It’s on everyone’s mind: Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are revolutionizing the majority of industries, from construction and manufacturing to healthcare and the sciences. Digital marketing, which transcends most sectors, is no exception.
Indeed, marketers have long sought innovative ways to enhance their strategies, save time, and stay ahead of the competition.
The arrival of AI has opened up a new realm of possibilities, allowing digital marketers to streamline their efforts, make fast, data-driven decisions, and deliver unique and personalized customer experiences to their target audience.
But what are the best AI tools for digital marketing? In this post, we’ll explore the 20 best AI tools for digital marketing professionals, including those that will help optimize your campaigns, others to improve customer engagement, and even those that can help shape your overall strategy.
Since accessibility is key, we’ve ensured that our curated list includes some of the best free AI tools for digital marketing. Harnessing the power of AI needn’t break the bank, as we’ll see.
We’ll cover:
Ready? Then let’s dive into the exciting world of artificial intelligence!
1. What is an AI digital marketing tool?
Before we reach our top 20, it helps to ensure we all know what we mean by “AI digital marketing tools”. Simply put, an AI tool is a piece of software or a platform that leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to optimize otherwise complex or menial tasks—in this case, those related to digital marketing.
Whether we’re talking about social media advertising, content strategy, SEO, or affiliate marketing, AI tools can help.
Learn more: What are the 9 types of digital marketing?
While all digital marketing activity requires human oversight, AI tools specializing in data analysis, image or natural language processing (and more) can eradicate much of the heavy lifting associated with these tasks.
For example, there are tools to help with everything from ad strategy to influencer marketing. And despite occasional doom-mongering in the media, these tools are not here to replace humans.
They are here to make our jobs easier and more productive. In turn, this allows us to focus our efforts where they’re most needed (and spoiler alert: that’s usually on the fun and creative tasks!)
While there’s little doubt that AI tools will transform digital marketing, we could say the same about any digital innovation over the past 20 years.
Artificial intelligence may play an increasingly prominent role in our lives, but it simply means our jobs will evolve—admittedly in unexpected ways—to match. This comes with uncertainty but it also makes it an exciting time to be a digital marketer!
2. The 20 best AI tools for digital marketing
While we may think of artificial intelligence as being highly sophisticated—which in many ways, it is—it’s also still in its infancy. As such, you can expect many more sophisticated tools to emerge in the coming months and years.
With the present moment in mind though, let’s explore 20 of the best AI tools for digital marketing that are available right now.
Content is, of course, king, so you’ll notice many of the tools on our list relate one way or another to creating or optimizing various types of content. Let’s take a look.
1. Jasper.ai
Launched: 2021
Used for: Content production
Pricing: $39 (individuals) and £99 (teams)
Jasper.ai is a cutting-edge AI-powered content generation and optimization tool designed for augmenting content production. Using advanced natural language processing algorithms, the platform allows you to effortlessly tackle multiple content-related tasks, such as crafting blogs, social media posts, ad copy, and other compelling marketing content.
Its focus on marketing-specific content distinguishes it from more generic content generation tools.
2. Surfer SEO
Launched: 2008
Used for: SEO management
Pricing: From $19 to $249
A well-established SEO tool that recently incorporated AI into its functionality, Surfer SEO is designed to help digital marketers optimize content for search engines. It now uses automated data-driven recommendations for improving on-page SEO, such as keyword usage, content structure, and meta tags.
Using detailed analysis and competitor insight, you can also use the tool to automate the trickier aspects of SEO itself, allowing you to concentrate on the important stuff: namely, creating high-ranking, search engine-friendly content that packs a punch!
3. Grammarly
Launched: 2009
Used for: Content editing
Pricing: Free to $15 per month
Grammarly is probably one of the best free AI tools for digital marketing professionals looking to streamline their editing tasks.
Think of it as being a bit like an AI version of MS Word’s grammar tools; it detects and corrects grammar, spelling, punctuation, and style errors (just like MS Word) but also offers enhanced, real-time suggestions for improving sentence structure, word use, and tone of voice.
Better yet, most of its functionality is free, and even if you fork out for the premium version, it won’t break the bank.
4. Brand24
Launched: 2013
Used for: Social listening
Pricing: $69 to $349
Use Brand24 to monitor and analyze online mentions of your brand, products, and broader industry trends.
Offering real-time insights from social media, news articles, blogs, and other content, Brand24 can help you track customer sentiment, identify influencers you might want to work with and offer additional tips and insights to help you engage your audience better.
And by automating data analytics tasks, the tool also gives the comfort of staying on top of your online reputation using reliable recommendations you can trust.
