GenAI simplifies the delivery of complex data with reports, charts, and graphs that make it possible for anyone with even a basic grasp of analytics to understand. Instead of sifting through mountains of raw data or relying on Google Analytics (which is a great tool but has a steep learning curve), GenAI tools like Tableau Pulse create visual representations of key metrics like conversion rates, click-through rates, and ROI that are easy to digest. Tableau will also make straightforward recommendations based on your campaign performance data, highlight trends, identify areas needing improvement, and make suggestions for optimization.

Data analysis is crucial for refining and optimizing marketing campaigns and GenAI is making these tools accessible to everyone. Even digital marketing agencies are jumping on the bandwagon, incorporating these tools into their workflows to streamline and improve data analysis and reporting.

Supercharging SEO

Earlier we covered how important great content is to your digital marketing strategy, and if the content is the foundation of your online presence, then SEO is the key. Without effective SEO even the best content will fail to get noticed.

There are nearly 200 million active websites today and each is fighting to gain first-page visibility in search results. Marketing agencies dedicate significant resources and often entire teams to help boost their clients’ search rankings. However, SEO requires extensive research and planning, and constant fine-tuning to stay ahead of the competition. But now, GenAI is helping to simplify some of these tasks.

One area when GenAI can lend a hand is brainstorming content topics based on trending searches and frequently asked questions, saving you the hours of research it usually takes to discover the right ideas. It can also help with keyword research. These AI-powered research tools can analyze high-volume keywords in real-time, offering you suggestions for terms that will maximize your reach.

Beyond initial research, GenAI writing tools can assist in drafting SEO-friendly headlines, subheadings, and meta descriptions, all optimized to align with search engine algorithms. These seemingly negligible tasks play a big role in how your content is positioned on search pages which ultimately impacts how many users and how much traffic is directed to your website.

Enhancing Customer Service

Customer expectations are higher than ever when it comes to customer service. When interacting with a brand online, people expect a response within 60 seconds even after regular business hours. Generative AI is giving businesses the ability to meet these demands by providing seamless 24/7 customer service through AI-powered chatbots.

With chatbots powered by GenAI, businesses can offer around-the-clock support without the need for a large customer service team. These chatbots can handle everything from answering common questions and offering product-related instructions to checking on the status of an order and processing returns. When it cannot find a solution, chatbots can filter users through appropriate channels allowing human agents to tackle more complex queries.

Wrapping Up

In Vancouver’s competitive market, generative AI can be a valuable tool for companies looking to boost the effectiveness of their digital marketing strategies without drastically increasing their budgets. The key lies in using these tools strategically to maximize their potential without letting AI overshadow the creative essence that makes your brand unique. By finding the right balance, businesses can harness AI’s efficiency while preserving the brand voice that resonates with their audiences.