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Firstly, let’s bust a common myth.
Many people tend to use the terms “AI (artificial intelligence)” and “automation'' interchangeably. These two technologies often seem indistinguishable to most folks – and for a good reason. Automation and AI are frequently used together, so it’s easy for people to assume that they’re the same thing. Despite their apparent similarities, there are significant differences between automation and AI. So, to bust this common myth once and for all:
Automation can include some AI integrations, and AI can certainly be used to automate things, but automation is not the same as AI.
To spare you from reading pages upon pages of tech jargon, AI can be thought of as the more comprehensive cousin of automation.
Automation has been around for a long time – practically since the dawn of computers. It’s simply the concept of taking identical, repetitive tasks and having a machine do them instead. Marketing automation helps to free humans to do high-level management and creative work while allowing software to deal with the rudimentary aspects of your marketing. We'll talk more about the specific applications of automation later in this blog.
There’s only one problem: what happens when your marketing processes are tiresome but not identical every time? Then automation becomes useless, and you need to use people for these tasks again. That’s where AI comes in. Like automation, AI can also perform marketing automation tasks, but it has the additional ability to assess and solve problems on its own.
After all this tech talk, you might wonder how any of this information is relevant to your brand’s marketing automation strategy. Here’s the answer:
Implementing AI and automation into your marketing efforts can revolutionize how your brand performs. From managing your social media efforts to improving your website performance, digital marketing technologies have made companies more competitive and visible to consumers than ever before.
The most noticeable benefit of AI integration is reducing how many employees you need in your marketing department. AI and automation let you automate many tasks and either employ fewer workers or repurpose them for higher-level, more creative jobs. Letting computer technology handle tasks like social media campaigns or keyword strategy also eliminates human error and makes your business less prone to costly marketing blunders.
In addition to handling marketing tasks independently, AI can also be used to augment human intelligence. You can use artificial intelligence as a sort of “assistant” to make yourself and your employees more productive at building marketing campaigns that resonate with your audience.
With all of these benefits (and many more on the way as the technology improves), integrating AI into your marketing operations is well worth the investment. Many companies have already started using AI in their daily advertising. Soon, all companies will need AI to stay competitive – so you might as well get ahead of the curve and adopt marketing automation and AI technologies before your competitors do.
Implementing AI and marketing automation in your advertising might seem like a daunting, complex task. Luckily, modern technologies make it easier than ever to utilize marketing tech in your operations. Here are just a few ways you can start automating your advertising with artificial intelligence:
Social media is crucial for reaching customers and building an audience. It’s an incredibly affordable and efficient way to market your brand. Some social media platforms have even integrated features like Facebook Marketplace and Instagram Shop where companies can sell products directly from their social platforms. With these excellent business features (and many more in development), social media marketing isn’t an opportunity that your business can afford to miss.
Unfortunately, your competitors see this opportunity too. Nearly every company under the sun is already on social media. Having success in such a populated environment requires constantly developing and posting high-quality, actionable content. Some of the most prominent pages on social networks post up to three or four times daily.
With such a fast-paced marketing tempo, building a social media presence for your brand can get overwhelming. Between creating content, scheduling posts, editing images, and interacting with your audience, social media quickly turns into a full-time occupation. What does this mean for your business? Cutting into your profits and spending time and money on administrative work that doesn’t generate revenue for your brand.
Marketing automation technology eliminates this problem. By using software that can schedule and automatically post your social media content, you can save a significant number of hours weekly. Adopting marketing automation technology lets you reduce the number of workers responsible for managing your social media administration and give them creative tasks that make your brand unique. Not to mention, marketing automation software never takes vacations or sick days – meaning that your social media presence stays organized 24/7, even during flu season!
With how popular social media has become in the past decade, it’s no surprise that there are countless companies offering social media marketing automation software. Unfortunately, not every social media automation software is built with the same care and quality. From being difficult to navigate and program to glitching and making errors, social media marketing automation tools can create many issues for your company. So how can you ensure that the tool you’re using for your marketing channel is the right platform for you?
Luckily, Websuitable is here to help you out. We asked our team of social media experts for their top three picks of the best social media management and marketing automation tools. Here’s what they came up with:
Later is a marketing automation platform that helps you boost your social media while saving time and money. Founded in 2014, the platform’s easy-to-navigate interface and impressive features quickly helped it become one of the leading social media management tools.
Later is an excellent tool for businesses of any size. It has many plans and price points that make it accessible for even the smallest companies. Later even has a free version that you can use for as long as you want before upgrading to a paid plan. If you’re looking for a powerful social media tool that you use for your marketing automation strategy as your business grows, try Later!
When someone mentions social media management tools, Hootsuite is usually the first name that comes to mind. This platform was one of the first social media tools that went above and beyond its function as a management platform.
Apart from offering scheduling and content management, Hootsuite also lets you manage your messages, monitor competitors, view analytics and identify areas for improvement, and even plan entire campaigns months in advance.
With all of these impressive features, it’s no surprise that Hootsuite established itself as a powerful force in the social media management industry and that it’s trusted by over 200,000 users!
