AI marketing for website traffic — from smart content to revenue

‍🕑 8 min read

Companies use AI in 24.2% of their marketing activities. In 2024 that was 13.1%.

Generative AI grew fastest, from 7% to 22.4%, according to The CMO Survey 2026 among 308 marketing leaders.

Yet most marketers are using AI across the board.

Let that sink in: many people use it incorrectly. They are dazzled by the cool output and lose sight of what really matters. Generating more traffic and revenue.

Because that is ultimately what marketing is about, isn't it? 

What goes wrong?

Even though AI is the most valuable investment on the horizon, both generative and in analytics.

1. Wrong focus. Companies often use AI for the 'sexy' things and overlook the 'ugly' side where the real money is.
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2. Lack of strategy. AI is used without a clear goal or plan.
   
   
3. Wrong expectations. People think AI solves everything by magic, without human input.

AI is used most in Marketing and Sales, followed by Product and Service Development and then IT. Production comes last.

Within Marketing and Sales, we see the most common use of AI in content. Personalisation comes second and Sales Lead Identification and Prioritisation third, according to McKinsey.

Why you should avoid certain content

This is important: do not think you can mislead search engines by stuffing your site with less useful content.

Imagine you have published 2,500 articles. Sounds impressive? Watch out! This can seriously damage your website, now and above all in the future.

Why? Well, imagine search engines as critical readers. They look at your site and think: “OK, 2,500 pages... but hang on, only 100 or maybe 450 pages are really worth it. The rest? Doubtful (according to the robot crawlers of several search engines).” And what happens then? Your whole website takes the hit. It is like a barrel of apples: a few bad ones can spoil the whole lot.

Even the 450 good pages you put effort into will rank less well in the search results.

And what happens then? Your whole website takes the hit. It is like a barrel of apples: a few bad ones can spoil the whole lot.

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AI agents are the James Bonds of marketing

Let's rewind a decade. Remember how we did data analysis back then? Exactly, with traditional software and tools.

Enter the language models (or, the Matrix?), also known as LLMs or Large Language Models. In no time, these chatbots devoured more data than we could process in 10 years.

The next step is AI agents. Think of them as James Bond. Give them a mission and they go for it. They have access to tools and a memory, plan actions, learn from feedback and adapt at lightning speed.

That is worth its weight in gold for Marketing and Sales. In fact, it is gold for anyone still stuck in traditional methods. We are only at the start of this revolution. In the years up to 2030, we will see explosive growth with these autonomous agents.

The market is about to go through the roof.

Hold on tight, because Grand View Research predicts this market will be worth as much as 182.9 billion dollars by 2033.

That is serious money. 

How personalisation helps you sell 

Now that we are talking about revenue, let's look at the power of personalisation, for B2B and B2C alike. 91% of customers are more likely to buy from brands that recognise them and make relevant offers, according to Accenture (2018).

Take a local accounting business that supplies software to freelancers. If you create content specifically aimed at the needs of that group, you will do well within that segment over time. But if you suddenly switch to services for larger SMEs without adjusting your approach, your results drop.  

To prevent this, you can apply these personalisation techniques:

1. Hyper-personalisation. Create content based on the specific industry of the business owner.
   
   
2. Adaptive messaging. Tailor your message to the stage of business growth.
   
   
3. Segmented campaigns. Use targeted ads for different types of business owners.
   
   
4. Dynamic websites. Show relevant testimonials based on the company size of the visitor.
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For example, a personal favourite of mine for using personalisation in email: “I am impressed by “Snoepwinkel Lekkers”.

This works much better than a generic message such as, “Tilburg business owner, I am impressed”.

With personalisation you build a bond, especially with returning visitors.

Boosting paid ads with Flux Lora, Runway and ElevenLabs

I will keep paid advertising short and powerful for now. 

With AI you optimise campaigns for a better ROI on Google and Facebook Ads. Real-time data predicts which ads, audiences and creatives perform best.

It focuses on intent, context and behaviour for perfect timing. It also analyses placements and bids. Generative AI speeds up A/B testing by creating multiple creative versions.

A fun example: tools such as Flux, Runway and Music Gen created a TV-worthy ad in 15 minutes.

Look it up.

Note: human creativity is here to stay. This study showed that human creations performed better than pure AI. But AI-enhanced human creations win more often.

AI speeds up feedback and optimisation. It tests personalisation in real time, splits elements and predicts top performers. That is how machine learning saves on ad costs and maximises your results.

Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) with AI

With CRO, I want to go a little deeper. 

Let's talk about conversion optimisation. The key? User experience.

