Using AI to Maximize

Marketing ROI:
6 Use Cases
By Hailey Jennato
 Executive Summary
AI is rapidly changing the world we live in, and the field of marketing is no
exception. Businesses implement artificial intelligence in various ways to increase
efficiency, maximize their returns, and produce the best possible experience for
their customers. Yet some marketers still prefer more traditional methods and are
wary of AI practices. However, they likely don’t realize all the ways they’re already
using AI. Autocorrect, GPS, voice-controlled home assistants, Netflix suggestions,
recommended purchases on ecommerce sites, and search engines are all examples
of AI we use everyday without even realizing it. AI software isn’t just for large,
established companies anymore. Startups and businesses of any size can greatly
benefit from implementing various AI programs too.

Too many marketers and communicators are waiting for that big
memo to arrive that says ‘okay, get ready, AI is coming.’ AI is not
coming because it's here, and it's only going to become a bigger
and more pervasive part of our work and our personal lives.

Martin Waxman, Founder of Martin Waxman Communications

In this report, we breakdown the functions of AI and how it benefits marketers

today. We also discuss 6 ways marketers can implement AI to maximize returns,
supported by data and case studies. Finally, we include products and tools that help
businesses integrate various AI functions.

Using AI to Maximize Marketing ROI -2

 What is AI?
There is still much confusion over exactly what Artificial Intelligence (AI) is.
According to IBM, “artificial intelligence leverages computers and machines to
mimic the problem-solving and decision-making capabilities of the human mind.” In
order to do this successfully, AI requires massive amounts of data. There are three
different types of AI: narrow, general, and super. Artificial Narrow Intelligence is AI
designed to perform specific tasks better than a human ever could, and it drives
most of the AI that exists today. Artificial General Intelligence is a theoretical type of
AI that can transfer what it knows between tasks. Machines with General
Intelligence would have a self-aware consciousness and intelligence equal to that of
humans. AI Super Intelligence is when machines surpass human intelligence,
becoming smarter than human beings individually and collectively.

Machine learning is a subfield of artificial

intelligence where machines use data and
observations to automatically act, learn, and
improve without being explicitly programmed by a
human. The goal is to allow computers to learn
independently, without human intervention or
assistance. With machine learning, analysis gets
increasingly better as the computer has more
experiences and is fed more data. Examples of
machine learning include self-driving cars, virtual
personal assistants like Siri and Alexa, and
product recommendations.

Deep learning is a subfield of machine learning consisting of hierarchical artificial

neural networks inspired by the structure of the human brain. Deep learning
processes data through a nonlinear approach and eliminates some of the human
intervention that traditional machine learning requires. Because of this, deep
learning enables scalability and the use of larger data sets. Deep learning models
also make decisions based on unstructured data and determine a hierarchy of
features to classify data into different categories.

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 New marketing opportunities
The AI takeover is inevitable, and marketers should embrace AI technologies rather
than ignore them. The AI market is expected to grow to at least $37 billion by 2025.
“AI is fast becoming as fundamental to software as software has become to
business,” reports Forrester. “As a result, AI software will partly be a new category
of the overall software market, but it will also be embedded in existing software
products.” AI streamlines tedious tasks and gives marketers the power to make
decisions based on data and patterns analyzed by computers. According to Lynn
Lewis, US CEO of UM, machines “will take the highly monotonous and repetitive
tasks, freeing up time for people to focus on higher-value, more impactful, and
personally rewarding aspects of their work, resulting in more innovation and
enhanced quality throughout the ecosystem.”

Implementing innovative AI and marketing technologies is also a strategy used by

successful, high-growth companies. According to the spring 2019 Forrester Analytics
Global Business Technographic Marketing Survey of almost 2,000 B2B firms, “high-
growth firms [characterized as firms that increase revenue by 15% or more year
over year] are more likely to be at the intermediate or advanced stage of marketing
innovation maturity than lower-growth firms.” So how can you actually implement
AI in your business to improve your returns and increase efficiency? Here are six
ways marketers are currently using AI to increase returns on investment:

Source: Forrester

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 6 ways marketers use AI

Artificial intelligence is great at making sense of

1) Identify massive amounts of data. AI can gather, process, and
patterns and store data faster than any human, or group of
predicting humans, ever could. Marketers use AI to discover
trends trends in consumer preferences and behaviors. They
also use predictive analytics, a form of advanced
analytics that combines statistical modeling, data
mining, and machine learning to predict future
outcomes from historical data, to identify
opportunities and optimize marketing campaigns.

