How to use AI in marketing campaigns: A step-by-step guide for beginners

Being a creative in marketing is hard work: constantly coming up with new ideas, creating innovative campaigns, and actually putting everything together. Sometimes, the well dries up. That is, until AI steps in.

You’re probably sick of hearing that AI is here to revolutionize everything, but it is! So why not use it to your advantage? In this case, that’s creating kickass marketing campaigns that connect and get you to your goals.

In this article, we’re going through a thorough step-by-step guide to show you how you can use AI marketing tools to produce your latest marketing hits. We’ll start with initial inspiration and move all the way to execution across different media. In the end, you’ll be left with an iconic, trendy, memorable, AI-powered marketing campaign that will be seen the world over. 

OK, go on, create. We’ll wait. Not easy, right? Whether you’re looking for that initial spark of inspiration or ready to produce final assets, the creative process can be daunting. You need to explore concepts, find your visual style, AND actually create all the graphics your campaign needs.

Being a smart creative means using the tools at your disposal from inspiration through execution. Yes, you’re an artist, and your art should portray aspects of the human experience. But (and we’ll hold your hand while we say this) AI can help at every stage.

Visual assets have the power to grab attention, instantly communicate your message, strengthen your brand, and boost performance. In other words, they can make or break your campaign.

But getting there is no small feat. You need to explore creative directions until you find the perfect style that resonates with your audience. Then comes the real work: developing strong visual concepts and translating them into actual designs — digital graphics like banners, ads, and headers, plus all the illustrations, icons, and product renders your campaign needs. And just when you think you’re done, you still have to adapt everything into different formats and sizes while somehow maintaining perfect consistency across every touchpoint.

That’s a lot of pressure. But with AI, it becomes a complete breeze.

You can use AI to:

Let’s dive into Envato’s visual AI toolkit. Take ImageGen, for example — it’s both your inspiration engine and production powerhouse. Start by using it to explore different visual directions for your campaign. The “Enhance Prompt” feature transforms simple ideas into rich, detailed concepts. Generate multiple variations using different style keywords (vintage, futuristic, minimalist, maximalist) to quickly discover your campaign’s unique visual language.

Let’s say we’re working on an AI marketing campaign for a designer sunglasses line for incredibly stylish pets. ShadeFetch, if you will. We’ll use ImageGen to both explore our creative vision and produce campaign assets.

Here’s the prompt we used:

Once you find a style you love, ImageGen lets you stick to it and build upon it, ensuring consistency across all your campaign visuals. But what if you already have an image you love and only want to enhance it? Glad you asked. ImageEdit (now with Nano Banana!!) is another Envato AI tool that will boost your work. You can use it to remove backgrounds, upscale, expand, replace, erase, crop, and more. Any quick fix you need, you’ve got it. Easy.

Or you may need a very specific graphic that you can’t seem to find anywhere else. In that situation, you can turn to GraphicsGen to provide the one you’re dreaming of.

Pro tip: Save your favorite generations to build a visual reference library. This becomes your campaign’s style guide, ensuring every asset — from social posts to billboards — maintains the same creative DNA.

AI is not the enemy. If anything, it’s your ally. Use it as your creative springboard, and you’ll end up producing even better material each time. No more getting stuck in the inspiration phase or struggling with execution — let AI help you explore and create at the speed of thought!

“Summer sale! Everything is half off!” Sound familiar? We’re all subscribed to at least one business newsletter (knowingly or unknowingly). Whatever the case, email marketing works. Litmus shares that email generates a return of $10–$36 per dollar spent.

Email marketing is essential because it finds people where they live. You get direct access to your target audience, which can increase ROI, allow you to personalize your message, and drive action. Plus, you can use it on every step of the marketing funnel.

To build a successful email marketing campaign, you should:

And it’s a lot easier said than done.

AI can help in every way on your journey to becoming a pro email marketer:

Say goodbye to email writer’s block and hello to campaigns that actually get opened.

Hey, do you have endless money and the connections to produce a cinematic feature for your campaign? You do you, boo.

But for us mortals, creating video content can be an expensive, exhausting, and excruciating experience. This is probably one of the areas in which AI assistance is the most noticeable.

Video content refers to anything audiovisual (hope that helps). That is, explainer videos, tutorials, ads, product demos, testimonials, etc. It’s an eye-catching strategy that’s dynamic, compelling, engaging, trustworthy, and highly shareable. Or at least, it should be. According to Vidico, 90% of marketers attest that video marketing provides good ROI.

