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AI tools are taking over the industry and dramatically changing how we operate every day. While the robots aren’t taking our jobs, they offer massive time and money-saving opportunities.
But when it comes to AI tools for marketing, I get it — there are so many options available that it’s difficult to know where to start, particularly when you feel the pressure of ‘adapt or get left behind’.
To get started if you’re new to the world of AI or need some inspiration, I’ve compiled a list of some of our favourite AI tools for marketing.
- OpenAI GPT-3/GPT-4
- ChatGPT
- DALL-E
- Google Bard
- Chatspot.ai
- Seventh Sense
- Jasper.ai
- Surfer SEO
- Zapier
- Browse AI
- Midjourney
- Merlin
- Fireflies
1. OpenAI GPT-3/GPT-4
Let’s start with the big hitters — OpenAI. Arguably the front-runner of deep learning and AI, OpenAI has brought us the groundbreaking GPT-3 and, more recently, GPT-4.
GPT-4 is a multimodal model built on an unprecedented scale. To put it into perspective, it’s 10 times more advanced than its predecessor, with a 170 trillion parameter count compared to GPT-3’s 175 billion. The answers it gives also sound much more natural than GPT-3 — a challenge AI tools often must overcome.
So, what exactly does GPT-4 do? It's a text generator where you can insert prompts which it then uses to generate and edit written content. All types of content are covered, from blog posts and headlines to songs, screenplays and even code.
While it’s proven incredibly popular — we’re talking one million users in the first week alone — you should always use AI-generated text with caution, add the human element back in, sense check and make sure it’s search engine friendly.
2. ChatGPT
We’re heading onto the next AI tool from OpenAI — ChatGPT. At this point, you’ll struggle to find anyone that hasn’t heard of ChatGPT. It has taken the news by storm and plastered all over social platforms, and it seems almost everyone has played around with it at some point. The 100 million users back this up.
While it’s based on the GPT-4 technology and provides a detailed response to an instructional prompt, ChatGPT differs by being much more conversational. The idea of ChatGPT is you can have a conversation with the model, ask follow-up questions and request expansion on the information it provides.
At the moment, ChatGPT doesn’t accept image prompts while GPT-4 does, so watch this space for future developments and enhanced capabilities of ChatGPT. But the most recent development which has everyone excited is the introduction of plug-ins which covers almost any need, ranging from Expedia to Klarna.
3. DALL-E
DALL-E is essentially the image version of GPT-4 and has been created by — you guessed it — OpenAI to generate digital images from natural language description prompts. The whole idea of DALL-E is you can create images from text.
AI image generators open a whole new world of opportunities. We’ve all been there — you spend hours trawling through stock websites to find the right image for your project. With technology such as DALL-E, you can generate images in minutes.
But we should caveat this by saying that AI image tools still have some room for improvement. It’ll often generate a person with an extra limb or a rogue eye and finds fingers especially difficult to get right. Plus, you need to consider things like copyright issues.
Having said this, it’s still groundbreaking tech that has the potential to revolutionise the way we work and source images completely.
Trying it out myself
To help you get your head around it all, I thought I’d give DALL-E a go so you can see the kind of images it’s capable of creating.
First, I asked ChatGPT to create a prompt for DALL-E using:
“I want to create an image showing a marketing manager reading about AI tools while drinking a coffee. Please create a detailed prompt for DALL-E that will give me a well-crafted image with strong, vibrant colours and design matching this brief.”
To which GPT replied with:
I then put this prompt into DALL-E, and here are the results. Although the face isn’t the most realistic, it’s still pretty impressive, right?
4. Google Bard
Moving on from OpenAI, the internet giants had to get on board with its own AI chatbot, and Google Bard was subsequently released. Bard is Google’s answer to ChatGPT. It’s a conversational AI chatbot powered by a language model that generates responses based on prompts.
While there are many similarities between the two, one key difference separates Google Bard from ChatGPT. Bard uses Google’s LaMDA technology to generate responses based on real-time information.
However, ChatGPT was trained on a dataset that ended in 2021, meaning the results aren’t always the most up-to-date or accurate. But that doesn’t mean to say that Bard is superior. ChatGPT has better textual functionality, whereas Bard provides more recent information. Despite that, Google is still chasing Microsoft in the race to AI dominance.
5. Chatspot.ai
For all you HubSpot users, Chatspot.ai is the integration you’ve been waiting for. Chatspot.ai integrates GPT technology with the HubSpot platform, allowing users to use the chat-based functionality to generate AI content.
The HubSpot content assistant can generate blog ideas, blog outlines, paragraphs, headlines, emails and more from chat-based commands. The result? Streamlined, more efficient processes and time saved for your marketing team.
