Updated September 2024.
If you think you don’t need an AI marketing agency, it behooves you to think again.
In today’s digital marketing space, artificial intelligence is becoming more and more ubiquitous. It’s due in large part to the rapid rate in which it’s becoming more useful for marketing activities. However, using AI effectively and creatively can be trickier than it seems for businesses striving to stay ahead. If handled without care, AI can actually lead to negative brand equity. It all comes down to how the AI is used, and how it impacts your messaging and offer.
For those who may feel overwhelmed or lack the expertise, turning to specialized AI marketing agencies that know how to harness the power of artificial intelligence is imperative. In this article, we’ll spotlight the top 5 AI marketing agencies we think can help bring your brand into the future (which is now, by the way)!
Top 5 AI Marketing Agencies
Let’s get right into it by taking a look at some of the top digital marketing agencies that are crushing it with AI.
1) Single Grain
We started Single Grain as an SEO agency and transformed it into a top-notch full-service digital marketing agency over the last decade. Specializing in SEO, PPC, CRO, and AI content marketing, as well as SaaS, e-commerce, travel, and education, we quickly drew the attention of such clients as Amazon, Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, and Nasdaq.
Today, we use generative AI to come up with solutions never thought of before. Here’s some of the major ways we’re using AI to help our clients:
- Automated Content: We create AI-assisted content infused with human expertise and inputs to save time while maintaining quality.
- Programmatic SEO: we use AI-powered programmatic SEO to improve organic search visibility at scale
- Programmatic CRO: We leverage AI to scale highly personalized CRO tests, such as contextual CTAs that adjust automatically based on the content of each page. Additionally, we use AI to analyze website usage data from tools like Clarity, accelerating the development of CRO test hypotheses.
For CEO Eric Siu and the SG team the pursuit of innovation is relentless. We’re continually exploring new frontiers in AI technology and marketing strategies to ensure that what works wonders for us also delivers exceptional results for our clients.
Want to be our next AI marketing success story? Reach out to us and we’ll get a plan in place to boost your marketing revenues.
Companies should take advantage of programmatic SEO and AI-enhanced content while the iron is hot.
Here’s what we’ve been doing for people:
1. Create a topical map of keywords that have high intent (MOFU and BOFU). For example, if you’re HubSpot, you might aim for keyword… pic.twitter.com/Z3nsE8zXl6
— ericosiu (@ericosiu) July 28, 2023
Through a blend of data analysis, machine learning, and automation, we will be your team’s new secret weapon in making smarter, data-driven decisions, optimizing processes, and delivering personalized customer experiences at scale. Our AI experts work closely with you, understanding your unique challenges and goals, to develop tailored solutions that drive tangible results.
The benefits of working with us include:
- Expertise: Our agency consists of experienced AI professionals who possess deep knowledge and expertise in the field. We provide forward-thinking guidance and insights to help you extract the most out of AI tools and applications.
- Tailored Strategies: We understand that each business is unique, and we tailor our strategies to align with your specific goals and challenges. We always take a customized approach, crafting AI solutions that are optimized for your industry, target audience, and organizational needs.
- Accelerated Implementation: Implementing AI technologies and frameworks can be time-consuming and resource-intensive. By leveraging our agency’s expertise, you can accelerate the implementation process. We have tried-and-tested methodologies in place that streamline the adoption of AI, enabling you to reap the benefits faster.
Single Grain takes your goals and challenges, identifies ways to use AI to address these, and gets you started – so you ultimately drive more growth in less time.👇
2) Thrive Digital
Thrive Digital is a digital marketing agency with skills weaving artificial intelligence and machine learning into their predictive analysis procedures, allowing them to harness large swaths of data and interpret it faster and with more accuracy.
Not only are they using these to generate reports more quickly and cleanly, but they are also taking advantage of periodic automated reporting that goes straight into the lap of their clients, keeping them in the loop with campaign developments and progress in real time.
Thrive Digital understands that analyzing existing or previous consumers might provide insightful information about how marketing efforts can change course to increase the number of high-quality users at scale. Through automated LTV analysis, churn forecasts and audience segmentation, they are able to help their clients better understand their customers with a direct tie to their CRM.
Their services include:
- E-commerce
- User Acquisition
- Lead Generation
- Demand Generation
3) Brave Bison
Brave Bison is a leading AI agency that helps businesses of all sizes grow their online presence. They’re a media, marketing, and technology company “built for the new era.” Connecting digital experiences, creators, and conversions, they use AI to automate tasks, personalize marketing campaigns, and optimize website content.
