Is AI shaping digital marketing in the current times, and what does it mean for your business?

The digital world is changing rapidly, and possibly over the last 10-odd years, we have seen a continual level of change. But certainly in 2025, and perhaps in late 2024, what we’re seeing is the change moving at a far more rapid pace. Businesses that are embracing AI are moving ahead, not only because it’s the cool thing to be doing, but because it’s helping them work smarter and really understand their customers more. And perhaps it’s allowing them to get a little bit more from their marketing whilst using AI general support for some repetitive tasks needed.

At Net Branding, we’ve seen what works and we know what doesn’t, whilst knowing what has a huge impact on your online presence.

As an example, I attended a seminar last week with a lady who was shouting from the rooftops about how to use AI in the digital environment. What she said did not resonate with me, and I double-checked her stats and her figures. I reviewed her website traffic and ranking. With this input, I can almost pinpoint exactly where she started to use AI, because her traffic and organic search rankings was falling or declining.

So, this becomes the fundamental baseline. The use of AI in the digital world does need to be considered and used, but with care and understanding of how to use it.

AI is already reshaping digital marketing, and cares what that may look like for you and your business.

Traditionally, business owners potentially lose up to almost an hour and a half every day on repetitive tasks. That’s almost three weeks or a month gone.

AI tools can help you recover some of that time by streamlining some of those processes that are more repetitive. Think about things like automating a marketing task, giving an understanding or outline for some content creation, or even considering some of the design work that you may need to be thinking about and actioning.

But AI is not magic, and it really doesn’t replace a good digital idea or a good digital strategy. It does work best when paired with the experience, smart planning, understanding of tech, and some level of human insight.

So that is where Net Branding comes in.

AI tools, like perhaps Chat GPT or Gemini, can help. They can provide some inspiration for your blogs. They can speed up emails. They can speed up some of your ad copywriting. They can help you, as I’ve already said, overcome writer’s block and can also support you with some A/B testing of various variations. They can support you in maintaining tone across your platforms and also support you with some of the writing and grammar that you may otherwise not actually include in your content.

We often use AI and some of these tools as a starting point, but every single deliverable is reviewed, shaped, and then checked by our digital team.

The next thing is visual and design support tools, perhaps like Midjourney (that’s been around for probably a good few years now) and DALL·E, which help you generate brand visuals quite quickly. So no longer that a need for design waits or expensive photo shoots. And for many clients, this actually means faster campaign turnaround and launch with a consistent brand that you can move and scale, particularly if you’re thinking about some of your Google Ads. Having the ability to support change of visual size can really help streamline and speed up that process.

Another element is video creation, where platforms like perhaps Pictory or Lumen5 can turn scripts into short videos.

It is, however, important to ensure that that video looks authentic to your brand. And while speed is always a factor, authentic content is even more important.

Video creation is obviously great for social media, explainer videos, or perhaps those sales pages, without the cost of that full-scale video production. We can help choose tools and scripts that suit your brand voice and the business goals.

Then we come to other elements where support can be included – areas such as social media.

In conjunction with social media, chat with Net Branding about our AI underpinned Google Profile Management and Google Review tool.

In addition to AI-driven social media content, we also support our clients with Google management AI features, in terms of being able to manage their Google Business Profile or Business Listing or reply to Google Reviews instantaneously. Do talk to us about our in-house tools that we provide to our clients that allows you to bring AI into some of those digital activities, and again remove some of those repetitive tasks.

Today’s chatbots are more than just “Hi, how can we help you?” They perhaps understand some context. They can answer questions. They can guide through services. They can extract content from your website. And obviously, you would always give them guide rails within which to operate.

This level of chatbot or conversational AI means a better level of customer service. However, that does need to be tapered with many customers really wanting to speak to a human. So, when using Chatbots, it does need to be used with care.

AI tools help us by possibly helping us to find some long-tail keywords associated with a derivative of a keyword. They help us understand the search intent. What does the user really want? Perhaps it supports us with voice and conversational searches. It can also help spot that seasonal shift or new topic opportunity.

These insights can shape the content, can be shaped into content that ranks, not just content that looks good.

Now, this is an area where AI can play a huge role.

It can support you in predicting what your audience will do next. You’re able to adjust some of the bids in real time. You’re able to delve into some of your data using advanced AI tools to make appropriate decisions in terms of your Google Ads and paid campaigns.

And again, this is an area where care should be taken to ensure that the human interpretation of the story or insight that the statistics or the data is giving you is taken, and that human decision is ultimately made based on competency and experience.

We understand that search is changing, and it’s changing rapidly. We can see that AI overviews are now appearing in your Google search results. This really changes where or how your business appears online.

Net Branding always works to stay ahead of these shifts so that you continue to be visible before your audience is ready to buy, but you are certainly visible when they are searching for your service.

With a little bit less of the guesswork or unknown.

Let us consider the areas where we could use AI opportunities in social media digital marketing:

• Social content scheduling – platforms that learn where your audience is active, what they respond to, and how often to post
• Platforms that support you with the generation of content based on your actual website
• Trend monitoring – where AI can help you track brand mentions, sentiment, rising topics

Now, that’s not really anything that has been new, because some of the search or social tools have had that feature and ability for a little while. But with AI, we are ramping up our capability in this area.

Community management can also help you. Tools that can help you now filter spam, highlight urgent issues, and perhaps even auto-reply to routine comments.

Email marketing. Let’s consider a more personal communication to your clients or potential clients, but a communication that needs less work.

Email is certainly far from being dead. But you can be smarter.

Think about personalised timing and subject lines. AI can figure out what’s the best time to send, what subject lines perform, and how to personalise this based on human behaviour.

Lifecycle campaigns – things like welcome flows, engagement, cart reminders – all triggered by what your audience does, not guesswork.

Think about the old traditional platforms like Mailchimp, which have now pulled in additional features to be able to support you in implementing some of those user flows into your communication.

Yes, but with care. AI has a place, especially for saving time on repetitive tasks, finding keywords, or generating content outlines. But using it without knowing how to use it properly can do more harm than good. We’ve seen that first-hand. So it’s not about whether you need it. It’s about how you use it, and making sure it’s backed by experience and a good strategy.

No. They can support your team, but they can’t replace smart people who know your brand, understand your audience, and apply human insight to data. AI can speed things up – emails, images, ads – but it won’t know your business the way you do. That’s where pairing AI with people like us makes the difference.

Search is already changing. AI overviews are starting to show up in Google results, and this shifts how visibility works. It’s no longer just about being on Page 1. It’s about being part of the answers AI tools are serving. So your content needs to be structured properly, sound natural, and be genuinely helpful not just written for rankings.

As a team, we’ve been around for a long time. We’re not here to throw out those buzzwords or those words that everyone thinks they need to share to be seen as understanding this new tech.

We’ve been involved with this new tech for a long time. Cathy specialised and gained her certificate in AI over three years ago.

We’re not here to act on AI at the expense of your online profile. We certainly work with businesses both in New Zealand and offshore – businesses who want to make smart moves, stay ahead of the competition, and not get left behind.

So, whether you need AI-powered content support, smarter ad campaigns, SEO and GEO built for people who are searching for your services, or a very clear, action-oriented digital plan – we’re here to help you be seen, be heard, and be found online.

No fluff. Real advice to support you with digital elements that work.