AI in Marketing: Revolutionize Your Strategy for 2026

Marketers of all experience levels can take advantage of AI’s ability to analyze data, identify patterns and behaviors, improve target audience segmentation, and deliver more personalized marketing campaigns.

If those sound like outcomes you’d like to see happen in your own work, don’t worry—you don’t need to become a machine learning expert. By learning key basics about how AI tools like ChatGPT work, you’ll be able to leverage artificial intelligence to take your marketing further this year.

By the time you finish this article, you’ll be well on your way to understanding how to use AI in your marketing work—and will have a better idea of how other companies are already using this technology.

How is AI transforming marketing?

As a professional marketer, you can use generative AI tools to automate, optimize, and enhance different aspects of your campaigns and strategies. With the help of AI, you might:

• Improve campaign targeting based on customer behavior
• Continually analyze large user data sets to identify new customer purchasing patterns 
• Refine your company’s customer segmentation abilities 
• Develop new buyer personas
• Pinpoint the best time to send email marketing campaigns 
• Better understand customer journeys on your website
• Leverage predictive analytics and data analysis to plan future price increases
• Quickly develop video scripts, email subject lines, social media graphics, and more
• Offer personalized in-app user support via AI chatbot
• Develop automated workflows to streamline routine actions like checking customer engagement metrics and conversion rates on a social media post

If you’re new to using AI, this might all sound too good to be true. After all, you’ve been using platforms that promise new and better marketing results for years, right?

Generative AI works differently than the software you may have used in the past, though. AI marketing tools allow us to find patterns faster—and replicate human speech patterns more accurately—than ever before. 

The use of AI also allows marketers to reach larger audiences. Take Malaria No More as an example. The global NGO asked sports star David Beckham to appear in a series of video messages sharing the stories of people who’ve survived malaria. 

The Malaria No More team, in partnership with Ridley Scott Studio, used a tool called Synthesia to show Beckham “speaking” with the voice of different survivors—in nine languages. These authorized deepfakes expanded the campaign’s global reach and led to over 700 million online impressions. 

What AI tools are useful for marketers? 

The size of the global AI market grew by over 48 billion dollars between 2023 and 2024. This growth is only expected to increase, with the market reaching over 826 billion dollars by 2030. Because of this rapid escalation, a stream of new AI tools are launched every month. They typically fall into one of two categories:

1. A purpose-built software platform that’s powered by AI and machine learning algorithms, but doesn’t allow you to directly interact with the AI yourself. One example of this type of tool is Semrush Copilot, which uses natural language to summarize any changes in a site’s search engine optimization (SEO) and performance.
2. Generative AI chatbots and tools that let you work with the AI using natural language—this includes ChatGPT, the Meta AI assistant, and the social media AI helper found in Buffer.

Both tool types bring a lot of value to the marketing process. Purpose-built, AI-powered tools allow you to leverage the power of AI without spending time crafting prompts or training a model. But interactive AI tools are also great, as you can train them to produce outputs that sound more like your brand.

Photo by The Coach Space on Pexels

The right AI tools for you will depend on how comfortable you are with the technology, how you like to work, and what you want to achieve. When evaluating any AI tool, though, keep an eye out for these terms that can clue you in to how the software works:

• Natural language processing (NLP). Natural language processing is a field of computing that aims to allow computers to mimic human language. This is why you can interact with ChatGPT using normal speech, and how it can begin to replicate your brand voice.
• Predictive analytics. Machine learning algorithms use data to predict different actions, such as when most customers open their email, the products they’re most interested in, what subject lines they respond to, and more. 
• Automatic speech recognition (ASR). This technology converts spoken language into text by identifying linguistic patterns and audio signals. If you’ve ever taken advantage of the transcript recap capabilities in tools like Zoom or Otter, you’ve seen the benefit of ASR
• Large language model (LLM). These are AI models trained on a massive amount of data with the purpose of producing an interactive chatbot like Google’s Gemini or Microsoft Copilot. You can ask LLMs questions and get answers, but the responses aren’t always correct. 

(To learn more about how AI works, check out our complete AI terms glossary!)

It’s also important to remember that AI isn’t a true replacement for human knowledge and creativity. A customer service chatbot can be a great way to provide users with quick answers while your office is closed, but the bot may not provide the quality of output needed to handle complex, sensitive matters. 

Similarly, AI tools are great for helping the content ideation process and creating simple outlines—but overreliance on AI-generated writing can result in accidental plagiarism. 

Benefits and challenges of using AI in marketing

From optimized marketing campaigns and performance to increased efficiency, artificial intelligence offers numerous benefits to marketing teams. But it can also expose marketers to privacy concerns, high costs, and implementation challenges.

Benefits of using AI for marketing

Artificial intelligence brings many advantages to marketing, including:

• Enhanced efficiency and automation. AI tools allow businesses to automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, leaving marketers to focus on more mission-critical activities. AI can also perform complex operations (such as faster and more accurate statistical analyses) and reduce human errors.
• Improved personalization. AI tools can identify specific patterns and behaviors from customer data, making it suitable for helping to create targeted content, providing tailored customer support, and recommending relevant products.
• Better decision-making. Machine learning allows marketers to quickly analyze vast amounts of data, identify key trends and insights, and optimize their marketing strategies.
• More impactful marketing campaigns. AI makes it easier for marketers to analyze and measure campaign performance in real time. As a result, marketers can quickly respond to shifting audience interests and make adjustments to ad targeting, bidding, and content.
• Easier content generation and repurposing. With the help of AI technology, you can write a blog post once and quickly turn it into several different versions, email copy, social media post graphics, LinkedIn posts, a podcast script, and more. 

