How to adapt your marketing strategy for AI and voice search

The marketing landscape is rapidly changing, driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and the rise of voice technology. As a result, your clients need new approaches, and your marketing strategy needs to adapt. Here’s how to navigate these shifts, ensuring your marketing efforts are effective and resonate with your target audience.

What we’ll cover: 

AI for Marketing:

• Smarter data analysis and predictive insights.
• Aids content creation, optimization, and personalization at scale.
• Streamlines tasks and improves campaign effectiveness.

Voice Search Adaptation:

• Focus on conversational SEO and natural language.
• Prioritize local SEO and content for concise voice snippets.
• Adapt paid ads for voice commands.

Practical Steps:

• Audit marketing stack for AI integration.
• Invest in AI expertise and refine content strategy.
• Embrace data-driven decisions and experiment with generative AI.

Integrating artificial intelligence into your marketing strategy is no longer optional. AI tools are transforming how people consume content online. From AI overviews to AI searches, search has changed. 

Agencies are now using AI to their advantage and building profitable agency products as a result. Like the guys at eight&four, who developed platform12. A groundbreaking AI tool that aids in photography production with limitless possibilities.

Using AI technology leads to smarter decision-making and enhanced customer engagement. However, we aren’t suggesting that everyone dives deep into the realm of creating their own AI tools, at least, not yet. AI can help streamline marketing tasks and improve marketing campaigns when used correctly and responsibly. Here’s how:

Smarter data analysis

AI tools excel at data analysis and allow you to gain insights from vast datasets more easily than ever. This enables marketing professionals to better understand market trends, customer behavior, and customer preferences. For example, you may discover that 73% of your client’s conversations happen during 7-9 pm on Tuesdays. With this knowledge, you can time campaigns carefully to maximise results.

This data analysis is crucial for refining your overall marketing strategy and creating content that resonates with target audiences.

Predictive analytics

With machine learning and predictive analytics, your marketing strategy can forecast outcomes, optimize future marketing campaigns and identify potential customers. Adopters of predictive analytics have reported an average increase of 10-15% in revenue and a 5-10% reduction in operational costs. The foresight gained from predictive analytics leads to more targeted marketing efforts and better allocation of your marketing budget.

Content creation and optimization

Generative AI is revolutionizing the content creation process. From crafting social media posts to generating email marketing copy with high-performing subject lines, AI-generated content can boost your content marketing efforts. It also helps in optimizing existing marketing content for better performance.

Personalization at scale

AI-powered marketing allows for deep personalization across all marketing channels. This helps tailor your message to your target audience, improving customer retention and driving business growth. As a result, your marketing strategy becomes more precise and impactful.

Voice technology is reshaping how consumers search and interact with brands. Your digital marketing strategy must evolve to capture this growing segment. Here’s how:

• Conversational SEO: Voice searches are often more conversational than text queries. People type “best pizza London” into search engines but ask Siri “What’s the best pizza place near me right now”. Your content strategy needs to reflect this, incorporating natural language and answering direct questions. Optimize your web pages for longer, more natural-sounding keywords.
• Local SEO importance: Many voice searches are for local businesses. Ensure your marketing plan includes robust local SEO, making it easy for potential customers to find you through voice assistants.
• Content for voice snippets: Voice assistants often pull concise answers from AI overviews and featured snippets. Structure your content to provide clear, direct answers to common questions at the top of the page to increase your chances of being featured.
• Impact on paid ads: Voice search also influences paid ads. Consider how Google Ads might be triggered by voice commands and adapt your ad copy to be more conversational and direct.

Here’s how to adapt your marketing strategy for AI and voice. As well as some tips to incorporate AI tools into your stack to increase efficiency.

Evaluate your existing marketing tools and identify opportunities for AI integration to speed up your workflow. Many digital marketing tools like Semrush, HubSpot, and Surfer SEO now offer embedded AI capabilities. Here’s what they can do: 

• Semrush – analyzes brand presence in AI search engines, optimizes content for AI, and offers AI-driven recommendations for business and marketing strategies.
• HubSpot – identify high-intent leads, tailor personalized customer experiences and launch cross-channel campaigns 
• SurferSEO – create keyword-optimized content that beats the competition in seconds.

Look beyond your existing marketing tool stack as well. Market research is a key component to tailoring brand voice and content to new and existing customers. Do you know your client’s customers well enough with the data you have right now to create personalized content for them? If not, take a look at data analysis tools like Hotjar, Adobe Experience Cloud, and SAS business intelligence to delve beyond the key metrics.

Building AI expertise within your marketing teams is crucial. Train your marketing professionals on how to effectively use AI for data analysis, content generation, and marketing automation. Your team should also know how to optimise for AI to ensure your client’s work is showing up in search results. AI can help you drive growth in your agency, as long as your teams know how to use it effectively.

Check out our webinar “cutting through the AI hype” with Heather Murray to learn more about building in-house AI expertise and growing your agency with AI.

Focus on a content strategy that delivers concise, valuable information. This includes optimizing for voice search, AI and exploring short-form videos and user-generated content for social media campaigns.

Your content strategy should also include a distribution plan. Content needs to be shared across multiple platforms to do its best work for you, and it should be optimized for each platform and the customers that use that platform. This targeted approach ensures the message resonates.

Your marketing strategy should be truly data-driven. Use AI systems and data analytics to gain actionable insights from historical data and customer feedback to continuously optimize your marketing efforts.

If you want to know why customers are or are not buying your client’s products and what you can change to make a difference in sales, you need data, and AI can help you scan huge data sets to get actionable insights quickly.

Generative AI can enhance your content marketing and accelerate your content creation process. This can lead to significant cost savings and free up marketing teams for strategic work. AI marketing tools can also enhance your social media strategy. From scheduling social media posts to managing social media accounts and running effective social media campaigns, AI tools can streamline social media management and improve customer engagement.

This article wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the risks of relying solely on AI to build marketing campaigns and content for your audiences.

AI sometimes generates false or misleading information, known as “hallucinations.” These inaccuracies can seem convincingly real, which is dangerous when you’re creating things for clients. 

Even the best AI tools require human oversight. Grammar, tone, context, and factual accuracy still need checking by a skilled editor. Assuming AI content is flawless “out of the box” is risky, especially when reputation, compliance, or user trust is on the line.

So, if you use AI to write any content for your clients, it needs to be thoroughly fact-checked. Without careful fact-checking, you risk publishing content that damages your client’s credibility or misleads their audience.

Relying too heavily on AI can lead to a loss of human insight and originality. Remember, AI doesn’t have original thoughts; it just pulls from vast datasets and offers you the answer it “thinks” most suits your questions. 

Automation can absolutely streamline tasks, but it can’t replicate human judgment, emotional nuance, or industry-specific knowledge. Overuse can result in generic, uninspired content that lacks authenticity.

AI isn’t suitable for all situations. Sensitive topics, legal statements, or brand-critical messaging should be handled by humans. If nuance, empathy, or complex reasoning is required, that’s a little beyond AI’s capabilities right now. So, it’s best to rely on expert judgment and humans, not algorithms.

AI is a powerful tool, and handy in many different ways. However, it isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Understanding its limitations and knowing where to step in is key to using it effectively.

Digital marketing has changed. It’s not enough to optimise for a standard search any more. By proactively adapting your marketing strategy to leverage AI technology and optimize for AI and voice search, your clients can stay ahead of market trends and achieve sustained business growth in the competitive digital marketing landscape.

What steps will you take first to refine your marketing strategy?