But to achieve all that, you basically need to become an expert in a bunch of areas:

It’s a lot, but you don’t have to do it alone.

This is another one of those steps where AI becomes your best friend:

And boy, do we have options for you. Envato is the ultimate one-stop shop for every AI marketing tool you need to produce quality video content. Here we go:

Unless you’re a dog/cat trainer, let’s create a YouTube Short for our ShadeFetch ad campaign using VideoGen. Doing so makes this process quick as a cat… with shades.

You don’t need a big production studio to make magic: just your ideas and a dash of AI marketing tools. Aren’t you so glad you’re living in this timeline?

Social media is our savior and our doom. It can get our message out there and help us find our community. But it’s a hungry, hungry hippo that only wants a very special diet (and it won’t let you in on it). This is why developing content for social media marketing is a tricky subject.

There are a ton of options to choose from (short-form videos, image posts, Stories or Reels, polls, GIFs, memes, infographics, live streams, and more). So, what do you choose and how do you produce them?

Choosing correctly is key because, as Amra and Elma state, on average, businesses earn $2.50 for every $1 spent. Once again, AI comes to the rescue. 

With the right AI marketing tools, you can do some serious:

Just make sure you know what works best for each social media platform, and you’ll be golden! AI will handle the heavy lifting (including writing the captions for your AI digital marketing campaign).

Knock-knock. Who’s there? AI. AI, who? AI for crafting ad assets. 

Crafting advertising assets means creating the visuals, copy, and formats used in paid ads across digital and traditional channels. They’re the face of your paid promotion and the things your audience is supposed to want to click on, take home, sign up for, etc. For example, there are display banners, search, video, and print ads.

Given their variety, producing quality advertising assets is a hassle and a half! It entails working on:

Allow us to tell you what you can get out of AI marketing tools:

The best part? Using AI for advertising assets will help you avoid doing a lame knock-knock joke to get attention.

A campaign doesn’t live inside a screen. A complete, well-rounded campaign includes design prints and out-of-home materials. For those of you who are too young, this includes flyers, posters, brochures, and packaging (even transit ads and billboards). This is a challenge in and of itself.

But, when done right, it can be a fruitful challenge: they expand your reach beyond the phone as they create a digital brand presence and reinforce credibility.

Since “out-of-home materials” is a concept that casts a wide net, designing them entails a lot of stuff:

While AI won’t be pasting posters on walls or handing flyers on the street, it can be with you in many other ways:

It’s time to carry on with our make-believe AI marketing campaign. Let’s see what a ShadeFetch sunglass case would look like out in the wild with a little bit of help from ImageGen:

Here’s the prompt we used for this one:

All in all, AI can help you show up everywhere with style, consistency, and zero formatting headaches.

Creative professionals who produce long-form written content (cough, blog posts, cough) are the brightest and most important of all. But even they need help from time to time.

Long-form content includes blog posts, video scripts, landing pages, and case studies. It can be instrumental to a campaign because it can help build strong relationships with users. It establishes authority and trust, engages, educates, and provides value. Moreover, it appeases the mighty SEO gods (allegedly). 

To do all that, you need to:

Daunting, right?

Luckily for us, AI can become our ride or die. These are just a few tips on what you can do with it:

It can make any amazing writer’s work even more amazinger. 

Building a full-on marketing campaign is no small feat. But with AI in your corner, you’ve got a creative sidekick that never sleeps, never runs out of ideas, and definitely doesn’t need coffee breaks.

From moodboards to motion graphics, email copy to epic voiceovers, creative AI tools can help you do it all. It’s faster, smarter, cheaper, and with way less stress. You’re still the brains and the vision behind the campaign, but with AI, you can get there without wanting to call it quits.

So, the next time you’re staring down a blank page, a blank canvas, or a blank timeline, don’t panic. You’ve got the tools, the talent, and now, a little robotic magic to back up your endeavors with AI in digital marketing. Go forth and make something iconic.

Remember that Envato offers millions of premium digital assets for your marketing campaign (from logo templates to 3D icons). You can subscribe for a low monthly fee and get unlimited downloads of these items. Plus, with your subscription, you’ll also get Envato’s full AI stack, including the crème de la crème, VideoGen, to create the marketing campaign of your dreams (not applicable for Enterprise accounts).