By Michaela Simpson on 10 Nov 2023
The below article was first puiblished on Adworld in October 2023
Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the digital marketing landscape, and digital marketing agencies are at the forefront of this transformation. AI is helping agencies to improve efficiency, targeting, creativity, and predictiveness for their clients across all aspects of their work. We also expect it will form the bedrock of the future of search.
Here’s how we’re getting the most out of AI now and how we’re preparing our clients for an AI future.
Efficiency
There’s no doubt that the number one benefit marketers are seeing at this stage in the evolution of AI is vastly increased efficiency. AI is being used to automate tasks and streamline workflows, freeing up time for more strategic work. For instance, Wolfgang Digital has developed a bespoke tool to help with Google Ads related tasks such as keyword research, negative term analysis and ad copy optimisation. For example, our Google Ads team conducted an A/B test comparing original ad copy against ad copy augmented with insights derived from AI over a period of 30 days. The results showed a staggering 164% increase in conversions, a 64% reduction in cost per acquisition, and a 31% higher conversion rate for the ad copy enriched with AI insights.
AI helpers like ChatGPT4 are also helping teams to access additional specialist skills at the click of a button. With ChatGPT4, our expert SEOs essentially have instant access to their own coding assistant to help with writing scripts and code to enhance their SEO work. Previously the SEO would have had to find a good coder who had sufficient understanding of SEO, brief them and wait until the developer could fit them into their workflow. Now the SEO can access basic coding help at the click of a button allowing them to get implementations live and generate results for our clients much more quickly.
ChatGPT4 also has a ‘Code Interpreter’ function, which allows marketers to upload large sets of anonymised data and get help with the analysis and extract high value insights.
Putting coding to one side, ChatGPT4 is an example of a Large Language Model (LLM) - as per the name, language is its speciality. So we also have access to a language expert which can help with short copywriting (not so much long form). It's also proving extremely useful for non-native speakers, helping them to refine their message in important communications to colleagues and clients, allowing them to get their key messages across effectively. LLMs are also helpful when trying to achieve each clients’ very specific tone of voice in their marketing copy.
All of the above efficiencies are having a massive impact, freeing up time for our experts to focus on more strategic tasks and the big picture - ensuring our clients’ businesses grow sustainably now and into the future.
Targeting
AI is proving helpful to identify and target the most relevant audiences for marketing campaigns. The B2B niche is a good example. B2B clients tend to have smaller, and more specific target audiences, often based around specific target business types. We’ve used AI to help B2B clients identify companies that fit certain criteria for LinkedIn marketing campaigns. We then take this further and create ‘lookalikes’ of these companies and target those too. Tests such as this led to a 40% reduction in CPL on LinkedIn.
Creativity
AI is being used to generate more creative and engaging content for marketing campaigns. There’s an endless list of generative AI tools to choose from. One of the most helpful creative uses for us at the moment is using AI to generate voice overs for video content. Previously, finding suitable voice actors could be expensive and time consuming. Now, we can recruit the perfect sounding voice and move on with putting clients’ campaigns into action.
Predictiveness
Putting AI to work in tandem with quality CRM data is perhaps one of the most powerful applications of AI we’ll see in the next year. By applying AI to our clients’ first party data, we can start to accurately predict customer behavior, churn risk and identify critical trends to allow us to make better business decisions and increase ROI.
Future-proofed SEO
Finally, there’s a critical link between AI and the future of SEO. AI is playing a bigger and bigger role in the search landscape. In order for your business's key information to be found by Google’s crawlers, you must present your content so that it’s human-friendly on the front, but AI-friendly in the back.
The backend of healthy websites will clearly point out all the attributes associated with the business, brand, people, products, and services within the content of the pages on our website.
We do this for our clients by implementing ‘structured data’ in the form of Schema markup. This is a tool we use to unambiguously tell search engines and future versions of AI apps what our content, products and offerings are about. Adding ‘under the hood’ context on top of clearly written on-page content will assist AI’s understanding of what your business can offer and ensure that your digital home is set up to thrive in the AI-dominated future.