Buffer is the ideal platform for businesses that are looking for a robust social media management tool that won’t burn a hole in their wallets. Despite offering high-quality, excellent customer service, and reliable features, Buffer has an incredibly affordable price point.
While other social media management platform plans can range in the hundreds or even thousands of dollars, Buffer’s premium-tier plan goes for only $100/month. This membership lets you manage up to 10 channels, add unlimited users, plan 2000 posts, and much more. Did we mention that Buffer also offers a free plan that lets you manage three channels and schedule 10 posts?
If you’re looking for a reliable and affordable platform for managing your company’s social media, Buffer is certainly worth a shot!
You’ve organized your social media posting with automation. But what about all the content you still have to create for your blogs, email marketing, and social networks? Fortunately, AI and marketing automation is here to help. AI shouldn't be used to create full content pieces from start to finish. But you can use the technology to augment some aspects of your content creation. Some notable AI functions include coming up with article titles, generating ideas for social media captions, and even getting past writer’s block when you’re unsure how to conclude your blog post!
Augmenting your marketing with AI helps you create content faster and easier than ever before. Whether you’re interested in supercharging your social media posts or want to write blogs faster than ever before, today’s tech will help you get the most bang for your marketing buck.
Jasper is the go-to platform for businesses that are planning to supercharge their content creation with AI. The Jasper tool is easy to navigate, effortless to use, and has more features that you can count. From creating email marketing content to generating entire paragraphs when you can’t think of anything to say, Jasper has every tool you need to take your business content to the next level.
Jasper plans start at just $29/month, and can be scaled up as your business grows. If you’ve never used a marketing automation and AI content platform before, Jasper is the best place to start.
Rytr is all about simplicity. It does away with all the bells and whistles, and gives you only the marketing automation and AI features that you really need. While Rytr might not have the same number of features as a tool like Jasper, this simplicity also means that the platform is easy to navigate and very affordable.
Rytr plans start free and can get as expensive as only $29/month, making this tool ideal for small businesses or independent writers looking to use AI content generation.
If you’ve ever done SEO for your business website, you’ll know how tedious this job can become. Between finding the right keywords and developing a meta description that Google will appreciate, optimizing your website for search engines is a full-time job. At least it was until recently.
With new AI technologies, the marketing industry is seeing a revolution in how people do SEO for their businesses. Although developing a secure web presence for your brand still requires human input and creativity, technology can now help with the tedious aspects of SEO. The same tasks that required an entire marketing department a few decades ago can now be handled by a small team with access to AI. Modern technology can do anything from developing titles and suggesting keywords to generating entire meta descriptions that perform excellently on the world’s search engines.
Surfer is an excellent tool for optimizing your web pages and content for search engine performance. The platform offers a robust audit and editing tool where you can get instant feedback while updating your content. Surfer also suggests which keywords you should use and how many times they should appear in your content.
Surfer’s SEO marketing automation tool goes beyond just optimizing your written content. It also advises you on how many images, headings, paragraphs, and words you should have on a webpage to maximize its organic search performance. All of these SEO features are wrapped up in a convenient SEO Content Score that gives you an overview of your overall website performance. If you’re looking for a powerful SEO platform that you can start using for only $49 monthly, Surfer is what you need!
If you want to trade simplicity for functionality, SEMRush might be the platform for you. This powerful SEO tool offers over 50 powerful features to boost your website performance. When you work with SEMRush, you get everything from SEO ranking on your website to keyword research, content optimization, and even competitor analysis.
With monthly membership prices ranging from $120-450/month, using SEMRush is definitely on the more expensive side of marketing automation and AI tools. But this platform’s impressive range of features makes it ideal for large, established companies with marketing departments looking to outperform their competitors in digital marketing.
With how flexible and abundant modern AI and marketing automation software has become, integrating these technologies into your company can be as easy or complex as you want. Many small businesses choose to work with online marketing automation services like those mentioned earlier in this blog. This lets them try out marketing automation campaigns without investing too much money. Large companies that want to outperform their competitors, on the other hand, often assemble a marketing team and augment its performance with AI and marketing automation work. Unfortunately, both of these strategies suffer from the same problem: they still require you to manage your own marketing activities. That’s where working with an agency comes in.
Rather than hiring individuals and trying to assemble a team, working with a marketing agency gets you instant access to an organized group of experienced marketers who know what they’re doing. Agencies specialize in branding and marketing automation so they have access to all the best tools available and know how to use them. Teaming up with a marketing agency or automation process experts also gives you the flexibility to scale your marketing as needed while not having to manage a team – it’s the best of both worlds.
If you want to take your business marketing to the next level, working with WebSuitable is the way to go. Our team of expert writers, social media managers, and digital marketing strategists will ensure your company grows and outperforms your competition.
Ready to get started? Click the Get Started button to book your free strategy consultation today!
Want to learn how digital marketing can fit into your business strategy? Book a free strategy call with our team of digital strategists to find out more!
👋 Get Started
WebSuitable is a digital marketing agency that helps companies grow their revenues online.
