Artificial intelligence is changing digital marketing, but for many businesses, it can be difficult to separate genuinely useful developments from the noise surrounding AI.
You may already be using AI without necessarily thinking about it. Google Ads uses machine learning to optimise campaigns, search engines increasingly use AI to shape results and platforms such as ChatGPT and Gemini are becoming another way for people to research products, services and businesses.
So, what does AI marketing actually mean? More importantly, what should your business be doing about it?
At Outrank, we believe businesses don’t need more AI jargon. They need to understand what is changing, what matters to their marketing and where AI can genuinely help them grow.
That is why we’re launching our AI Education Series, where we’ll break down AI search, SEO, content, PPC, visibility, responsible AI use and measurement into practical advice you can actually use.
What Is AI Marketing?
AI marketing is the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to support, automate or improve different areas of marketing.
That can include analysing large amounts of data, identifying patterns in customer behaviour, helping create and optimise content, automating elements of advertising campaigns and personalising experiences based on what someone is likely to be interested in.
But AI marketing isn’t simply about asking ChatGPT to write a social media post.
AI technology is already built into many of the platforms businesses use every day. Google, Meta and other major marketing platforms have increasingly incorporated automation and machine learning into the way campaigns are delivered, while generative AI platforms are creating entirely new ways for people to discover information online.
For businesses, the important question isn’t whether AI exists. It’s understanding where it can make marketing better and where human expertise still matters.
Where Is AI Already Being Used in Digital Marketing?
AI touches considerably more of digital marketing than many businesses realise.
In paid advertising, machine learning can help determine bids, audiences, placements and which combinations of creative assets are served.
Within content marketing, generative AI can support research, ideation, briefs and certain parts of the writing process. AI can also help marketers analyse performance data, identify trends and process information more quickly.
And then there is search. Platforms such as ChatGPT and Gemini mean that traditional search engines are no longer the only places people can go when they’re looking for information or researching a business.
That creates both a challenge and an opportunity.
Is AI Changing the Way People Search?
Yes, and this is one of the areas we’ll be exploring extensively throughout this series.
Traditionally, someone looking for a service might search Google, look through the results and visit several websites before making a decision.
AI-powered experiences can change that journey. Someone can now ask an AI platform a detailed question and receive a generated response that brings together information from different sources. They may also ask follow-up questions, compare options or request recommendations without starting a completely new search.
Google itself is also incorporating more AI-generated experiences into search. For businesses, this means online visibility is becoming broader than simply asking, ‘Where do we rank on Google?’
Increasingly, businesses also need to understand whether AI systems can find them, understand what they do and accurately represent their brand.
We’ll explore this in much more detail during Month 2 of our AI Education Series, which focuses specifically on AI search and business visibility. This follows the campaign plan’s next stage of looking at ChatGPT recommendations, AI visibility measurement and local business discovery.
Does AI Mean Businesses Don’t Need SEO Anymore?
No, the way people search is changing, but that doesn’t make the fundamentals of SEO irrelevant.
Your website still needs to clearly communicate who you are, what you offer, where you operate and why people should trust your business. Technical performance, useful content, authority and a strong overall online presence continue to matter.
The difference is that businesses now need to think about visibility across a wider search landscape.
Traditional search results remain important, but so do AI-powered search experiences and the information about your business available elsewhere online.
Rather than viewing SEO and AI as competing strategies, businesses should think about how a strong digital presence can support visibility across both traditional and emerging search experiences.
We’ll be taking a much closer look at this in our next article: AI vs SEO: Do Businesses Still Need SEO?
Can AI Create Your Marketing Content?
It can create content. That doesn’t necessarily mean you should publish everything it produces.
Generative AI can be extremely useful during the content process. It can help with ideas, research, structure, summaries and repetitive tasks.
However, businesses still need to consider accuracy, originality, expertise, brand tone and whether the finished content is genuinely useful to their audience. There is also information that an AI tool simply doesn’t know unless you provide it.
Your team’s experience, customer conversations, case studies, results, opinions and first-hand knowledge are what make your business different from every competitor asking an AI tool to write about the same subject.
