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AI In Marketing
Artificial intelligence has many uses across different industries. From diagnosis prediction in the medical field to automated tasks in the IT industry, AI has great potential as a tool. In this article, we will explore the uses of AI in the marketing industry, which tools can be helpful with your marketing strategies, and the potential pitfalls that come with artificial intelligence.
Overview:
- 4 uses of AI in marketing
- Disadvantages of AI
- Marketing Director’s View Of AI
The Uses of AI In Marketing
Below are 4 uses of AI that could be helpful for your marketing efforts:
1. Research & Content Creation
AI can write many different types of content that you will use regularly within your marketing campaigns:
- Social media captions
- Email copy
- Blog copy
Although this can be incredibly useful, be cautious of inaccurate information. AI should only be used as a tool, not a complete solution.
AI Tool: ChatGPT is one of the most popular AI platforms. It can write content, gather research and provide insight when asked questions. Remember to always check where it has got its information from in order to confirm that it is accurate. You’ll also find it available on the platforms when you write a post, for example, LinkedIn.
2. Customer Support
As artificial intelligence has become more popular and advanced, businesses have been using it to enhance their customers’ support experience. Tools such as chatbots can answer users’ questions and recommend content that can be useful to their users based on the conversations they have with them.
Here are a few advantages to using AI within your customer support process:
- Support can be personalised to enhance individual users’ experience
- Provide support in multiple languages
- Automatically recommend products or packages based on conversations with users
- Gather important and informative information for users with ease
Ultimately, customer support and chatbots can be faster and more efficient with the automation functionality that artificial intelligence provides.
AI Tool: Tideo is a customer service chatbot that uses AI in order to provide efficient and accurate support to users around the world.
3. Analytics
Artificial intelligence can aid in data collection and analysis. Analytics is an incredibly important aspect of marketing as it allows marketers to see what strategy is working, where improvements can be made, and what type of audience has the highest engagement with their content.
AI can be used within analytics for several different uses, including:
- Data collection
- Data analysis
- Error reduction
- Discovering analytical trends
AI can be a very resourceful tool to use when analysing your marketing data and also frees up resources so that your marketing team can focus on more strategic tasks.
AI Tool: Google Analytics uses AI to provide predictive metrics, anomaly detection, and clear and concise insights generated from data that has been collected.
4. Photo Editing & Graphic Design
AI has made strides in photo editing and even graphic design. From upscaling images with limited quality loss to creating entire images with generative AI, graphic design is now even more limitless.
Here are a few uses of AI within graphic design:
- Generate entire images
- Expand images by generating around the edge with AI
- Select and fill portions of your image to make edits
- Increase the size of small images by using an AI image upscaling tool
Marketing is analytical, strategic, and very visual.
Although allowing everyone to design is fantastic, it does saturate the market with a lot of AI art that can be seen as obscure, inaccurate, and visually jarring.
With AI generated art, the user is completely at the mercy of the program they are using, which relies on them communicating with it in a clear manner. Without practical artistic skills and genuine creativity, the human element of graphic design, and art in general, is diminished in the presence of AI on its own.
AI Tool: Canva has many AI features including; an object eraser (Magic Eraser), image generators (Magic Media), and an animation generator (Magic Animate).
Disadvantages Of AI
- Inaccurate Data: AI systems are only as reliable as the data they are trained on, so if the data is outdated, or biased, the AI can produce inaccurate or misleading results.
- Lack of Creativity: Although AI can generate patterns and automate tasks, it struggles to think outside of the rules it has for itself, making it less effective for tasks that require creativity.
- No Human Touch: AI lacks emotional intelligence, which can make interactions feel impersonal and lead to a lower-quality user experience.
Marketing Director’s View On AI
Top take-away: Don’t ignore AI.
Ignoring AI would be like when Blockbuster ignored the tech innovation at the time of the rise of Netflix.
As the technology landscape changes businesses need to be monitoring this and riding the wave. Being on the fence with AI for business is not a long-term sustainable approach.
A couple of things to consider:
- How are your competitors using it.
