Patel explained to the 17,157 attendees at this year's summit his learnings from adopting AI in persuasion strategies. In his speech, the guru highlighted the importance of the human component in the adoption of the revolutionary technological solution, stating that "smart companies use AI in combination with humans, not to replace them". In this sense, Patel considered that artificial intelligence will take the place of some tasks that are already performed by professionals, but will create a whole new role for those involved in marketing.

In this regard, the application of the disruptive tool in this sector focuses mainly on optimising campaigns in various areas: from design and initial ideas, to programming, testing with 'copies', SEO strategies, audience segmentation, or data analysis, among many others. Therefore, in the words of Neil Patel, "it is mandatory to experiment with AI".

AI and digital marketing: uses and experiences

During his speech at DES2024, the international leader listed nine tips on how to leverage AI to make any marketing campaign a success.

1. Analyse online reviews and opinions: AI has the ability to reason and examine data in minutes, not weeks, and is more accurate in its results. It can also understand the meaning and context of a piece of writing by monitoring online conversations, and adjust content and tone accordingly. Therefore, AI can be used to evaluate online reviews of products and know where to pay more attention.
    
2. Examine sales channels: AI comes to discover patterns and trends in the performance of different channels, as well as predict conversations, audience behaviour, or prospects for product segmentation and usage. It also helps to analyse and make multiple changes every day to improve the effectiveness of campaigns.
    
3. Monitor social networks: AI draws conclusions from what is happening on social networks and provides real-time data on users' likes and dislikes, what content they share, and gives ideas for new projects.
    
4. Improve ad spend: Currently, according to Neil Patel at DES2024, around $240 billion is wasted on ineffective ad campaigns. Applying AI helps to uncover ways to improve ad spend and ROI, one of the great opportunities that technology in marketing opens up and that most companies are currently ignoring.
    
5. Search results: The use of search engines has dropped to 61% because most consumers already employ generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT or Gemini, to get answers to their questions.  "So, you have to be in these programs," Patel said. That's why brands need to understand how they work. Essentially,
   AI-powered tools research and measure brand mentions, reviews, relevance, seniority, recommendations and authority (in that order) when choosing which firms to show in search results.
    
6. Reduce customer churn: One of the most costly aspects for companies is the acquisition of new customers and their retention. Consequently, leveraging AI to offer a hyper-personalised service leads to a boost in the performance of each account and a more satisfied customer.
    
7. Predict the effectiveness of campaigns: Once we understand the preferences of our customers through the assessment of opinions, we can introduce them into the AI and ask if the campaigns we propose will be successful or not. This can save a lot of time and money.
    
8. Build trust and engagement with consumers: By helping us to understand the profile of those who buy from us, what they like and dislike, AI makes it easier to improve the proximity and specialisation of campaigns for specific audiences, or even consumer-to-consumer.
    
9. Personalisation of campaigns: According to data shared by Neil Patel at DES2024, 71% of consumers expect marketing campaigns to be personalised and 89% of marketers see a positive ROI when they are tailored to their target audience. In addition, personalisation can bring in "40% more revenue", so more and more companies are using AI to tailor their efforts to their target audience.

In addition to these tips, Neil Patel presented some case studies to help the audience understand how far AI can go when applied correctly to marketing strategies. In this sense, the expert highlighted that "wellness brands can analyse sleep patterns with AI and offer them to their users". Other companies, such as Starbucks, implement it to find out what new drinks their consumers would like based on previous preferences.