That’s why we see AI as a tool that can support marketers rather than a replacement for strategy, expertise and human judgement. This will become a major focus later in the series when we look at AI-assisted content, quality control and the role of brand authority.
How Is AI Being Used in Google Ads and Paid Media?
AI and automation already play a significant role in paid advertising. Google Ads uses machine learning throughout its advertising ecosystem, while Meta has also developed increasingly automated tools for campaign delivery, audience targeting and optimisation.
These systems can process huge amounts of data far more quickly than a person could manually. But automation doesn’t remove the need for strategy.
Businesses still need people to understand commercial goals, interpret performance, assess lead quality, develop creative, manage budgets and determine whether automated decisions are actually producing valuable results.
Later in our AI Education Series, we’ll look specifically at AI in paid media, including Google Ads, Meta, reporting and where human intervention still matters.
What Are the Benefits of AI Marketing?
Used effectively, AI can help marketing teams work faster and make better use of the information available to them.
It can reduce time spent on repetitive tasks, support analysis, identify patterns in large datasets and help marketers generate ideas or explore opportunities more quickly.
That can give businesses and their marketing teams more time to focus on the areas where people provide the most value: strategy, creativity, customer understanding and decision-making.
However, adopting AI simply because everyone is talking about it isn’t a strategy. The real value comes from identifying where AI can solve a problem, improve a process or contribute to better marketing outcomes.
Are There Risks to Using AI in Marketing?
There can be, AI-generated information isn’t automatically accurate, and businesses need to think carefully about what information they enter into AI platforms and how generated content is checked before it is published or used.
Privacy, copyright, factual accuracy and data protection all need to form part of the conversation.
Businesses also need processes for deciding how employees should and shouldn’t use AI.
That’s why responsible AI use has its own dedicated stage within our six-month series. We’ll cover topics including AI marketing and UK GDPR, information businesses shouldn’t enter into public AI tools, accuracy and AI hallucinations and creating an SME AI usage policy.
Will AI Replace Digital Marketers?
AI is changing what marketers can do and how quickly certain tasks can be completed. But that is very different from replacing the need for marketers altogether.
A tool can analyse information or generate an output. It doesn’t automatically understand your commercial priorities, customers, internal knowledge or what success means for your business.
Effective marketing involves judgement, it requires deciding which opportunities are worth pursuing, understanding why something has or hasn’t worked and connecting different channels into a strategy that supports wider business goals.
AI can become a powerful part of that process, but it still needs direction.
What Should Businesses Be Doing About AI Now?
You don’t need to change your entire marketing strategy overnight, a better starting point is understanding where AI is already influencing your marketing and where it could have the greatest impact.
Look at how customers currently discover your business. Consider whether your brand appears when people search through AI platforms. Review how your team is using generative AI internally. Look at where automation already exists within your advertising campaigns.
Most importantly, don’t treat AI as a completely separate marketing channel, search, content, paid media, websites, digital PR, reviews and brand authority are increasingly connected. AI adds another layer to that ecosystem.
What’s Coming in the Outrank AI Education Series?
This article is just the beginning, over the next six months, we’re going to explore how AI is changing marketing and, importantly, what businesses can practically do about it.
We’ll cover AI search and business visibility, SEO and content, AI in paid media, responsible AI use and how businesses can measure the impact AI is having on their marketing.
We’ll also move beyond theory. The final stage of the series is designed around original testing, AI visibility benchmarking and measurable evidence so we can begin showing what actually works rather than simply talking about AI.
The goal is simple: help businesses understand what AI means for their marketing, show them what to do about it and prove what actually works.
Want to Understand What AI Means for Your Marketing?
AI is moving quickly, but you don’t need to chase every new tool, update or trend.
You need to understand which developments matter to your business and how they fit into a wider digital marketing strategy.
At Outrank, we help businesses build strategies across SEO, PPC, content and digital visibility, with AI increasingly forming part of that wider picture.
If you’d like to understand where your business currently stands and where the biggest opportunities could be, speak to our team about an AI Marketing Review.