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Smart Budgeting: Harnessing AI to Slash Digital Marketing Expenses

Financial Desk Team Published: October 25, 2024 | Updated: October 25, 2024 9 min read

As essential as digital marketing is to any business’s success, associated expenses can add up quickly.

From paying for software to ad spend budgets to employing digital marketing specialists to working with freelancers, your investment in digital marketing can balloon to an amount you can’t sustain.

However, you can be proactive about slashing expenses and finding the most productive strategies to boost your digital marketing strategy, starting with artificial intelligence.

AI can transform your processes and streamline your operations to keep costs in check while simultaneously generating consistent results.

If you’re still on the fence about leveraging AI to enhance your digital marketing strategy and lower expenses, consider the following.

How AI Cuts Digital Marketing Expenses Down

AI developers work every day to stretch the limits of these tools.

Early applications of AI in marketing were primarily in the realm of data collection and analysis.

But it’s since gained traction because it can do more, like creating content and automating repetitive tasks.

As AI tools take on more, it results in increased efficiency, productivity, and better decision-making.

And that, in turn, may help cut down digital marketing expenses.

Increase efficiency

One of the most significant advantages of AI is its ability to enhance efficiency.

Human employees can only go so fast and are only so accurate in their tasks.

Slow completion of tasks and human errors can be particularly costly in business.

AI can complete certain tasks on its own much faster and more accurately than employees would.

People are then freed up for high-value projects that need creativity and critical thinking.

For example, instead of employees spending hours manually inputting customer data into a spreadsheet, this task can be handed off to an AI tool.

The tool can automatically collect customer data from different platforms, filter it into a central system, and organize it based on the criteria you set.

You can audit all of your processes and determine which ones can be refined with AI to make them more cost-effective and results-oriented.

Improve employee productivity

As you increase efficiency in the workplace and make it easier for your employees to do their jobs, they become more productive.

They also become happier and more engaged in their roles because they aren’t burnt out from insignificant work.

“Low engagement costs the global economy $8.8 trillion dollars,” according to Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workplace report.

For an individual business, this means thousands of dollars lost every year.

Improving employee productivity with AI helps you keep money in your business that you can use to bolster the digital marketing budget.

Manage financials better

Often, slashing digital marketing expenses requires you to gain better visibility into business finances.

You need to know how much you’re making, how much is going out monthly, and where resources are being allocated.

Fortunately, there are AI tools available to help businesses better manage their finances.

For example, invoice capture technology powered by AI can automate invoice systems and minimize billing errors for a more streamlined process.

Deep learning algorithms and document capture technologies can analyze financial data, like receipts and invoices, extract the most important insights, and provide you with suggestions for better budgeting, planning, and forecasting.

You can also employ these tools to track financial information specific to digital marketing strategies.

Data analytics tools can show you exactly which marketing strategies are making money, helping you manage your marketing return on investment (ROI).

Make more informed decisions

Many marketers end up with high marketing costs because they aren’t making informed decisions.

They throw money at random tools and techniques and hope for positive results.

This ends up costing them more in the long run.

Spending your budget solely on the most productive digital marketing tools and strategies will not only lower your expenses but it will also keep you on a path of consistent results, leading to increased profitability.

AI’s data analysis capabilities help businesses collect insights into what their most productive digital marketing tools and strategies are.

Armed with this information, you can make data-driven decisions that reduce expenses.

AI Can Help Businesses Collect, Analyze, and Organize Customer Data

AI can lessen digital marketing expenses because it can increase efficiency, improve productivity, and help you make more informed financial and other decisions.

But how exactly are these tools used in a business?

Here are the different uses of AI in digital marketing and how they can elevate your strategy and ultimately contribute to cost-effectiveness.

Filter data to a single data analysis platform

Smart marketers collect customer data on every digital marketing platform, whether on their websites, social media sites, email marketing, paid advertising, or podcasts.

All of this data can give a business a significant competitive edge.

However, having to go to each platform, analyze the data, make notes, and transfer those findings to a central system manually is time-consuming and inefficient.

AI-powered data analytics platforms integrate with most digital marketing platforms, allowing you to collect data from each one and automatically filter it to a single data analysis platform.

You’ll have all of your customer data in one place.

This makes it easy to access and find the data you need when you need it.

Segment your customer base

Along with collecting customer data, AI can organize and segment your customer base.

Rather than you going in and identifying similarities and patterns within your customer data, AI can quickly complete this task and segment your audience based on what it learns.

