The Continued Growth of AI in Marketing
Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer just a buzzword tossed around in tech conferences or speculative articles. It’s here, it’s evolving fast, and it’s transforming how marketers connect with audiences, make decisions, and optimize content. From intelligent automation tools to AI-enhanced search engines that summarize web content for users, AI is touching every corner of the marketing world.
For businesses and marketers alike, understanding how to work with AI instead of against it is quickly becoming a necessity, not just a competitive edge. Let’s take a look at how AI is continuing to grow in marketing, how you can use it to your advantage, and what you can do to ensure your brand is showing up in this new AI-powered era of search.
How AI Is Changing Search and Brand Visibility
One of the most noticeable impacts of AI in marketing is how it’s reshaping search engines and the way users discover information.
AI-Powered Responses in Search
Search engines like Google and Bing are incorporating generative AI into their platforms, offering users more than just a list of links. Instead, users often see an AI-generated summary or “snapshot” at the top of the results page that pulls data from various sources across the web. Google’s “AI Overviews” and Microsoft’s Copilot-powered Bing are two major examples.
These summaries can directly answer a user’s question, meaning that users might never click through to an actual website. That’s a game-changer for SEO.
Brand Information in AI Responses
For marketers, this new reality means your brand’s online presence must be easily understood by machines, not just by people. When AI generates a summary about your business, it’s using publicly available data like your website content, reviews, business listings, articles, and even structured data (schema markup). If that information is incomplete, outdated, or confusing, AI may misrepresent your brand or skip over it entirely.
How Marketers Can Leverage AI
AI isn’t just changing the tools we market with, it’s also changing the way we do marketing. Here are a few key ways marketers can use AI to streamline their workflows and improve outcomes.
1. Content Creation and Optimization
AI writing tools like ChatGPT, Jasper, and Copy.ai are becoming staples for content marketers. These platforms can help brainstorm blog topics, generate outlines, or even draft full articles and product descriptions. While human editing is still essential for brand tone and accuracy, AI can significantly speed up the content creation process.
AI can also analyze your website or social media content and make suggestions for improving SEO, readability, or engagement, saving hours of manual work.
2. Audience Targeting and Segmentation
AI-powered customer data platforms (CDPs) and CRM tools use machine learning to identify behavior patterns and predict what kinds of content or offers a customer is likely to respond to. This allows for hyper-personalized marketing strategies that can improve click-through rates, conversions, and overall customer satisfaction.
3. Marketing Automation
From email sequences to chatbots to ad placement, AI is automating repetitive tasks and optimizing them in real-time. Tools like HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, and Salesforce are integrating more predictive AI models that help marketers not only automate campaigns but also adjust them based on real-time data without constant human input.
4. Trend Analysis and Predictive Analytics
AI excels at digesting large amounts of data and finding patterns humans might miss. It can be used to monitor industry trends, track competitor activity, or predict consumer behavior. Platforms like SparkToro or Crayon use AI to deliver actionable insights that can help shape your marketing strategies.
Optimizing Your Brand for AI in Search
As AI continues to play a bigger role in how people find and interact with brands online, it’s crucial to make sure your digital presence is AI-friendly.
1. Use Structured Data (Schema Markup)
Structured data is code added to your website that helps search engines understand your content. It tells AI what your page is about, such as whether it’s a business profile, an event, a product, or a review. Schema markup is essential for appearing accurately in AI-generated search responses and can improve your chances of showing up in featured snippets and AI overviews.
2. Maintain Consistent Business Information
Ensure your business name, address, phone number, hours, and services are consistent across all platforms—Google Business Profile, Yelp, LinkedIn, Facebook, and your website. Inconsistent information can confuse AI models and cause them to pull outdated or incorrect details when summarizing your business.
3. Write for Humans and Machines
Well-written, clear, and structured content benefits both human readers and AI algorithms. Use short paragraphs, bullet points, clear headers, and descriptive titles. Include relevant keywords naturally throughout your content, and make sure your copy answers common customer questions.
4. Monitor Your Brand Mentions
AI tools like ChatGPT often summarize third-party sources. Make sure your brand is being mentioned positively and accurately in reviews, articles, forums, and online directories. You can use tools like Google Alerts or Brand24 to monitor your brand mentions and respond accordingly.
5. Keep Content Fresh and Relevant
AI tools tend to prioritize recent and relevant content. If your site hasn’t been updated in months or years, AI may consider it outdated and skip it when generating responses. Regularly update your blog, FAQs, service pages, and product descriptions to keep them timely and competitive.
There is Certainly More to Come
The growth of AI in marketing isn’t slowing down, it’s accelerating. From reshaping how people search to changing how marketers create and distribute content, AI is becoming a foundational part of modern marketing strategy.
But rather than seeing AI as a threat, smart marketers will see it as a powerful ally. By using AI to streamline workflows, improve targeting, and enhance content, and by optimizing your web presence to be AI-friendly, you can stay ahead of the curve.
The future of marketing isn’t just digital, it’s intelligent. And the sooner you embrace it, the better positioned your brand will be to thrive in the AI-powered landscape.