5. MarketMuse
Launched: 2011
Used for: Automated content marketing strategy
Pricing: Free to $399 for teams
MarketMuse is an AI-driven content auditing platform. It assists digital marketers in creating high-quality content that achieves the holy grail of being both relevant to end users and meeting organic SEO requirements.
MarketMuse goes beyond the basic keyword analysis offered by many tools, also identifying content gaps, providing strategic recommendations, and empowering data-driven decision-making.
6. Seventh Sense
Launched: 2013
Used for: Email marketing
Pricing: $64 or $360 per month, depending on platform integration
Seventh Sense is a cloud-based AI tool that simplifies email marketing campaign management, analysis, and associated business intelligence.
Designed to integrate with the marketing platforms HubSpot and Marketo, it automatically analyzes recipients’ email engagement patterns, determining the optimal time to send emails for maximum open and click-through rates.
By sending customized emails to each customer, you will ultimately improve deliverability and conversion rates, all with minimal effort.
7. Brandwatch Influence
Launched: 2022
Used for: Influencer marketing
Pricing: On request
In 2022, the social listening provider Brandwatch acquired the LA startup, Paladin, before relaunching it as Brandwatch Influence. With a database of over 30 million influencers and supporting all the big social media platforms, you can use it to efficiently manage your influencer networks and discover the best influencers for your brand.
The tool utilizes AI for audience and product analysis, as well as for measuring the impact and ROI of influencer campaigns, an automation that would not have been possible just a few years ago.
8. Zapier
Launched: 2011
Used for: Task automation
Pricing: Free to $750
Zapier is undoubtedly one of the best AI tools for digital marketing professionals wanting to improve workflow management. This AI-powered platform helps streamline workflows, connecting various apps and automating repetitive tasks.
Beyond merely automating, you can create custom workflows, known as “Zaps”, which trigger actions in one app based on events in another. Examples include things like data synchronization, lead generation, social media posting, and more.
9. Drift
Launched: 2015
Used for: AI chatbot
Pricing: $2,500 per month
Drift is a conversational AI platform that helps businesses provide chat assistance and answer common questions from their website visitors.
By engaging with visitors in real time, the tool vastly speeds up lead generation, freeing human marketers to handle more complex tasks, such as answering specific questions or providing custom quotes.
With personalized messaging and seamless integration with various platforms, Drift can transform how businesses interact with their visitors, making the experience more positive and productive for all involved.
10. Ocoya
Launched: 2021
Used for: Social media automation and content generation
Pricing: $15 to $159 per month
Ocoya is a social media automation and AI-driven content generation tool that digital marketers can use to create (and post) compelling social media content. Outputs include posts, captions, blogs, hashtags, and gifs, to name a few.
With over 10,000 preexisting customizable templates, you can quickly create unique branded content without having to resource a graphic designer or content writer every single time. It also integrates with many popular social media platforms and other social media scheduling suites, making it a fantastic time-saver.
11. ManyChat
Launched: 2015
Used for: Chat marketing
Pricing: Free to $15 a month
ManyChat is an AI chatbot platform aimed not at websites (like Drift) but at Facebook Messenger. Using a simple drag-and-drop interface and offering many templates, you can create chatbots for digital marketing, sales, and customer support purposes.
It automates your conversations, sends targeted messages, collects leads, and drives user engagement on Facebook, all with minimal effort. Ultimately, this sets you up to go, allowing you to focus more time on complex strategic tasks such as customer segmentation and campaign performance management.
12. Tidio
Launched: 2013
Used for: Automatic customer service
Pricing: Free to $29 per month
Another AI chat and customer service tool, Tidio stands out for its multichannel support, allowing you to create chat interfaces on websites, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp. Its intuitive interface means digital marketers can easily customize their chatbots without any coding knowledge.
It also offers live chat services, directing visitors towards human-to-human interactions when required. On top of that, its customer analytics and helpdesk support are excellent for those moments when even state-of-the-art tech can’t do it all!
13. Smartly.io
Launched: 2013
Used for: Branded social media ads
Pricing: Demos/pricing on request
Smartly.io is an AI-powered advertising platform designed to optimize and automate social media ad campaigns. Smartly has an array of advanced tools, such as creative automation, ad optimization, and precise audience targeting, and supports advertising across platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.
Leveraging its analytics functionality, you can also scale your social media advertising efforts right up, without any impact on campaign performance, ultimately helping you achieve higher returns on investment.
14. DeepL
Launched: 2017
Used for: Language translation
Pricing: From free to $49.99 per month
DeepL is one of the best free AI tools for digital marketing professionals looking for quick, accurate language translations. By using neural networks, DeepL typically offers more accurate and context-specific translations than mainstream alternatives such as Google Translate.
