Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a hot topic in the marketing world. It’s being used for everything from customer service to generating new leads, but what exactly is AI, and how has it changed marketing?
Artificial intelligence refers to software that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. These programs can learn from data and solve problems. AI is changing the marketing world by helping firms collect data, identify new customer segments, and personalize messages at scale.
AI has been around since the 1950s, and its use can be seen in many facets of our lives today: Google Translate, Netflix recommendations, and even Siri are all examples of this technology. But why should marketers care about it? Read on to learn how AI is changing marketing as we know it and some of the best ways to add this technology to your arsenal.
What Is AI and How Does It Affect Marketing?
What Is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial intelligence refers to any machine that can perform tasks in the same way as humans. It includes technologies like self-driving cars, speech recognition software like Siri or Alexa, automatic translation of documents from one language into another, and natural language understanding.
In this case, Google Translate and IBM Watson are perfect examples of robust AI tools used in translation and natural language understanding.
AI is a powerful tool that can be used in many ways to make life easier for people. At the same time, it’s more convenient for companies since it allows them to automate tedious tasks.
Here is a video by TedX Talks that describes AI in more detail:
How Has Artificial Intelligence Changed Marketing?
Artificial intelligence has greatly impacted the marketing industry by automating tasks, increasing productivity, and offering insights into revenue opportunities. It has changed the way marketers find and analyze data, identify prospects, segment customers, and deliver individualized content.
In other words, marketing is no longer just about finding a winning sales message. Notably, this industry is now also about delivering compelling content to win prospects’ attention on social media channels.
That being said, here are four key ways AI is changing marketing:
Data-Driven Marketing
Artificial intelligence allows marketers to design messages based on data rather than gut instinct. Marketing automation allows them to devise personalized offers and deliver those messages at the right time with the right message to win over potential customers.
Increased Efficiency Through Automation
AI has also increased marketers’ efficiency by automating tasks such as lead scoring. Traditionally, such activities could take up many valuable human resources without providing significant ROI for marketing teams.
According to a recent report by IBM, some companies have recorded up to 30% increased sales due to marketing automation.
Identifying Emerging Opportunities
AI also allows marketing teams to explore new opportunities in their customer base for future campaigns or products they might not have noticed before. For example, data from social media can identify potential customers and market share.
Delivering Individualized Content
Marketers are also using AI to deliver individualized content with the right message at the right time. AI can help marketers personalize emails, text messages, and social media posts for different customers based on their needs and preferences.
Examples of companies using AI in marketing include:
Amazon: with their “Ask Alexa to Order” feature.
Affectiva: with their EQ Emotion Sensing.
Google: with their “Now Playing” feature for Pixel phones.
5 Best Ways To Incorporate AI in Your Marketing Strategies
Having learned what AI is and its potential to revolutionize your organization’s marketing approach, chances are you are wondering:
“How do I incorporate this technology in my business?”
If so, here are some ways to integrate AI in your marketing unit:
Use Chatbots
Make your website more interactive with chatbots. These chatbots will engage with your customers and offer them personalized service.
Below are some of the tasks that you can assign to these bots:
Accepting feedback on products or services.
Sending notifications about promotions, new items in stock, etc.
Asking for contact details when a customer purchases something online so that you can contact them later when delivering their parcel.
Leverage Insights From AI in Decision Making
AI can help you learn about your customers’ behaviors and preferences. For example, Google Analytics is using AI to power their customer journey mapping process to use these insights in marketing decision-making.
You can also leverage the data collected from social media platforms like Facebook, where marketers can tap into sentiment analysis tools.
The following is an example of sentiment analysis in marketing: say you want to measure the public’s mood about your company. You can analyze the number of likes, comments, and shares on your Facebook posts.
This information can be analyzed to track changes in customer sentiments over time so that you can identify problems before they escalate and affect your brand reputation negatively.
Automate Tasks
Use AI to automate repetitive tasks like social media posts and email newsletters.
You can also use AI to generate images for your ads automatically. This is a great way to save time and money while still ensuring that you are not sacrificing quality!
Notably, there are services like AdsGenius that can automatically create the perfect Facebook ad for you based on what you’re trying to sell or promote.
Personalize the Consumer’s Experience
Leverage data collected from customer interactions to create personalized experiences for each customer.
One way to do this is by adding AI into your customer service unit to provide personalized responses based on what was said in a conversation with an individual customer.
Customers will be delighted when they find out how much attention you give them!
Another way to personalize their experience is through marketing automation.
Here are some ways to do this:
Nurture leads with relevant content and offers
Offer personalized product recommendations based on customer’s purchase history
Automatically send out marketing campaigns at certain intervals or times of the day according to customers’ interests, preferences, etc.
Use AI in Your Video Campaigns
Incorporate AI into your video strategy by making videos that respond to viewer’s facial expressions or comments in real-time.
This way, you can use AI to create interactive videos that are fun and engaging for your audience.
Another thing you could do is leverage AI in video creation by using it to choose the best scenes from a series of raw footage clips.
4 Predictions About Where AI Marketing Will Be in 10 Years
Undoubtedly, we can expect that some big changes are coming our way in the next decade.
Specifically, artificial intelligence will take over most of the tasks done by human marketers now.
But what will be different, and how is it going to change things? Here’s a look at four predictions about where AI Marketing may take us in ten years:
Conversational interfaces with chatbots taking over customer service functions: Chatbots will be able to take care of basic tasks like enquiries, billing, and order status with customer service representatives only handling more complex queries.
Automated pricing models eliminating the human element. These algorithms are already being used for things like online advertising, which means companies can respond quickly without any need for manual input
Increased monitoring of customer posts on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, enabling brands to respond in real-time. With such a huge number of customer queries, it will be difficult for human marketers to keep up.
Artificial intelligence experts can predict the next big marketing trend before it even starts. Every year, brands and organizations are increasingly turning to AI experts for their opinion on which marketing trends will be the ones that drive success in the next 12 months.
Final Thoughts
And while AI might take over the world one day, for now, it’s helping marketers do their jobs better. It has already changed marketing by making data collection and personalization at scale possible - something that was too difficult or expensive to accomplish in the past. Besides, this technology can create engaging content that provides customers with what they need without being overly pushy or sales-oriented.
Who knows what other changes it will bring? But we should be excited about them!