When thinking about AI technology and how to utilise it in your digital marketing, it can seem overwhelming and, quite frankly, a little scary! But, you’ll be surprised how much of this technology is already in play – and it’s really not that bad!

How we’re using AI technology for tourism marketing content

By now, ChatGPT is widely known and utilised worldwide and, while it’ll never replace the knowledge and creativity of a real-life person, it can be a helpful tool to lean on when you’re struggling for ideas or can’t get a blog piece started (we’ve all been there!).

If you’re working on a content plan, or need to generate some ideas for blog content for your website, ChatGPT is a great place to start. It’ll spit out some weird and wonderful ideas (and they’re not always factually correct, so make sure you do your homework!) that you might be able to pull one or two topics from to get started. Try prompting it to generate a list of top activities in your area or top five things to do on a rainy day – what it throws out in a few seconds might not be perfect, but it might just help get the creative juices flowing!

Think of it as another tool in your tourism marketing toolbelt to draw inspiration and content ideas, for rewriting existing content, and even drafting up the odd social media post! But don’t rely too heavily on it – it’s well known for making things up, the data isn’t live (so anything after September 2021 won’t be included), and it simply can’t replace your own knowledge and expertise.

How we’re using AI technology in paid media

Let’s take a look at Google Ads, for example. For a long time we have been using AI through smart bidding techniques which allow us to set bids for every auction and to tailor bids so they’re specific to each user’s search, which drives better campaign results. In this instance, machine learning algorithms use large amounts of data to improve our ability to predict how changing bid amounts could affect our account’s conversions or the value of those conversions. These algorithms consider a broader range of factors that affect performance than what any individual or team could analyse.

And, more recently, Google has introduced Performance Max campaigns which use AI to learn about a business and inform some campaign metrics to drive improved performance.

There is no doubt that AI and machine learning technology helps many people create efficiencies internally. Dynamic ads, for example, allow us to load multiple images, ad text variations and CTAs, and we leave it up to Google and Facebook to use their data to serve up the best creative for a user – rather than us running multiple versions of ads for A/B testing, this saves loads of time!