This award-winning agency is an expert at building cross-channel strategies that widen the sales funnel, nurture engagement, and earn lifetime customer relationships.
Their digital marketing services include:
- Paid search
- Programmatic display
- Affiliate marketing
- Technical SEO
- Content marketing
- Analytics
Plus, the Bison Bot offers “automated large scale copy creation based on OpenAI’s GPT-3 AI model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text. Each instance is trained on approved client copy so the system writes in a way that mirrors the right tone of voice and content structure.”
4) NoGood
NoGood is a growth marketing agency that uses AI to help businesses grow their online presence with such services as:
- SEO
- PPC
- Content marketing
- Email marketing
- Social media marketing
They’re also using AI to gather psychographic customer data for their clients’ buyer personas. This includes the use of certain audience trait-collection tools, like the Personality Insights tool created by IBM Watson Advertising, that contain dynamic data on individuals, which can be narrowed to the profile of the client’s ideal audience members.
Moreover, NoGood has also acknowledged another tool from MRI Simmons called the Brand Catalyst, which is a renowned predictive segmentation tool that can aid brands and AI Marketing agencies in understanding how consumers perceive their brands.
Brand Catalyst uses predictive models to discover potential customers and their attributes. All of these distinguishing characteristics — which contain more than 60,000 pieces of customer data — are transformed into distinctive consumer personas for a brand via a built-in recommendation engine.
If that wasn’t enough, NoGood also takes advantage of Demographics Pro, a powerful data tool that can help brands and advertisers comb through demographic data and organize it in a way that can inform strategy and planning.
5) Major Tom
Major Tom is a full-service digital marketing agency that specializes in helping businesses in the technology, healthcare and financial services industries. They combine channel development, creative tactics, and futuristic technologies to help organizations blast-off to infinite success.
This agency has a team of experienced marketing professionals who can help businesses develop and implement effective marketing strategies. They also have a proven track record of success in using AI to improve marketing results.
Some of the services that Major Tom offers:
- SEO
- Paid Search
- E-commerce Marketing Strategy
- Content Marketing
- Custom Web Development
- UX/UI Design
- Web3
- Brand Strategy
Factors to Consider When Choosing an AI Marketing Agency
When looking for an expert in the digital marketing industry that offers AI-powered marketing, there are several factors to keep in mind:
- Experience: Assess if the agency has experience in your specific industry. Familiarity with your industry’s dynamics, customer behavior, and market trends can give them an edge in developing tailored AI marketing strategies that resonate with your target audience.
- Communication: Evaluate the agency’s communication and collaboration style. Effective collaboration is crucial for a successful partnership. Assess their responsiveness, willingness to listen to your questions, and ability to understand your business requirements.
- Pricing Structure: Discuss the agency’s pricing structure and how they measure ROI. Ensure that their pricing aligns with your budget and that they can demonstrate a track record of delivering tangible results through the AI marketing campaigns they will plan for you.
- Range of Services: Investigate the breadth and depth of marketing services they offer. An agency that provides a comprehensive suite of AI-powered tools and services can offer more holistic solutions, ensuring that all aspects of your marketing needs are covered.
- Technological Competence: Determine the agency’s proficiency with the latest AI technologies. Their deep knowledge of and personal experience in marketing AI is a testament to their commitment to staying ahead in the marketing industry.
- Client Testimonials and Case Studies: Review feedback from previous clients and go through their case studies. This can provide insights into the agency’s effectiveness, reliability, and the kind of results they’ve achieved for other businesses.
Just want someone to do all the work for you? Single Grain can take this off your plate and start your business’ AI transformation. 👇
Why AI in Marketing?
Besides the obvious answer — “because it’s inevitable” — AI in digital marketing makes a lot of things in marketing (or any business/industry) easier, faster and more efficient. And since AI is also becoming more affordable and accessible, it’s a viable and excellent option for businesses with fewer employees and/or a smaller budget.
AI is our new reality, in all aspects of life, especially business. And if you don’t get started with AI marketing right now, you could wind up losing out to your competitors.
Consider this: More than 80% of industry experts integrate some form of AI technology into their online marketing activities. (Are you one of the 20% getting left behind?)
Here’s what AI can do for you in terms of cost savings, improved efficiency and increased traffic and revenue: 💰
- AI-powered chatbots can save businesses up to 30% on customer service costs.