While it doesn’t offer quite as many languages as Google, it regularly introduces new ones and currently has around 30 in its arsenal. Its ability to manage colloquialisms and unusual turns of phrase makes it helpful for digital marketers who need to translate or localize content, ads, or customer communications. And while you can pay for additional features, the basic version is free. Bonus!
15. Hemingway App
Launched: 2013
Used for: Content editing
Pricing: Free online/ $19.99 for the desktop app
Similar to Grammarly, Hemingway App is an AI writing tool that helps digital marketers improve the clarity and readability of their content. Input your article or blog post, and it highlights complex sentences, excessive adverbs, and cases of passive voice; while suggesting revisions for better readability.
The tool’s readability scores are based on US high school grades, allowing you to assess how easily different age groups will understand your writing. You can then adjust your text accordingly, ensuring it is comprehensible to your intended audience.
16. HubSpot
Launched: 2006
Used for: Digital marketing platform
Pricing: $800 to $3,600 per month
HubSpot is an all-in-one marketing automation platform that has been around since 2006, making it an industry veteran. Although AI has only gained traction more recently, in March 2023, HubSpot launched ChatSpot.ai, as well as a content assistant tool.
Now, in addition to features such as lead generation, email marketing, social media analytics, and CRM integration, HubSpot enables you to implement chatbots on websites and generate content for digital marketing campaigns, social media posts, and so on. We think this may be a tool to watch.
As AI continues to evolve, you can bet HubSpot will introduce even more AI-driven tools, making it an ideal solution that caters to all your digital marketing needs.
17. PhotoRoom
Launched: 2020
Used for: Photographic editing
Pricing: Free to $9.99 per month
Yes, OK, end-to-end, all-bells-and-whistles solutions that will knock your socks off can be great. But sometimes, you just want to fix a photo in a hurry! PhotoRoom is an AI-powered mobile and browser app that allows digital marketers to quickly and accurately remove backgrounds from images and make other minor edits.
It uses computer vision technology to detect objects and people in photos, making it easy to create professional-looking product images and other visual content.
Although the tool is quite straightforward, its output is surprisingly professional-looking, saving you time with manual image editing when you need it in a pinch!
18. DALL·E
Launched: 2021
Used for: Text to image generation
Pricing: $15 for 115 credits (one credit per prompt)
Brought to you by Open AI, the organization behind the now ubiquitous ChatGPT, DALL·E is one of several emerging text-to-image generation tools slowly being adopted by digital marketers. Simply enter a text prompt, and the tool will output a handful of images you can abandon, further refine, or use as they are.
While the technology is still relatively new (and its output can be a little questionable at times) some organizations are already using it in their digital marketing efforts.
19. Albert.ai
Launched: 2014
Used for: Digital advertising
Pricing: On request
Albert.ai uses machine learning to analyze vast amounts of data that can then help you automate ad purchasing and optimization, delivering personalized social media advertisements to users based on their unique digital profiles and demographics.
While similar tools are available, Albert.ai’s website boasts that it covers 90% of platforms that offer biddable advertising, making it ideal for those looking to expand or scale up their paid search to a much wider audience.
20. Browse AI
Launched: 2021
Used for: Web monitoring and scraping
Pricing: $19 to $249 per month
Much of digital marketing involves creating compelling content, as our list has shown. But alongside this, there is the more practical issue of collecting and analyzing data—a must for any well-informed strategy. Enter Browse AI. Use this tool to monitor and extract data from any website (that permits you) using easily programmable web scrapers, which require no special coding knowledge to customize.
Whether you’re tracking login information or want geolocation data, the tool is adaptable to various digital marketing needs, making it one of the best AI tools for digital marketing professionals who want to expand their databases.
It might not be as flashy as an image generation tool, but it’s still very valuable!
3. Closing thoughts
So there we have it. In this post, we’ve explored 20 of the best AI tools for digital marketing. Don’t worry, we didn’t forget ChatGPT. Read our full guide on the best ChatGPT prompts for digital marketing.
As we’ve seen, the recent surge in artificial intelligence capabilities has resulted in many new AI tools emerging. These tools can now cover an array of functionalities, from content production to search engine optimization, copyediting, social listening, email marketing, influencer marketing, chatbots, photographic editing, text-to-image generation, language translation, and much more.
The main thing to remember is that, despite occasional concerns to the contrary, AI tools are exactly that: tools. They are intended to assist human marketers in streamlining their tasks and improving productivity, thereby freeing up more time for areas where machine learning is less effective, such as creative strategy, critical thinking, and relationship building.
Although digital marketing is changing, it’s also exciting times ahead as we learn to leverage AI in unexpected new ways that will help us achieve exceptional results. To learn more about the impact of AI in digital marketing, read our full guide on the subject.
Want to learn more about digital marketing? Then sign up for this free, 5-day digital marketing short course.
Alternatively, check out the following related guides: