Article by:
Dan Hughes (https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/)
Artificial intelligence (AI) was once a far-flung concept covered in sci-fi films and novels—but in our super advanced digital age, it’s a widespread reality.
Today, artificial intelligence is more accessible than ever, and it helps drive intelligence and efficiency across industries. The marketing industry is no exception.
A powerful branch of AI, marketing automation, is helping brands boost productivity while driving better results from their various promotional campaigns. Humans working alongside autonomous bots really is a winning formula—if you use the right tools.
Here we look at the best AI marketing tools for levelling up sales automation, link building, social media management, and content generation initiatives.
But first, a quick introduction.
What is AI in marketing?
Marketing automation is a system that automates repetitive tasks like curating subscriber lists, emailing customers about abandoned shopping carts, and providing automated customer assistance (among many others).
AI marketing tools facilitate the automation of these tasks and usually integrate into your existing applications or platforms.
Did you know? 28% of the top companies across industries actively use marketing automation and AI marketing tools.
The best marketing automation—or AI marketing—tools are powerful, and many brands use them to find valuable leads, create campaigns, and track the sales funnel with pinpoint accuracy.
AI marketing tools are designed to automate key tasks while augmenting the creativity, insight, and performance of the people that use them.
AI for sales automation
Sales automation software is a convenient and cost-effective way for markers to generate highly personalized email campaigns that build loyalty and communications with ease (and at scale).
In addition to email campaigns, sales automation software is also effective for scheduling prospect appointments, prioritizing leads, and gathering valuable data.
Let’s take a look at some of the best tools for AI marketing sales right now.
Outreach
Outreach is a versatile sales execution platform that helps marketers transform sales data into actionable insights. This seamless AI marketing tool enables you to automate your workflows while testing engagement activities and key messaging across channels, including SMS, email, and social media. The likes of Siemens, OKTA, and Zoom use it for their sales automation activities, so it must be good.
Gong
Gong is a sales marketing automation tool that exists to shorten sales cycles while significantly boosting team-wide communication and productivity. One of Gong’s most striking features is its ability to guide sales reps through their day with automated activity recommendations and strategic suggestions. A smart tool with a great deal of scope.
Drift
Drift is an incredibly smart conversation tool that helps marketers and sales reps work in harmony to reach out to customers with exactly the right messaging at that exact time, as well as channels where they’re most likely to engage. With razor-sharp insights designed to get under the skin of key customer segments, Drift will help you meet your consumers’ needs while boosting overall output.
Best AI marketing tools for link building
Now we move on to link building. Automated link-building tools empower you to identify which sites are authoritative and high in authority.
Some of the best link-building tools suggest contacting these sites to build mutually beneficial relationships that will ultimately boost your search rankings and expand your brand’s reach. Let’s take a look.
LinkAffinity
As one of the most respected ethical link-building platforms, this digital marketing tool will help you supercharge your brand authority while developing a wealth of valuable promotional relationships. Highly visual and straightforward to navigate out of the box, LinkAffinity serves up AI insights based on concrete semantic estimation. A real ace up the link-building sleeve.
Postaga
Postaga is a savvy outreach tool that not only analyzes domain authority and link-building opportunities but it also automatically creates relevant contact lists while allowing you to choose which channel to contact them through with a quick click. A brilliantly balanced platform with incredibly intuitive ways to analyze content and source key link-building opportunities.
AI marketing tools for social media management & advertising
A social media management tool automates the entire social media process. It’s possible to use an AI social media tool as stand-alone software, or you can integrate it with your existing CRM and CMS platforms to create an increasingly streamlined social media management experience across platforms.
Let’s take a look at the cream of the automated social media manager crop.
Cortex
A cutting-edge social media management and advertising tool, Cortex uses razor-sharp technology to deliver critical marketing data from various channels. With Cortex, you can see exactly what is driving engagement and sparking interest in your target audience, giving you the insights to understand when and what to post. Its content-posting suggestions are usually pretty spot on, too.
Phrasee
If you’re looking to optimize your paid social media advertising efforts for ongoing success, Phrasee is a tool you should consider. Not only does this highly-intuitive platform come with an in-built brand language optimization function to help ensure your messaging consistently stands out from the crowd (earning a healthy ROI in the process)—it also enables you to streamline key aspects of the ad creation process—a real winner.
Emplifi
Emplifi
Emplifi is an excellent all-around AI-powered social media management tool, but one of its biggest strengths lies in influencer marketing. Here you can connect with comprehensive insights based on influencers in your niche and get to know them better before making contact. Once you have an influencer marketing campaign off the ground, you can also monitor its performance while gathering intelligence for your future efforts.
AI writing & content generation tools
Last but not least, we arrive at AI writing tools. As you no doubt know, content is one of the most vital components of any successful digital marketing strategy. With rock-solid content, you’ll establish a strong brand voice and establish authority in your niche.
Now, AI writing tools exist to help create valuable content with minimal human intervention. Let’s take a look at some of them.
Rytr
Rytr is an automated writing assistant that autonomously produces marketing content based on your input requirements (title, keywords, subject matter, essential points, etc.). The platform tailors the copy to your brand voice and the channel (social media, landing page, email, etc.). This smart AI copy editor even generates snappy calls to action (CTAs) to help generate extra engagement.
Jasper
Trained by a mix of top direct-response copywriters and digital marketing experts, Jasper AI is a smart writing assistant that produces content in a natural voice based on the key features of your brand’s tone. It also has a clever SEO optimization function, and it can create imagery to support or complement your copy. A reliable and well-rounded AI writing assistant.
Wordtune
If you’re looking for an AI-powered tool to make your existing words and content sing almost instantly, Wordtune is a handy digital marketing tool. Wordtune integrates easily into any Edge or Chrome browser, automatically offering suggestions to improve your content while making critical edits that will make your copy more digestible to your target audience.
How do you use AI digital marketing tools?
“The playing field is poised to become a lot more competitive, and businesses that don’t deploy AI and data to help them innovate in everything they do will be at a disadvantage.”—Paul Daugherty, Accenture
There are many inspiring uses of AI in digital marketing. As autonomous technologies become increasingly accessible (and powerful), an increasing number of renowned brands are joining the party.
For example, big-hitting publications like Bloomberg, the Washington Post, and Forbes are currently using AI tools to create content.
To help you get the most from your AI marketing efforts, here are a few quick dos and don’ts for your reading pleasure.
Do
- Work with a small selection of AI marketing tools that align with your specific goals and business needs.
- Train your staff on how to use your new AI-powered tools to enhance their work and creative efforts.
- Use your best judgment to automate tasks you feel need streamlining and cherry-pick the best elements of your tools.
Don’t
- Integrate a bunch of different tools and bounce between them. It will cause confusion and create chaos rather than achieve harmony and boost productivity.
- Forget to include your team in the decision process when it comes to choosing the right AI tools.
- Lean solely on AI marketing tools to carry out your various tasks and processes. As we said, AI marketing tools are best when used with human leadership, and nothing beats the human editorial eye!