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels

Challenges when using AI in marketing

While AI can help boost creativity and productivity, you may find that adoption across your company proves to be challenging. This is often due to:

• Privacy and ethical concerns. Training an AI model requires a lot of data. Whether you want to work with an AI engineer to build a custom LLM for your business or you plan to use an existing AI tool, you’ll need to be careful about what customer data you share with the algorithm. Businesses should have measures in place to promote data privacy and ethical AI use; at the same time, marketers should be aware of potential bias in the AI model. 
• Implementation challenges. While many AI tools exist, integrating them into existing systems can still be challenging. Businesses should consider whether off-the-shelf AI platforms will work, or if they’ll need a bespoke AI tool created specifically for their needs. 
• Lack of proper training. Artificial intelligence is a complex field requiring specialized skills. Upwork research shows that nearly half of employees using AI at work are unsure how to achieve the productivity levels that their employers expect. And 77% of employees say that AI has actually made their work less productive! This is what can happen when you deploy an AI tool without properly training your internal teams. Taking the time to assess your team’s technical skills and providing resources to help them upskill can make your AI adoption efforts a success. 
• Poor data quality or low availability. AI model accuracy depends on the quality and quantity of data it uses for training. While commercially available AI models are typically trained on vast data sets, it’s important to make sure that any data you feed into the tool is accurate and high quality. If it’s hard to source enough quality data to produce the results you need, then you may want to look for more traditional marketing software platforms.
• Cost. AI marketing can be expensive to run and maintain—for example, ChatGPT Pro costs $200 per user, month. Marketers must ensure they have enough resources available to use the tools they select on an ongoing basis.

How 4 companies leverage AI in marketing

Many of the companies you encounter in your daily life are already using AI to improve customer experiences, marketing, and conversions—whether you realize it or not! 

1. Netflix uses AI to engage customers

Netflix uses artificial intelligence to recommend relevant shows and movies based on customer preferences and viewing habits.

As users watch their favorite movies the Netflix AI continuously updates its catalog with appealing shows that match people’s tastes and preferences. This way, Netflix keeps viewers engaged and subscribed to its services.

Netflix also uses AI to personalize images, making them more engaging to viewers. As a result, Netflix can capture viewers’ attention and convince them to select specific content.

Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels

2. Amazon turns customer insights into ads and chats

Amazon gives its ads customers access to audio, video, and image generation tools that make it faster and easier to develop advertising assets. Amazon data indicates that companies using the image generation tool see about 5% more sales from their ads—and they’re saving time, too.

Shoppers also benefit from AI on Amazon. Rufus is a generative AI chatbot that helps shoppers compare products, find answers to questions, and select the right item for purchase. It can even make recommendations based on a specific occasion or need. 

3. Yum Brands personalizes the fast food drive-through

Yum Brands, which owns fast-food chains including Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut, uses AI to improve restaurant operations. The company is experimenting with augmented reality training for new hires, as well as voice-based AI technology that can improve the drive-through ordering experience. 

When a customer provides voice identification, the purchasing experience becomes personalized to their ordering preferences and loyalty program status. 

Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels

4. ClickUp relies on AI capabilities to improve SEO content creation

ClickUp, a popular project management app, used AI to improve their website traffic by 85% in just one year. By using an AI-driven app called SurferSEO, ClickUp’s content marketers were able to learn more about how and why some of their articles weren’t performing well online. 

While human content writers craft ClickUp’s articles, their digital marketing team uses this AI tool to identify new keywords and areas of improvement, develop content briefs, and monitor performance. 

Level up your marketing efforts with AI

You don’t need a Netflix-level marketing budget to take advantage of AI in your marketing efforts—you can do a lot with the free version of a tool like ChatGPT or Claude!

• Set clear goals. Set clear marketing goals that highlight what you want to achieve when using AI. (Make sure you understand how the tool works before setting these goals, so that your expectations remain realistic.) By putting goals in place right away, you can establish direction for how you’ll use AI—and have a reference point to assess how helpful a tool really is. 
• Choose the right AI marketing tools. While off-the-shelf AI marketing platforms like Fliki and MarketMuse work for many, it’s also possible to work with an AI engineer to create a solution that’s tailored specifically to a company’s needs. Take Bee Line Transport as an example—they worked with an AI engineer on Upwork to develop an app that allows their employees to log receipts, get information about routes, and more. 
• Develop privacy standards. As you venture into AI marketing, set data privacy standards that keep you compliant with regulations. Data security standards are also useful in maintaining public trust and confidence in your business.
• Check data quality. AI models rely on large datasets to learn and make predictions. For more accurate outputs, ensure you collect and clean data before using it for training.
• Hire professionals. You need team members with the right skills and knowledge to integrate AI into your marketing activities. In case of a skills gap, consider hiring and working with AI professionals on Upwork.

Make the most of your marketing efforts with help from AI professionals

Artificial intelligence is a valuable technology for marketing teams. Besides enhancing efficiency, AI marketing facilitates effective decision-making, enhanced customer experiences, and optimized marketing campaigns.

If you’re a business manager looking for professionals to help you with AI for marketing, start your talent search on Upwork. Marketing experts with experience in AI are ready to get started.

And if you’re an AI professional looking to kick-start your career on a more flexible platform, Upwork is the place for you. You can meet clients and forge long-term relationships. Get started today!

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‍Upwork does not control, operate, or sponsor the tools or services discussed in this article, which are only provided as potential options. Each reader and company should take the time to adequately analyze and determine the tools or services that would best fit their specific needs and situation.