Integrating AI into Your Marketing Agency: Best Practices and Common Pitfalls

If you run a marketing agency, you want to keep your tech stack updated with relevant products that can keep your team productive and your clients happy. AI is the latest emerging technology that’s changing the face of B2B marketing — but over a third of marketers are yet to integrate it into their workflows.

With top reasons including a lack of knowledge and experience with AI, we’ve brought together this quick guide to integrating AI into your agency — and how to sidestep common pitfalls.

First Steps: Find Your Why

AI has many benefits for modern marketing agencies but if you don’t know why you want it, you can end up wasting money on tools that don’t fit your needs. This isn’t a “if it works, don’t fix it,” message — there’s likely some aspect of your agency processes that could be honed by AI. After all, nearly 62% of B2B marketers are already utilizing AI in at least some of their tactics.

So, figure out how you could benefit from AI marketing tools and where you could best implement them for the most impact. Here are just some ways marketing agencies are employing AI to drive results:

• Automating tasks

• Data analytics for honing marketing campaigns

• Predictive modeling to assess and forecast market trends and consumer behaviors

• Increased personalization

• Social listening

• Chatbots

Some of these tasks you may already excel at. Others, you might see room for improvement. AI marketing tools can help you fine-tune your processes to deliver better results for your clients.

Best Practices for AI Marketing Integration

1. Start small — if you’re unused to AI, start with one area of your agency where implementing it represents a low-risk investment.

2. Browse AI marketing tools — find a trusted software comparison platform or talk to peers about the best tools for your needs.

3. Get advice — follow the instructions that come with your tool but also look at YouTube videos, forums, and again, talk to your peers about how to get the best from your tools.

4. Record results — document your performance now and at several points after implementing AI so you can see the impact.

5. Assess and fine-tune — figure out what worked well and what needs adjustment, make those adjustments, and continue recording results.

6. Rinse and repeat — if you’re happy that AI is benefitting your agency, see where else you can implement AI marketing tools.

Avoid These Common Pitfalls

1. Complete reliance on AI — it’s a tool and doesn’t replace your human team.

2. Not checking for hallucinations — remember when Google AI told drivers to check their blinker fluid levels? Generative AI doesn’t check its own work — you have to do that.

3. Trying to change everything all at once — making an organization-wide change is hard work and it may be difficult to get your team’s buy-in.

Final Word

Remember that the experiences of your peers can really help when choosing AI marketing tools and figuring out how to implement them. If you want to learn more about overhauling your strategies, book a free 15-minute introductory call with Arch Collective, and let’s see if we can help you revamp your marketing workflows.

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