- AI-driven fraud detection can reduce fraud losses by 30-50%.
- AI in healthcare analytics is expected to save the industry $150 billion annually by 2026.
- Google’s DeepMind AI to optimize data center cooling resulted in a 40% reduction in cooling energy use.
- Amazon’s AI-powered recommendation engine drives 35% of total sales.
- Netflix’s recommendation system is credited with saving $1 billion per year in value from customer retention.
- JPMorgan Chase uses AI to interpret commercial loan agreements, saving 360,000 hours of human work annually.
Here are a few ideas of how to use AI in marketing:
Let’s take a more specific look at why businesses should use AI in marketing:
Predicting Consumer Behavior
AI systems can study past consumer behaviors and trends to predict future actions. This predictive analysis allows businesses to be one step ahead of the competition and craft marketing strategies that cater to anticipated consumer needs.
For instance, let’s say Netflix notices a trend where a significant portion of its user base binges on ’80s and ’90s sitcoms during the winter months. Plus, through sentiment analysis on user reviews and social media, the platform discovers that nostalgia is a primary driver for such viewing habits, probably because it’s the holiday season.
So, using predictive analytics, Netflix then sees that there will be a surge in demand for classic sitcoms and nostalgic content in the upcoming winter:
Based on this prediction, Netflix might:
- Acquire more licensing deals for classic sitcoms before winter.
- Create a dedicated “Nostalgia” category on their homepage as winter approaches.
- Commission a holiday special reunion episode of a beloved ’90s show.
- Launch tailored email and in-app campaigns, promoting this content to users who showed previous interest in similar shows.
Real-Time Campaign Optimization
Traditional marketing often relies on post-campaign analysis to determine effectiveness. With AI, campaigns can be monitored and tweaked in real time, which means that your marketing efforts are always optimized for the best results.
For instance, let’s say a local coffee shop, we’ll call it “Bean Bliss” because why not, decides to run an online ad campaign promoting its new range of summer cold brews. They design two different ad creatives: one featuring a picture of a cold brew on a sunny patio (Ad A) and another showcasing a group of friends enjoying their drinks (Ad B).
With a traditional approach, Bean Bliss would run both ads for an entire month, analyze which one performed better, and then decide which ad creative to use in future campaigns or what tweaks might be necessary.
But an AI-driven real-time optimization approach means that from the onset of the campaign, an AI system tracks the performance of both Ad A and Ad B. Within just a few days, the system notices that Ad A is outperforming Ad B significantly. Instead of waiting for the campaign to end, the AI system automatically allocates more budget toward promoting Ad A.
Personalization at Scale
One of AI’s most significant advantages is its ability to analyze vast amounts of data and tailor marketing efforts accordingly.
For example, Amazon recommends products on their e-commerce site based on what you’ve purchased in the past. So if you bought a pair of sneakers, the algorithm might suggest athletic socks, gym bags, water bottles, fitness trackers, and books related to running or sports.
Or a travel-related website might use dynamic content display to tailor their homepage and landing pages to show images, articles or videos that are relevant to the user’s interests. For example, someone interested in adventure travel might see content about mountain trekking or scuba diving.
Revolutionizing Marketing Strategies
AI is reshaping the marketing landscape by enabling hyper-targeted campaigns, real-time data analysis, and adaptive content creation. Traditional approaches generally rely on broad strategies and post-campaign reflections. With AI, marketers can fine-tune strategies on the fly, which means improved relevance and maximized ROI.
Although you can hire a, for example, real estate marketing agency that specializes in one industry to help you with AI marketing, it makes more sense to hire an AI digital marketing agency that has experience in many industries.
Related Content:
* How to Implement AI in Your Business: A Step-by-Step Guide
* 14 AI Marketing Tools to Streamline Your Digital Marketing Strategy
Services Typically Offered by AI Marketing Agencies
The technology behind AI in marketing is constantly learning how to be better, meaning you’re going to continue hearing about it even more, not less. We’ve already begun classifying types of AI in marketing to define specific applications, such as:
- Functional AI: Involving practically an operative task or learning activity, either independently on its own or integrated with another tool
- Analytical AI: Involving robust, automated reporting, interpretation, and metadata (think Boolean logic)
- Textual AI: Grammar tools and written content assistance tools
- Visual AI: Prompted art and graphics generators
- Interactive AI: Generative language models like chatbots
AI marketing agencies offer a range of services that leverage artificial intelligence to enhance marketing strategies. Here’s a list of digital marketing services typically offered by these specialized agencies:
- AI-Powered SEO: Using AI to analyze search trends, optimize content, and improve website rankings.