For example, Crayon is a competitive intelligence

company that analyzes over 100 data types across
the web and uses AI to determine key updates and
trends, helping companies capture a complete
picture of their market and track competitors’
actions.

Source: Forrester

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 In less than 6 months of using Crayon, the sales win rate in our most competitive
segment has doubled, and the win rate against a top competitor has tripled to
95%,” says Alex MacKenzie, Director of Sales at Allego, a virtual learning platform. A
Global HCM Software Company also had Crayon carry out the market research and
competitive intelligence process for them, and the VP of Market Research &
Industry Relations reported that the company was saving 32 hours a month.

Heuritech uses AI to analyze 3 million social media images a day, identifying

trending products, patterns, colors, and textures in the fashion industry. It then
uses this data to forecast how a trend will evolve over time, so clients know what to
promote and include in their next collections. After Heuritech forecasted major
growth in the visibility of the tie dye print, their client showcased the trend and
decided to increase the number of tie dye items in the next collection. The client
saw a 65% increase in sales in the month after implementing the campaign and a
95% sell-through on tie dye items, with many references selling out completely.

Arimo Behavioral AI uses deep learning to predict demand for various SKUs across
different locations so retailers can better manage staffing and inventory. It also
monitors an online shopper’s web activity to predict their next actions and
probability of purchase. According to Arimo, retailers see up to a 3-8%
improvement in gross margins when applying machine learning to their analytics.
Arimo also helps manufacturers predict when machines will break down and
determine the drivers of downtime and poor quality.

Growth Channel uses AI to automate market research and generate marketing

plans based on the strategy with the highest chance of success. Growth Channel
uses predictive analytics to map customer decision journeys and identify the best
channels, content opportunities, and ad targeting criteria to help businesses
improve their marketing campaigns. Since launching in 2020, over 20 agencies and
thousands of startups and small businesses deployed Growth Channel's solution as
a part of their market research, marketing strategy and planning operations.

Using AI to Maximize Marketing ROI -6

 Source: Growth Channel

Oribi makes it easy for customers to track their analytics and understand what their
key metrics actually mean. Oribi highlights the most important data points, spots
channels that acquire and convert the most prospects, and finds correlations and
patterns in customer behaviors. Upscope, an interactive screen-sharing platform
built for onboarding and support, used Oribi to determine what types of blog
content were driving the most conversions. After promoting their most successful
posts, Upscope saw a 20% traffic increase within 16 hours. Unclockable, an e-
commerce platform known for its 'feel good' gender affirmative products, used
Oribi to drastically increase sales. According to Founder and CEO Maddie Bleistern:
“With Oribi’s correlations, we realized our visitors need more product information
before they’re ready to buy. With some changes on our website... we’ve literally
tripled our conversion rate.”

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 Source: Oribi

Artificial intelligence plays a major role in optimizing

2) Content content creation. AI can also be used to determine
writing how a certain piece of content is performing for
search engines visibility. In addition to that, it
suggests content ideas by analyzing competitors’
topics and keyword rankings. With GPT-3, AI can
even write high-converting text, including ad copy,
landing pages, email subject lines, and full blog
posts. GPT-3, or Generative Pre-trained Transformer
3, is a form of AI that creates natural, human-like
text from a short text prompt.

Outranking.io, an advanced AI-powered writing and

researching platform, helps businesses create high
quality, SEO-optimized content. It identifies related
keywords and questions, creates recommendations
from competitors’ content, and uses GPT-3 to write
outlines, meta descriptions, and featured sections
recognized by search engines. According to
Outranking, using GPT-3 helps writers generate
outlines 10x faster and produce content 5x faster.

Using AI to Maximize Marketing ROI -8

 Source: Outranking.io

MarketMuse offers AI-powered content research, intelligence, and writing. After a

website migration, Lewis, a global agency, used MarketMuse to carefully map their
keywords and optimize their new and existing content. As a result, Lewis increased
their top three rankings by 30% and grew their overall page rankings by 55%.
MarketMuse also helped Tomorrow Sleep grow its organic search traffic from 4K to
400K visitors and gain page rankings for many important keywords in less than a
year. By using MarketMuse to move away from a manual content strategy, Cortex
scaled its content creation, resulting in 3x more blog traffic and higher quality leads,
all within six months.

Missinglettr uses AI to recommend highly relevant pieces of curated content that

businesses can share or repost on their own social sites and blogs. ContentBot.ai
uses AI to generate unique and original topic ideas, ad copy, intros, and more in
under 30 seconds, preventing writer’s block and saving marketers a significant
amount of time.