- Could the AI tech bring new entrants to your market?
- Could it change the cost/quality of your product/services?
At this point, you might be wondering if AI could replace your business, team or product/service. The answer really comes down to this…
AI is not likely to replace humans with AI…
but it will replace humans without AI.
– Lydia Mckeown, Marketing Director
Is ChatGPT an effective SEO tool?
ChatGPT and other AI tools have become very popular throughout 2023. Many people use these tools due to personal interest in how AI works, others are using them to aid them in their businesses and marketing practices. AI can be incredibly useful in many different situations:
- Improving image quality
- Image editing
- Research
- Automation
- Content writing
But how does ChatGPT and AI handle SEO tasks? Is it possible?
Creating Content with ChatGPT
At I Do Marketing we set out to research how well ChatGPT performs in terms of SEO compared to our own content writing.
We first researched a keyword/topic that was fairly competitive, but still achievable to some degree. We chose our articles to be centred on the 7 Ps of marketing, which is a popular subject across the web, within the marketing industry. To make things fair, we decided that the word count of each article should be the same, and metadata should contain the same amount of keywords and keyword variants.
We prompted ChatGPT to “write a 700 word article summarising the 7 ps of marketing”. Out of the 700 words we wanted, ChatGPT wrote an article with 553 words. We then generated some metadata to fill in the title and description of the article. The only human input included were the images present on the blog post.
Afterwards we planned and drafted our own article, including the same word count and the same amount of images.
Here are the two results:
Human: The 7 Ps of Marketing
AI: The 7 Ps of Marketing: A Comprehensive Guide to Building a Successful Strategy
Once both articles were published we submitted their links through Google Search Console in order for search engines to crawl these pages and index them on the web.
SEO Performance: Human V ChatGPT
After a few months of these new articles being made live, we decided to see if either of them had any progress in terms of their SEO rankings.
Using an online SEO tool we could determine that the article written and optimised by ourselves were ranking for 3 keywords related to the article:
- “7 ps” (which has a monthly search volume of 3,600) ranks at 59
- “Marketing ps” (which has a monthly search volume of 210) ranks at 47
- “seven ps” (which has a monthly search volume of 70) ranks at 77
Although these rankings aren’t particularly high up on Google search results, they rank fairly well within the time frame of this SEO experiment. The longer content is present on the web, the more likely it is to have a higher ranking on search results pages.
In the case for the ChatGPT article, our SEO tool determined that it did not rank for any keywords. We also found that the traffic generated from the ChatGPT article was lower than the traffic achieved by our article.
- ChatGPT’s blog had 9 users that viewed the page 17 times in total
- Our blog had 17 users that viewed the page 23 times in total
This could be due to the writing style differences between humans and AI, and the fact that, as content writers, we tend to go back and amend the way we present information. SEO and keyword optimisation is a deliberate practice that usually requires content to go through several alterations. This includes spacing out keywords in your content evenly and amending keywords so that keyword variants can be used instead (Google can rank you for a keyword, even if you use synonyms as alternatives).
Are ChatGPT and AI still useful?
With content writing and SEO, AI can be a useful tool but it shouldn’t be used on it’s own. Tools like ChatGPT reiterate information that is currently present on the web, and can’t always be deliberate in its actions.
ChatGPT isn’t always accurate, even though it may come across as confident when it presents you with an answer. ChatGPT uses data throughout the internet up to the year 2021, so it’s answers will only ever be accurate for information that hasn’t changed in two years.
If you want to write content with ChatGPT, we recommend using it to help you with your content structure. Use it’s AI generated content as a basis for the information you want to convey. You can use ChatGPT for research also, but make sure to fact check any information it provides.
Although ChatGPT can save you a lot of time, the performance it achieves isn’t always going to get you the results you want. And if you pump out content at a high rate, you run the risk of having your website feeling bloated.
Content Writing & SEO
Whether you are looking for a website audit or SEO friendly content for your website, the I Do Marketing team can help. Click below to view our SEO services, or get in touch:
Increasing Your Website’s Speed
When businesses look into creating a website, they usually prioritise its content and design. Although these two aspects are critical, other criteria are just as fundamental.
Website speed and how it can affect your business
Slow website loading speeds can have a huge negative effect on your website and how it performs. Below are a few ways a slow website can affect your business:
- Reduction in website traffic, resulting in loss of sales
- An increase of user’s bounce rate (exiting your website)
- Reduction in user engagement due to poor user experience
- Negative effects on your SEO and SERP rankings which will result in less organic traffic
How to increase website speed
Although it is best practice to integrate measures into your website that reduce loading times before developing, this doesn’t mean a slow website can’t be optimised later on. Below are 5 tips on how to increase your website’s speed and create a better experience for your users.
Note: You can use Google’s page speed tool to see how fast your website is.
1. Reduce Image Size
Images can make up a huge portion of your website in terms of memory size. So reducing the amount of memory that images take up and giving images specific sizes on your pages can greatly improve your website speed.
There are a number of ways you can decrease the size of images:
- Use a free online compression tool to compress your images without loss of quality, before uploading them to your website
- Use a plugin to compress the images that are already present on your website
- Resize your images using an image editor, so that they are reduced to the size that they will be presented on your web page
2. Minimise or Reduce CSS and Javascript
By combining multiple CSS and JavaScript files into a single file, you can significantly minimise the number of HTTP requests made. Reducing the number of HTTP requests is crucial for improving website loading times. This approach not only reduces the overall file size but also enhances the website’s performance. Visitors will then experience faster load times and a more seamless browsing experience.
3. Enable Lazy Loading
Lazy Loading is a feature on websites that only loads images on the page as and when they are in view of the user. This means that instead of loading an entire page with all of its images, the browser only has to load a portion of the page at a time, making it a lot faster.
On most website platforms there are several free plugins, guides, or scripts that can help add lazy loading functionality to your website:
4. Website Hosting
Believe it or not, where you host your website can affect its speed. If you try to load a website that is hosted on a server in another country it will take longer to load than a website hosted close to you.
Many hosting providers have physical servers located across the world, which makes it more convenient for you and your users. Some hosting providers even let you choose what location to host your website in. So if your business and your target audience are all located in the UK, you can select your server location to be in London, as an example.
5. Website Caching
When a large number of users access a webpage simultaneously, servers can become sluggish and require more time to deliver the content to each user.
Website caching will address this issue by storing the current version of your website on the hosting server and serving this version until the website is updated. This process ensures that the web page does not need to be rendered repeatedly for each user.
As a result, the server’s load time is reduced, and the delivery time of the web page is improved. This leads to a more efficient and faster user experience for all visitors.
Do you need help increasing your website speed?
If you would like assistance in optimising your website to increase its speed and improve your online user experience, please get in touch:
Updating SEO: How Often Should You Be Updating Your SEO
Updating your SEO across your website is key to keeping your website’s performance on search engines consistent. And it can greatly increase the chances of improving your website’s performance.
Below, we will break down some elements of SEO and how often you should update parts of your website.
- Keywords
- Content
- On-Page SEO
- Page Loading Speed
Updating Keywords:
Keywords are just one of the key aspects of SEO that can help increase your organic traffic through Google and other popular search engines.
Optimising a website and improving keyword rankings is very time-consuming.
This brings up the question: Why would I update my keywords if I’ve worked hard to get them to the ranking they currently have?
The answer to this is simple. Trends evolve and so should your website. If a better, more popular, and more appropriate keyword comes along, using that keyword can open up your website to new organic traffic, that is more in line with your target audience.
How often should you update keywords for SEO?
When you discover new keywords that gives you more opportunity to increase organic users that align with your target audience.
Updating SEO: Content
Google loves fresh/new content. So regularly adding more content to your website can be very beneficial for SEO.
When you are looking to add more content and copy, consider these points first:
- Shall I add new content to an existing page?
- Shall I add new content to a new blog?
- Can I improve the content that my website currently has?
- Shall I add a new page and write new content to focus on a specific keyword?