- Predictive Analytics: Forecasting future trends and consumer behaviors based on historical data.
- Chatbots and Virtual Assistants: Deploying AI-driven chatbots for customer support, lead generation, and engagement.
- Personalized Content Creation: Using AI to generate and curate content tailored to individual user preferences and behaviors.
- Programmatic Advertising: Automating ad buying processes to target users more effectively in real time.
- Customer Segmentation: Utilizing AI to segment customers based on behavior, preferences, and purchase history for targeted marketing campaigns.
- Email Marketing Optimization: Using AI to optimize email content, send times, and targeting to increase open rates and conversions.
- Voice Search Optimization: Ensuring content is optimized for voice search queries.
- Visual Recognition: Implementing AI tools that can analyze images and videos for better content categorization and targeted advertising.
- Sentiment Analysis: Analyzing customer feedback, reviews, and social media mentions to gauge brand sentiment.
- Dynamic Pricing: Adjusting prices in real-time based on demand, competition, and other external factors.
- Recommendation Engines: Providing personalized product or content recommendations to users based on their browsing history and preferences.
- Lead Scoring: Using AI to rank leads in terms of their potential to convert, helping sales teams prioritize their efforts.
- Conversational Marketing: Engaging users in real-time conversations using AI-driven tools to guide them through the sales funnel.
- Data Analytics and Visualization: Offering insights into marketing performance and customer behavior through AI-powered analytics tools.
- A/B Testing and Optimization: Using AI to automatically test different versions of content, ads, or web pages to determine which performs best.
- Video Analysis and Optimization: Analyzing video content to determine viewer engagement and optimizing videos for better performance.
These services, when combined, offer a comprehensive approach to your marketing strategy that is data-driven, up-to-date, and tailored to your business’s needs.
Benefits of Hiring an AI Marketing Company
Hiring an AI agency equipped with artificial intelligence and advanced machine learning capabilities can bring numerous benefits to businesses seeking to optimize their marketing efforts and stay ahead of the competition.
Here are some advantages of partnering with AI digital marketing agencies:
- Data Analysis: AI algorithms can be used to process and analyze vast amounts of data, extracting valuable insights and patterns that may be overlooked by human analysts. This helps brands make data-driven decisions and develop more effective marketing strategies.
- Personalized Customer Experiences: AI marketing agencies excel at creating personalized customer experiences using a customer data platform. This allows for the delivery of highly targeted and relevant content, resulting in improved customer engagement, satisfaction, and conversion rates.
- Marketing Automation: This allows agencies to automate various time-consuming marketing tasks, such as email marketing content, social media management, and ad campaign optimization. Marketing automation not only saves valuable time and resources but also ensures consistent messaging and prompt responses to customer inquiries.
- Predictive Analytics: AI marketing agencies can take advantage of predictive analytics models to forecast customer behavior, identify potential churn risks, and optimize marketing campaigns accordingly.
- Continuous Optimization: Through automatic and recurring A/B testing, advanced machine learning algorithms can identify the most effective messages, channels, and timing to maximize campaign performance. This iterative process leads to constant improvement and higher returns on marketing investments.
- Cost Efficiency: While investing in an AI marketing agency may seem expensive at first, you’ll actually be accessing a comprehensive suite of AI-assisted tools and apps. These tools streamline processes, minimize human error, and optimize budget allocation so that marketing efforts are targeted and efficient.
- Integrated Customer Data Platforms: AI marketing agencies often use customer data platforms to centralize and harmonize data from various sources. This integration provides a unified view of the customer, which enables more precise segmentation and personalized marketing campaigns.
As you can see, by leveraging the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning, businesses can ensure that they’re at the forefront of modern digital marketing techniques as we head into the future (or at least 2024), driving growth and enhancing customer relationships.
Related Content: 10 Easy Ways to Get Started with Marketing AI (Artificial Intelligence)
Tying It All Together
Now you know how to choose the best AI marketing agency for your business, what services an AI agency usually offers, and the advantages of working with them.
So which is the best AI marketing company? That, of course, depends on your budget, your needs, your specific goals, etc.
But the marketing companies on this list — the ones that wield AI marketing techniques for their clients’ advantage — will be the ones that can contribute to increasing your bottom line most efficiently. And its all thanks to AI.
If you’re ready to grow your business by partnering with an excellent AI marketing agency, Single Grain can take your brand to the next level. 👇
Other agency lists you may like:
* Best CRO Agency: Our Top 5 Choices in 2024
* Best SaaS Marketing Agency: Top 5 Choices for 2024
* Best YouTube Marketing Agency: Top 5 Choices for 2024
* Best TikTok Ads Agency: Top 5 Choices for 2024
AI Marketing Agencies FAQs
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What is an AI marketing agency?
An AI marketing agency is a specialized type of marketing company that harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to enhance and optimize marketing strategies for businesses. These agencies leverage advanced AI tools and techniques to analyze data, predict consumer behavior, and automate marketing tasks, offering tailored solutions that cater to the unique needs of any business.
Their expertise in integrating AI with traditional marketing practices positions them at the forefront of the marketing industry, enabling global business clients to achieve more targeted and efficient marketing outcomes.
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Which companies are using AI in marketing?
Several companies are integrating artificial intelligence into their marketing strategies, including:
- Affectiva: This company utilizes emotion AI toolkits to gather insights from qualitative observations, diagnosing consumers’ emotional reactions to marketing content.
- Appier: Based in Asia, Appier offers several AI-driven products, such as AiDeal, which targets hesitant customers with real-time personalized deals.
- Persado: They focus on the application of machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing to address key marketing challenges, emphasizing the importance of personalization and a customer-centric model.
- HubSpot: As a major player in the marketing industry, HubSpot integrates AI to gather insights into customers and produce better content tailored to the customer journey.
- McKinsey & Company: They highlight the rise of AI, especially generative AI, in areas of marketing and sales like customer experience, growth, and productivity.
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Which marketing companies are using AI in marketing?
In addition to the agencies on the list above, including Single Grain, several other marketing companies are leveraging artificial intelligence to enhance their marketing strategies and provide innovative solutions to their clients, including:
- Appier: An Asia-based company that offers AI-driven products, such as AiDeal, which targets hesitant customers with personalized deals in real-time.
- Optimove: This company’s mission is to help marketers drive growth by transforming customer data into actionable insights, which then power thoughtful customer communications at scale.
- NeoReach: Recognized for its use of AI to help businesses identify potential customers and improve the effectiveness of their campaigns.
- GumGum: Another prominent name in the marketing industry that integrates AI-powered tools to transform businesses.
- Quantcast: Known for its AI capabilities in marketing, helping brands achieve better customer insights and campaign effectiveness.
- Heuritech: This company uses AI to offer insights into customer behavior and trends, enhancing marketing strategies.
- Cognitiv: Frequently mentioned for its AI applications in marketing, aiming to transform businesses through advanced machine learning techniques.
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Can you make money with AI marketing?
Yes, you can make money with AI marketing, because this technology harnesses advanced algorithms and data analysis to optimize marketing campaigns. By implementing AI-driven strategies, marketing companies can achieve higher engagement rates, improved conversion rates, and increased customer retention — which can lead to better ROI and significant revenue growth.
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How can AI help marketing agencies?
This technology can help AI marketing companies by enhancing data analysis, personalizing campaigns, automating repetitive tasks, predicting consumer behavior, and optimizing marketing strategies in real-time, leading to more effective campaigns and improved ROI.
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How do AI marketing agencies differ from traditional ones?
AI marketing agencies use cutting-edge technology to analyze vast amounts of data quickly, offering predictive insights, automating repetitive tasks, and delivering hyper-personalized campaigns in real-time.
In contrast, traditional agencies depend on human expertise, manual analysis, historical data, and conventional marketing methods.
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How much does it cost to hire an AI marketing agency?
The cost to hire an AI marketing agency varies widely based on factors such as the scope of the project, the agency’s expertise, the tools and technologies they employ, and the duration of the engagement.
Typically, costs can range from a few thousand dollars for basic services to hundreds of thousands or even millions for extensive campaigns or ongoing partnerships with top-tier agencies.
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Can small businesses benefit from AI marketing?
Absolutely. Many scalable and affordable AI solutions cater specifically to the needs and constraints of small businesses. SMBs can leverage AI marketing to enhance customer personalization, automate repetitive tasks, gain insights from data, and optimize campaigns even with limited resources. AI tools can help small businesses compete effectively, understand their customer base better, and achieve a higher return on their marketing investments.