Leveraging artificial intelligence can help marketers predict consumer behavior and improve the buyer’s journey to create the most effective marketing strategies. Companies can lean on AI and machine learning to create more engaging content, analyze data to make better business decisions, automate customer support and more.

The use of AI in marketing is expected to increase in 2022 as more organizations seek ways to incorporate it into their processes to boost their advertising and marketing efforts. Here, 14 experts from Forbes Agency Council share some great ways that AI can assist industry leaders in marketing and advertising in the coming year.

1. To Optimize Media Buying And Lower Customer Acquisition Costs

AI can help optimize media buying and lower the cost of customer acquisition. With manual optimization becoming more difficult and resource-intensive, implementing AI and deep learning solutions to drive performance at scale can ensure that budgets are being spent as efficiently as possible. – Jeremy Fain, Cognitiv

2. To Drive Conversions Within Existing Mobile Messaging Programs

AI can be used to drive conversions within existing mobile messaging programs by equipping chatbots with natural language understanding capabilities that enable customers to ask questions and even transact, all within the messaging channel. Earlier in the buyer’s journey, brands can use AI to power acquisition campaigns with conversational advertising where customers click through to a live chat rather than to a brand website. – Matt Ramerman, Sinch for Marketing

3. To Make Campaign Optimization Recommendations

Deploy AI for tactical objectives by using it to make small but impactful campaign optimization decisions, including creative, placement and more. As AI systems don’t “care” about the nature of their inputs, they can make optimization recommendations with smaller and noisier datasets than humans. Shy away from using AI for strategic decision making, which requires understanding of the specific roles of different inputs. – Ajay Gupta, Stirista

4. To Automate Internal Tasks And Processes

While a lot of talk about AI is focused on using it within third-party systems, agencies should start thinking about ways that they can automate internal tasks and processes that are necessary for the company but not rewarding work for the employees doing it. Think of AI as a member of the team and find ways to utilize it in that way. – Greg Kihlstrom, GK5A

5. To Personalize The Online Customer Experience

An increasing number of customers expect a personalized online experience. Using AI chatbots, for instance, can push the conversion process along and increase customer engagement, which improves your understanding of what your customers need. When paired with employee contact, the client receives individualized attention and an improved experience. – Hannah Trivette, NUVEW Web Solutions

6. To Anticipate Consumer Needs And Customer Buying Behavior

Using AI to anticipate consumer needs based on what they have done in the past is a great way to preempt sales data and forecast profitability in the year ahead. We can learn about a customer’s tendencies from their previous buying behavior and predict what they will do in the future. Leveraging AI to generate this information can help us target particular audiences at certain times of the year. – Adrian Falk, Believe Advertising & PR

7. To Improve Processes And Results For Staff And Customers

There are quick, effective ways to use AI via software tools that leverage existing algorithms or build their own. Create a research initiative within your company to identify and test these tools. Put them to use and compare them against current methods or competing tools. You will learn a lot, such as how software might improve processes and results for your staff and customers. – Jim Caruso, M1PR, Inc. d/b/a MediaFirst PR – Atlanta

8. To Automate Service Center And Sales Center Workflows

Chatbots and artificial agents have come a long way, but they still have a ways to go. That said, I think this will be the year we truly see breakthroughs in the quality of service center and sales center AI flows. If those breakthroughs come, get ready for some seriously powerful automated tooling for sales and service. – Bobby Steinbach, MeanPug Digital

9. To Optimize Retargeting Efforts

AI can help with retargeting efforts for your initial marketing campaign by optimizing ads that generated the best response. Then, you can retarget the most engaged audience until conversion rates and revenues increase. – Jessica Hawthorne-Castro, Hawthorne LLC

10. To Identify New Audience Segments And Understand Brand Sentiment

Artificial Intelligence is an excellent tool to better leverage data insights and incorporate more automated analytics. By pooling customer data and information from ad campaigns, you can identify new audience segments and gain a deeper understanding of brand sentiment. AI can sift through massive amounts of data to reveal vital patterns that might otherwise remain hidden to human eyes. – Henry Kurkowski, One WiFi

11. To Assist In Content Creation

Now, don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying AI copywriting apps are perfect, but from what I have seen, they are wonderful at creating first drafts of blog posts and long-form content. As you work with them, they get smarter, but you need the patience and writing skills to manage them. If you have both, they are a great timesaver and can help you pump out more content. – Christopher Tompkins, The Go! Agency

12. To Maximize Your Ad Budget

Artificial intelligence is now being used by major ad platforms to help show ads to higher-intent audiences. Combining this AI with tools such as campaign budget optimization, dynamic bidding and dynamic creatives can help you maximize your ad budget while letting the AI do the heavy lifting for your ads. – Brian Meert, AdvertiseMint

13. To Model CRM Data Into Customer Lookalikes

With the increasing loss of marketing data, companies must leverage their own data to understand and reach new customers by integrating customer relationship management data. Brands can use AI to model this data into customer lookalikes for the best accuracy and scale. This requires strong communication between marketing and sales teams, a regularly updated CRM system, and two-way integration with media platforms. – Donna Robinson, Collective Measures

14. To Test And Optimize Paid Media Ad Campaigns

AI will be invaluable for testing and optimizing paid media ad campaigns in the coming year. With the ability (and need) to test a wide variety of ad variations, AI will be critical for pinpointing winners across all areas of search engine and social media advertising. There is a strong possibility that AI will also make “on demand” programmatic ad variations faster and simpler. – Bernard May, National Positions