The answer to all of those questions is yes.
You need to consistently add new content and improve your current content. Your website should not only evolve and change, but it should expand.
Search engines love websites with lots of high-quality content
How often should you update content for SEO?
When you see an opportunity to add quality content to any area of your website, that your target audience would find useful and insightful.
Updating On-Page SEO:
On-page SEO is all about the techniques, guidelines, and approaches applied directly to your website to improve its search engine ranking. This includes the use of keywords, content components such as titles, meta titles, and the regular updating of content.
There are so many different elements to SEO, and all of them need to be updated in order to improve your website’s performance with Google and other search engines.
When it comes to knowing when to update these different elements, there are a few things you can look out for:
- A drop in the amount of users that are finding your website organically
- Your rankings have dropped, and your competitors’ sites are now ranking higher than yours
How often should you update your on-page SEO?
Although rankings for keywords can fluctuate, a drop in rankings can be a good indicator of when you need to update your on-page SEO. So try refreshing your metadata, image alt descriptions, and H1 & H2 titles.
Updating SEO: Page Loading Speed
The speed at which your website loads is very important when it comes to SEO.
If a website is slow, users may not use it. That also means that your slow website could decrease the amount of returning visitors. Most search engines are aware when users visit a site and almost instantly return to the search results page. This can indicate to search engines that your website wasn’t useful to the user, and this can affect your keyword rankings.
Here are a few techniques you can use to increase the speed of your website:
- Change all images on your site to the WEBP image format
- Make sure all images have specified sizes
- Implement a lazy load feature (this only loads images when they are scrolled down to)
- Minimise your CSS and Javascript code (this compresses the code to make it take up less memory)
- Delete any unused CSS or Javascript code
How often should you check your page loading speed?
Average engagement time, which is a metric measured through Google Analytics, allows you to measure how long a user uses your website for. If your average engagement time is getting less and less over time, it may be caused by users trying to use your site, but quitting, because it isn’t loading quickly enough.
So, how often should you be updating seo?
Well, there is no definitive answer. SEO has a wide range of aspects, that all need updating at different times and for different reasons. Google and other search engines like websites when they are constantly updating, adding fresh content, improving keyword density, and much more.
Your website should be consistently evolving.
Improve your website performance and increase your website’s organic traffic with our SEO service
10 Features Your Website Needs
A website can be a very useful tool, especially for businesses. They allow you to get your name out there, show off your products or services and reach new audiences.
Below we have outlined 10 features all websites should have in order to make using them a pleasant and beneficial experience:
1: Responsive User Interface Design
You will probably find that most visitors of your website will be from mobile devices. This can be for many reasons, but the main two are ease of use and speed. Our mobile phones are almost always switched on, and most people have access to the internet from these devices. It takes less than a minute to pull up Google and type in a question.
That is why it is important that the user interface of your website accommodates all screen sizes. This means it needs to be responsive and adapt its design based on the width of the screen it is being viewed with.
2: Clear Call to Actions
Call to Actions are buttons or links on websites that allow users to take action. These actions include:
- Loading new content
- Calling a phone number
- Composing an email
It is important to have clear call to actions within your site’s content in order to make it easier for your users to contact you.
Make sure your call to actions:
- Are clear and stand out
- Have unique wording (don’t repeat “read more”, “learn more”)
- Are big enough to click on smaller devices (mobile phones and tablets)
3: Consistent Branding
Every business wants to be recognisable. Use your website to show off your branding so that your users can point it out in a crowd. Your branding should be consistent, not only on your website, but also your social media pages, emails, newsletters and printed materials.
Remember:
- Use a consistent colour scheme across your website that align with your brand guidelines
- Place your logo within the header, sticky header and footer
- Pick two separate fonts for your regular text content and your titles
4: Reviews & Testimonials
When you run a business, feedback can be very useful to you. It can help you improve your operations, see where you are doing things right or wrong, and if you have positive reviews it can lead to more customers. If you do have great reviews, you need to show them off!