Using AI to Maximize Marketing ROI -9


Source: Chatfuel
3) Creating
chatbots
Nowadays, almost any website you
visit has a chatbot. Chatbots are a
great way to rapidly answer
questions without overwhelming
customer support teams. Some
chatbots are simple, where a
customer selects a pre-written
question and the bot responds with
a programmed answer. Other
chatbots are more intelligent using
machine learning to provide a
relevant answer to a multitude of
human inputs (think of devices like
Siri or Alexa). Chatbots can also be
integrated into other platforms, like
Facebook or Instagram.

For example, a bot can be set up to automatically reply to every user that
comments on a social media post. In 2017 and 2018, HelloFresh used their chatbot
to automatically send Black Friday promo codes to users who commented the right
answer to a raffle posted on Facebook. The campaign had a 68% conversion rate in
2018, with over half the recipients using their promo code to place an order.

Chatfuel lets businesses easily build no-code chatbots for a variety of

circumstances. According to their website, chatbots can “resolve up to 80% of
customer inquiries, so you can save time and resources and win more business.”
LEGO built a chatbot to provide recommendations to customers looking to
purchase a gift. Their ROAS was 3.4x greater for ads that led to the chatbot
compared to their website, and they even saw a 71% decrease in the cost per
conversion. HelloFresh used Chatfuel to answer customer questions. While it
originally took 5 hours to answer a customer inquiry, their response time fell 76%
within a year of implementing a chatbot, even though they were also getting 47%
more messages.

Using AI to Maximize Marketing ROI -10

 Source: Chatfuel

Like Chatfuel, Exceed also offers a website chatbot designed to convert visitors into
leads and schedule meetings with sales reps. Comeet, a task-oriented recruiting
platform, integrated Exceed’s chatbot into their Hubspot CRM. As a result, they
were able to approach 175,000 website visitors through chat, schedule 200
additional meetings, and engage with over 3,000 contacts that would’ve otherwise
been lost.

MobileMonkey lets users create chatbots and integrate them across multiple
platforms, like web, Facebook, Instagram, and SMS. Plus, all messages can be
managed in one central inbox. According to MobileMonkey, 75% of customers
rather message a business than email or call, and their users typically see a 20%
click-through rate with Facebook Messenger chatbots.

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 Source: Exceed

There are many tedious tasks marketers have to

4) Automating complete every day. However, in most cases,
workflows and artificial intelligence can perform repetitive tasks
tasks automatically, saving marketers time to work on
more complex and creative problems. For example,
Howler uses AI to run automated PR campaigns and
match companies with the most relevant journalists
and news outlets for only $150. Howler reports their
conversion rate for journalist interest is about
1%-2%. Many other tasks can be automated with AI,
like email workflows, social media management,
content writing, brand management, and customer
service.

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 Besides chatbots, Exceed also offers Intelligent Virtual Assistants that help
marketers boost their SQL conversion rates. ClearShift, a highly rated virtual
automotive dealership platform, increased conversion rates by 25% after
implementing Exceed, according to Chief Strategist Aaron Wood. ClearShift used
Exceed’s AI-Powered Intelligent Assistant to automatically follow up, qualify, and re-
engage leads. “By using Exceed we’ve been able to scale our marketing effort and
customer communication while retaining the human interaction,” says Wood.
Comeet also used Exceed’s Virtual Assistant, along with their chatbot, to double
revenue, reduce the time to close a deal, and save approximately 500 hours a
month. Comeet uses their Assistant to reach out to thousands of leads, respond in
real time, and complete repetitive tasks.

Source: Exceed

OneSpot uses AI to micro-target every single visitor on a company’s website and

then automatically deliver personalized, relevant content, greatly improving site
engagement and the visitor’s overall experience. Delta Faucet, known for its high-
quality kitchen and bathroom accessories, used OneSpot to automatically send
individualized content to every user who visited their website. They saw a 45%
boost in page views and a 300% increase in the number of users that read three or
more pieces of their content. Nestlé Toll House used OneSpot's hyper-targeted
recommendations to gain 84,000 additional page views per month and an 88%
increase in visitor engagement.

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 5) Optimizing digital ads
A human can’t wrap their whole brain around the Internet. But AI can with ease. In
order to create high converting ad campaigns, marketers use AI to scan the internet
for the best and most relevant sites to place their ads. AI can also be used to
generate alternative copy scenarios for A/B tests, predict which creative layouts will
resonate the most with different target audiences, and monitor campaign
performance.