6. Seventh Sense
Helping you send targeted emails that are less ‘annoying’ for your contact base, Seventh Sense is an AI plug-in that allows you to optimise the performance and engagement of your email strategy.
The main selling point of Seventh Sense is it uses AI to optimise the delivery of your emails. When using Seventh Sense during an email send, it analyses the recipient's engagement behaviour to determine the best send time for maximum performance of your emails.
And it goes beyond that, too. Seventh Sense allows you to test multi-variants, segment based on engagement and throttle emails for the best results.
7. Jasper.ai
Jasper is another AI content generator that’s always on hand to help out when you have the dreaded writer's block. Similar to GPT and Bard technologies, Jasper works by receiving prompts and generating creative copy for you to use.
Although it’s not one of the biggest household names, it still has impressive capabilities in generating copy and content using AI, proving to be a force in the copy world. It’s also easier to access and has a user-friendly interface, making it a go-to for many marketers.
8. Surfer SEO
Although AI-generated content is impressive, search engines are no fools. The chances of search engines picking up pure AI-generated content and disregarding it are strong, which is why adding the human element back in is so important.
On the flip side, if you’re happy to write the content and need a hand with SEO optimisation, then Surfer SEO is the tool for you.
Surfer SEO analyses your content and provides suggestions based on SEO best practices, such as readability, keyword density, length and so much more. By utilising Surfer SEO’s recommendations, your content is much more likely to rank and get those all-important results.
9. Zapier
Automating daily tasks is where AI naturally succeeds and Zapier has capitalised on this. Robots were made for executing repetitive tasks that didn’t need human interaction, which is why AI tools do so well in this area.
Zapier allows you to connect thousands of apps and automate tasks and marketing activities, even if they’re not on the same platform. It allows you to build workflows to link and trigger actions without any coding, meaning even tech-phobes can harness its benefits.
If you want to save time, create efficiencies and maximise your productivity, this is the tool for you.
10. Browse AI
Competitive intelligence is a game-changer in marketing, and if you want to make the labour-intensive process much easier, you need to try out Browse AI. It’s a website-scraping robot you can train to extract data from websites to draw analytics and insights.
It can extract all data from a web page and review similarities, pricing structures, new trends and even product launches. If you want to do the best competitor analysis you’ve ever done in record time, try out Browse AI.
11. Midjourney
Midjourney is another AI text-to-image generator, and it’s one of the most popular. It’s user-friendly and doesn’t require coding, meaning anyone and everyone can give it a go to see what it can create.
Midjourney has fewer limitations than most AI image generators and it’s free to use for a trial period if you have a Discord account.
It's arguably one of the easiest to use once you've mastered the art of prompting and image descriptors. The more specifically you describe how you want the image to look, the more impressive the results — all through Discord.
It has also gone up a level recently in terms of ultra-realism. Recently launching the V5 model, the days of six fingers, four arms and two necks are a thing of the past. Humans look more real than ever, artistic styles look more impressive than before and it's becoming to challenge to decipher whether some Midjourney images are AI-generated or not.
12. Merlin
Merlin is an AI tool for marketing that takes things one step further. It condenses the power of ChatGPT into a Chrome extension that can be used on all websites, creating a seamless and fuss-free user experience.
For example, say you’re reading this blog and you have the extension installed. You could prompt Merlin to summarise the contents of the page, which it would do without having to leave the blog, open up ChatGPT and enter the prompt there.
It can also be used for online documents, such as generating complex Excel formulas and codes or for writing emails from scratch. Essentially, you have all the functions of ChatGPT, without having to leave the pages you’re browsing.
13. Firefies
Last, but by no means least, is a real time-saver. Fireflies is an AI notetaker that combines ChatGPT with any virtual meeting platform. We’ve all been there — you’re in a virtual meeting, nobody is taking notes or writing down actions, and a week later, you’ve all forgotten the key takeaways.
That’s where Fireflies comes in. It uses AI to transcribe, summarise and analyse meetings so you don’t have to. Simply use it as a plug-in and wait for the technology to generate the results.
AI tools for marketing: Putting it all together
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Hundreds of new AI tools launch every single week and it can be difficult to keep up. However, there are still some question marks about using AI tools and to what extent.
Countries like Italy have banned the use of ChatGPT. There are ethical and legal concerns to consider. And the likes of Elon Musk, Bill Gates plus huge companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google and Meta have co-signed a letter asking to pause AI research for anything more powerful than GPT-4.
Despite that, the power of AI tools in marketing can't be ignored. Not only are the impressive capabilities advancing day by day, but they offer the opportunity for you and your teams to save time, become more efficient, and ultimately, save money and enhance ROI.
The AI tools for marketing in this list are just a starting point. Thousands are available for every possible function, from generating whole content strategies and social captions to developing jingles and providing video captions. The possibilities are endless.