When you understand your customers’ diverse demographics, needs, and interests, you can create marketing materials that resonate better, leading to increased engagement and a higher marketing ROI.

Personalize marketing

Speaking of creating marketing materials that resonate with your customers, personalization is everything in digital marketing.

People encounter hundreds, maybe thousands of pieces of content every day.

You only stand a chance if you can differentiate yourself from everything else they see.

That’s where personalization is powerful.

People are more likely to stop on content that feels like it was made for them.

They’re seeking brands that make them feel special and supported.

You can use the data you collect with AI to personalize the experiences customers have with your marketing.

For example, when a customer visits your website, the AI algorithm will collect data on their behavior.

In this case, it determines the customer keeps visiting blog posts on your latest product.

So, it starts sending them personalized content recommendations at the end of each post.

Another example of AI-powered personalization is chatbots.

With the help of natural language processing, chatbots can process customer queries and provide personalized solutions and recommendations.

Personalization through AI can increase engagement with your marketing, leading to more revenue and a higher marketing ROI.

Use AI to Streamline Content Creation and Optimization

There isn’t a digital marketing strategy out there that can flourish without high-quality content.

But the problem is that producing high-quality content consistently can be one of the most time-consuming tasks.

It can also be one of the most expensive, especially if you have to bring content creators in-house or outsource content-related tasks.

Although this particular capability is still in its infancy, you can use AI to streamline content creation and optimization.

Brainstorm content ideas

Having a bottomless bucket of content ideas is a secret weapon in digital marketing.

Fresh perspectives and topics are crucial for getting people’s attention and keeping it.

They’ll also be more likely to come back to your content if what they’re currently engaging with is captivating and interesting enough.

That said, everyone who creates content runs into a creative block eventually.

So, when you can’t come up with solid content ideas, AI can.

With a tool like ChatGPT, you can type in something like, “What are some content ideas for [this topic]?”

And it will give you a list of content ideas in seconds.

No more spending hours on generating topic and content ideas.

You can cut your brainstorming sessions down to minutes and spend more time crafting high-quality content for your unique audience.

Generate completed pieces

AI-powered content creation tools can go beyond brainstorming and complete entire pieces for you.

You can ask these tools to write blog posts or articles, craft emails, and create infographics, video scripts, social media posts, product descriptions, and other types of digital content.

This can save marketers a ton of time on content creation.

It might even allow you to postpone adding more employees to your digital marketing team to keep up with content demand, helping you save on labor costs.

Keep in mind that although AI-powered content creation tools can complete entire pieces, their quality is lacking.

They don’t have the level of creativity and originality you need to captivate audiences.

You might also notice issues with redundancy in the piece.

So, if you decide to use these tools, you will need to go back through each piece, edit it, and add personal touches that are indicative of your brand.

Conduct optimization and testing

Optimizing content to rank higher on search engines or generate higher conversion rates generally, is typically a resource-intensive process that requires a lot of time to complete when done manually.

There are many details to address, such as metrics, keywords and phrases, and target audience.

AI-powered optimization tools help you improve your site’s performance on search engines quickly and efficiently.

They analyze search patterns, user behavior, and content performance to identify critical insights that you can use to better your content.

AI-powered optimization tools learn about natural language, user intent, and what content is most relevant to your preferred target audience, and will continuously suggest changes most helpful in enhancing your SEO strategy.

You can look forward to SEO-based platforms incorporating additional AI-powered optimization features that allow you to create a more efficient optimization process for your content.

Automate Different Aspects of Digital Marketing Campaigns

Many aspects are involved in executing a digital marketing campaign.

If each is completed manually, errors are likely and expenses will add up.

With the help of technology like AI, you can save time, improve efficiency, and reduce business costs.

You’ll get more done more accurately in less time.

In addition, you won’t exhaust your marketing budget and resources when you automate different aspects of your digital marketing campaigns.

Social media should be at the core of your digital marketing strategy.

Millions of people engage on these platforms daily for hours.

If you aren’t meeting your customers there, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to connect with them and inspire conversions.

However, one of the biggest challenges with social media is posting consistently.

Many experts suggest posting daily, if not multiple times a day to stay relevant on these platforms and build a following.

Creating each post individually on the spot is the fastest way to burn out regarding social media.

By using an AI tool that automates scheduling and posting social media posts, and even creates the posts, you can simplify this tedious process and maintain a consistent schedule.