Pattern89 uses creative intelligence to help marketers pick the colors, copy, and ad
designs with the highest chance of success. Pattern89 analyzes five hundred billion
data points, helping companies predict what creative will be the most successful,
before campaigns even launch. Ad-Flex Communications, a marketing agency, used
an A/B test to compare the success rate of campaigns run with and without
Pattern89. At the end of the two week study, the ad-flex team found that the
campaign assisted by Pattern89 had a 439% higher conversion volume and 11%
more impressions.

IBM Watson Advertising Accelerator helps companies make their digital creative as
effective as possible. It uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze
real-time data signals and automatically predict the best combination of creative
elements for each user. The Ad Council used Accelerator in their “Love Has No
Labels” campaign and saw a 113% lift in CTR from the start to the end of the
campaign and a 69% increase in conversions. They also learned what types of
creative resonated most with different audiences.

Using AI to Maximize Marketing ROI -14

 Source: Growth Channel

As a marketer, your goal is to know as much about

6) Improving your website visitors, audience, and customers as
customer possible, so you can better satisfy their needs and
segmentation connect with them on personal level. AI can be used
and targeting to track consumer data and build highly specific user
personas for a business, product, or service.

Dstillery's Custom AI models use over 10 million

attributes to build audiences that best match a
company’s physical and digital footprint.
Comporium, a telecommunications provider, used
Dstillery to understand their customers. Dstillery
gathered data about visitors and subscribers from
Comporium’s website and put the top attributes in a
custom AI model, which prospected new users who
matched Comporium’s target customers but hadn’t
interacted with them yet. Comporium used this data
to pinpoint prospects in their next ad campaign, and
they saw 20% higher conversion rates.

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 IBM Watson Advertising Predictive Audiences uses deep learning to analyze relevant
data and determine the probability that a certain user will take a particular action,
like viewing a video or making a purchase. A leading insurance company used
Predictive Audiences to reduce their effective cost per acquisition by 82%.

Besides just building customer profiles, marketers also use AI to identify and
automatically engage with potential leads. For example, Seamless uses AI to find
and recommend ideal contacts and leads to B2B companies. Their 10-step AI engine
researches and verifies emails and telephone numbers in real time, so sales reps
don’t waste time engaging with old or outdated contacts. Objection.co, an online
reputation tech platform, used to schedule 1-3 appointments each week, but after
implementing Seamless, they were booking 50 appointments per week. They also
saw a huge increase in engagement. “We have a 25% engagement rate, meaning
that 25% of the leads we reached out to actually communicated back,” says Founder
Curtis Boyd, and these higher-quality leads have led to huge revenue boosts.

Conclusion
Artificial intelligence is the future of marketing, and it offers numerous ways for
businesses to improve efficiency and effectiveness. As consumer expectations
continue to rise, it is imperative that marketers keep up with new technologies and
trends so they can stay one step ahead of the competition. AI analyzes massive
amounts of data and predicts trends accurately, helping marketers make better
decisions and optimizations that lead to more conversions and ultimately increase
the bottom line. By letting AI write content, communicate with customers, and
automate repetitive workflows, marketers can better satisfy customer needs and
save time for more important tasks.

About the author

Hailey Jennato is a Marketing Associate at Growth Channel, a
SaaS startup using AI to generate data-driven marketing plans
for businesses and agencies. Hailey is passionate about telling
stories in unique and creative ways. She also enjoys innovation,
researching best practices, and writing about marketing trends.

Using AI to Maximize Marketing ROI -16

 Growth Channel uses AI to generate personalized marketing
About plans for startups, small businesses, enterprises, and agencies

Growth in a fraction of the time, eliminating expensive outsourcing

costs. After automating market research from 500+ data
Channel sources, Growth Channel simulates thousands of marketing
campaigns to identify the most successful strategy with clear
persona profiles and full customer decision journeys.

Set the right All plans include:

strategy from Ideal buyer personas
the start Customer journey maps
Eliminate guesswork, long Competitor analysis
research hours, and expensive Personalized growth tactics
outsourcing costs Budget allocation
Custom campaign ideas
Website audit
Optimize your And more!
marketing for
success
Rapidly grow your business and
reach the right people, on the
right platform, at the right time

Using AI to Maximize Marketing ROI -17

Growth Channel
Marketing Intelligence Platform

GrowthChannel.io
Automate your marketing planning with AI