Place them on the home page or footer of your website, so that they can be seen by visitors. This could encourage them to seek out your products or services and gives your business more legitimacy.
You can use a service like Elfsight, which allows you to pull through your reviews on a carousel, making it easy to view.
5: Speedy Loading
If people click on your website and the content is taking a long time to load, there’s a good chance they will click away and use a different website instead. Having a fast loading website will allow you to keep users on your website for longer, and bring them back.
Use these top tips to make your website load fast
- Enable lazy loading on your images: This allows your web pages to load in the text content before the images. And the images are loaded as blurred versions to allow them to load quicker, and then are loaded in full definition afterwards.
- Compress your images: When you compress an image it takes up less memory, allowing it to load faster for your users. You can choose to compress your images before or after uploading them to your website, via free online tools or website image compression plugins.
- Change your website hosting: Websites are hosted on servers all across the world, but your website should be hosted on a server that is within the country you carry out your business. If your business is based in the UK, choose a hosting service that has servers in the UK.
- Enable Website Caching: Website caching is when a version of the website and its content is stored on the devices that it is accessed from. For example, if you were to visit our website for the second time, it will load faster as your device is loading content that it is already aware of. Note: when adding new content to your website, it is important to delete the cache across your website, so that the new content can be accessible to new users and returning users.
6: SEO Optimisation
For your website to be useful to you, your business and your potential customers, it needs to be seen and accessible. Search engine optimisation will help improve how your website and its webpages perform on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and many more.
The higher the quality of your website’s content, the better it will perform. Below is a checklist for your website’s SEO:
- Pick keywords that are relevant to your website’s content
- Assign 1 or 2 keywords per page to use within those pages’ content
- Include meta titles and meta descriptions using these keywords
- Use alt descriptions for images to accurately describe what they contain
- Try to write content on your website that contains 700 words or more
7: Social Media
There are many benefits to linking to your social media profiles on your website. Here are a few:
- Social media is another method your potential customers could use to get in touch with you
- If users like the content you provide on your website, and they see you are also providing quality content on social media, they may follow your pages or interact with your posts
- On your blog posts, providing a “share to” social media button will let users easily share a link to your content on various different social media platforms. This could increase the amount of traffic your website gets
8: Security
Providing security to your users and your website is a must. Have you entered a website that shows a warning before allowing you to load the page? Those websites don’t contain an SSL certificate, which makes the website insecure, and the information that you input into that website is possibly accessible to third parties.
What information do websites collect and/or use?
- Card details: these are typically only used on e-commerce websites
- Cookies: these show what other websites you have been using
- Contact details: these are typically collected through contact forms
Tips for securing your website:
- Purchase an SSL certificate for your domain name
- Add 2-factor authentication for logging into the backend of your website
- Use complicated passwords, and change them every few months
9: Easy To Use Navigation
The navigation menu of your website is incredibly important, as it allows your users to easily move from one page to another. Here are a few tips for keeping your navigation easy to use:
- On desktop, have your links on a single line
- Keep your page naming convention as simple as possible to avoid confusion (home, about, contact)
- On mobile, condense your menu into a burger menu. This will allow more space on the page, and keeps the navigation menu in an easy to find section at the top of the page
- Think about adding a sticky header to your website. This means the header and navigation menu will be present at the top of the screen, ready to use any time, no matter how far your users scroll
10: Footer
The footer of your website should be where all relevant and easy-to-consume information should be stored. This should include:
- Phone number
- Email address
- Social media links
- Address
- Useful links (FAQs, Privacy Policy, GDPR)
All that information should be easy to find and easy to use – so placing it within the footer on every web page of your website is ideal. Remember to make sure that all links that take you away from your website, should open in a new tab.
Must have website features
In summary, a well-designed website is crucial for businesses to showcase their products, engage with new audiences, and enhance user experience. Essential features include a responsive design for mobile devices, clear call-to-actions, consistent branding, SEO optimisation, easy navigation, and an informative footer. Implementing these elements ensures a website is user-friendly, accessible, and effective in meeting business goals.
Do you need help with your website? Book a discovery call with us below: