Agencies today are leveraging artificial intelligence technologies in many different ways and to varying degrees of success. A big question that has been on the minds of industry leaders in recent years is, “What is the best way for our organization to invest in AI?”
From automating processes to serving as a conduit for better customer care and communication, agencies are embracing AI capabilities they hope will streamline operations and improve results for clients. Below, members of Forbes Agency Council draw upon their industry insights and personal experiences to explore how agencies can incorporate AI and what kinds of results they can expect.
Forbes Agency Council members share ways to leverage artificial intelligence to improve an agency’s workflow.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Optimizing Your Website For Search
At our company, we’re using AI in a few areas, including for website SEO, where it has propelled a more than 50% increase in page views per visitor, year over year. We also use automated systems to manage our increasingly complex workflows. Snippets on the website automatically enter new leads into our customer relationship management system, and messaging workflows fuel quick responses to new leads, leading to an increase in total leads converted. – Paula Chiocchi, Outward Media, Inc.
2. Answering Easy Questions And Booking Meetings
One of the best ways that AI is being leveraged at the moment is to answer easy questions. In addition to that, it is used as a virtual assistant and to help book meetings. This is very helpful because it means some processes take fewer people to manage from end to end. – Jon James, Ignited Results
3. Bid Shading For Programmatic Ad Buys
One type of AI that has really benefited our workflow has been bid shading for our programmatic ad buys. The AI within our demand-side platform uses historical data to basically handle the cost-benefit analysis of certain bids, meaning we don’t have to manually test or risk overpaying for placements. It saves our team valuable time while still delivering high-yield placements for our clients. – Tellef Lundevall, Accelerated Digital Media
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4. Recruiting Talent And Gathering Sales Leads
Using AI to optimize different workflows, such as recruiting talent or gathering sales leads, has been a success for many agencies. By doing so, you see a decrease in mundane manual tasks, which then opens bandwidth for teams to focus on tasks that require deeper thinking. – Jordan Edelson, Appetizer Mobile LLC
5. Automating Services Fulfillment And Internal Reminders
We use AI with our programmatic ad campaigns, in workflow automation for services fulfillment, and in internal reminders for operations, sales and marketing. We have a custom app that notifies clients in Slack and via email when they receive a new lead. We’re expanding this to SMS, call and social direct message notifications in quarter three, too. – Vix Reitano, Agency 6B
6. Powering A Chat Box On Your Website
We use Facebook’s AI to power a chat box on our website to answer any questions that might arise from potential customers while they are browsing our site. Since implementing the chat box, we have noticed more people have been reaching out than when we just had our email and phone number available. It’s more convenient for potential clients, and they often can get an instant answer. – Adrian Falk, Believe Advertising & PR
7. Automating Repetitive Tasks
Automate repetitive tasks to save time and resources. Some tasks occur several times in the workflow, and repeating them only requires more time and effort. With AI, agencies can easily predict consumer demands and study behavior patterns to automate different tasks that occur frequently. If you’re handling a large number of customers, time is an important factor. – Candice Georgiadis, Digital Agency, Inc
8. Elevating Client Work
We use AI in various ways on our website and in running campaigns, but mostly we leverage technology to elevate our client work. For example, we can quickly access AI-enhanced, reliable first-party research for insights. These insights inform branding, messaging and intelligent creative for digital campaigns targeted at niche audiences. The results are improved lead quality and better return on investment. – Megan Devine, d.trio marketing group
9. Simplifying Tasks And Speeding Up Processes
AI can often be hit or miss in so many ways, but the key is to trial numerous platforms and software—such as Copysmith.ai, for example—and use it carefully and selectively for simplifying tasks or speeding up a process. The general rule of thumb with AI is that it is the quality of the information fed into the AI engine that dictates the quality of the outputs. Test, test and test again. – Julia Linehan, The Digital Voice PR Agency Ltd
10. Improving Emails To Generate More Replies
We recently started using AI to scan through our email messages, offer suggestions on readability, then provide tips on what we could change in our writing to increase our chances of receiving a reply. This includes an optimal length for the email we’re drafting, suggestions to include questions to get the recipient to engage and more. We have definitely seen an increase in replies! – Rafael Romis, Weberous Web Design
11. Optimizing Digital Ad Campaigns Across Channels
We have been leveraging machine learning and AI to optimize digital ad campaigns across channels. Effectively, we are able to rapidly shift ad spending to better-performing campaigns, creatives and audiences based on the strategic automation rules we have put in place. The results have been fantastic, as we can also “reset” these campaigns daily to adapt to rapidly changing buyer behavior. – Bernard May, National Positions
12. Automating Email Marketing
AI for email marketing and automation helps our team and clients maximize the value of their email efforts and generate more sales-qualified leads. Leveraging AI in this way enables us to personalize when emails are delivered to prospects based on existing data about when they are most likely to engage. This has increased email open rates and click rates and has improved engagement with those in our database. – Elyse Flynn Meyer, Prism Global Marketing Solutions
13. Understanding Client Needs Through A Chatbot
We have leveraged AI-driven chatbot technology to understand what our visitors and clients need when they visit our site. Being able to identify a client and giving them different, customized service choices always pleasantly surprises them. Both clients and visitors who aren’t yet clients are able to engage in meaningful conversations with bots and with humans when bots need assistance. – Jayant Chaudhary, JLB USA
14. Scaling Content Creation
AI is leveraged by agencies to improve workflow in many ways. One of the areas is AI-powered content strategy and content. Successful content creation is a mix of artistic instinct and scientific data. AI helps us scale the creation of content and enhance the output of that content at record speed, knowing the content is backed by data, not just artistic instinct. – Greg Carney, Freedom United Social
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Author: Expert Panel®, Forbes Councils Member