Advanced audience segmentation and dynamic content are the thing. Think of the earlier example of personalisation in the headline. AI makes this possible at scale.

But be careful, super-personalisation does not always work. It looks holistically at the user experience and adapts to it.

Two crucial CRO improvements:

Detecting typos and auto-filling details. Tip: Show fewer fields and add more as users fill in the form.

Smart chatbots are perfect for e-commerce. They help with basket recovery, cross-selling and lead generation.

These tools significantly increase conversion rates on websites. Experiment with them for the best results.

Social media and AI, the perfect match

For the social media fans among us:

AI and social media are a perfect match. Social platforms are top channels for marketing, with an expected market value of 7.25 billion dollars (US) in 2029.

How can you use it on social media?

• Campaign optimisation
• Chatbots for better customer service
• Audience segmentation for personalised content
• Automated posting and scheduling
• Streamlined content creation
• Chatbots boost sales. In 2018, Facebook Messenger already had well over 300,000 active chatbots.
• E-commerce businesses see 7-25% revenue growth from chatbots that recover abandoned baskets. They perform 30% better than retargeting campaigns. 
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Real-world example: A well-known beauty salon from Brabant (a province in the south of the Netherlands) used AI for a quiz to find the perfect make-up shade and a TikTok filter to test products virtually. The result? More insight into buying trends and higher revenue.

Bonus: it even helped in the fight against COVID-19 by predicting its spread and identifying high-risk areas. Technology that saves lives.

Email marketing, your personal gold mine 

Email marketing, your personal gold mine. 

When it comes to email marketing, one of my favourite topics, the era of segmentation alone is over. It is time for personal segmentation.

Dynamic content and ethical balance are making their entrance. Think of preventing filter bubbles and avoiding spam folders, such as those greyed-out boxes in Gmail.

Say an online clothing shop sends Lisa, who often buys black, only emails about black clothing. This creates a filter bubble. Lisa misses out on new trends and colours. A balanced mix of known preferences and new suggestions would be better.

It is about more than getting the email into the inbox. It is also about making sure it is opened and read.

As a search engine specialist, I know email is powerful, but it needs continuous optimisation. Fortunately, AI tools help us improve campaigns. They also give quick insight into the best-performing emails. By analysing segmentation and patterns, they accurately predict how new campaigns will perform.  

That way we focus on the most promising initiatives.

A/B testing goes lightning fast. It identifies the optimal subject lines and copy formats (copying the formatting of one sheet and pasting it over another). We send the winning version to the full audience. 

A serious efficiency boost.

For B2B, AI is valuable in automated, triggered workflows. Think of webinar reminders that land at just the right moment. That way we create highly relevant touchpoints that have an impact on results.

Customer retention with AI is more efficient than ever

A less discussed topic is customer retention.

A well-known marketing principle says that keeping existing customers is cheaper than winning new ones. AI now makes this more effective than ever.

With it, you drastically improve your customer service: 24/7 support, personalised answers and smart analysis of customer conversations across all channels. Platforms can identify at-risk customers early and step in to keep them.

Where companies used to take a one-size-fits-all approach, it can now determine for each individual customer what is needed to keep them. The system ranks customers from 'very likely to stay' to 'high risk of leaving' and gives specific recommendations, per customer.

This is the 'ugly side' of AI - the data analysis side rather than the sexy creative one. That is the side that delivers real results.
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Take a sleep robot, for example.

These robots help people with sleep problems through personalised sleep guidance. Through analysis, they discovered a valuable insight: customers who used their robot for fewer than 15 nights in the first month dropped out more often.

With AI-driven personalisation, they tailored their approach to three groups: light users got extra support, average users received optimisation tips and frequent users were approached for the premium subscription.

The result? A 285% increase in active users and 340% more upsells from the €495 base robot to the €24.99 premium monthly subscription.

Frequently asked questions about AI website traffic (FAQ)

Why do so few large companies actively use AI for marketing?

Although it is a valuable investment, large companies still leave it on the shelf. They often focus on 'sexy' applications instead of the 'ugly' side where the real money is. On top of that, a clear strategy is often missing and many have unrealistic expectations of everything it can do.

How can it be used safely for content creation without misleading search engines? 

See it as an assistant rather than a replacement for your entire marketing team. Use it to identify gaps in your content, analyse old content and streamline SEO processes. Avoid stuffing your site with worthless content, because this can harm your rankings. Always combine the output with human creativity. 

What are effective ways to use it further for personalisation and customer retention? 

It can help you with hyper-personalisation by creating content based on specific customer characteristics. For customer retention, it can offer you 24/7 support, analyse customer conversations and identify at-risk customers early. See the example of the sleep robot, earlier in this article