Wondering how Artificial Intelligence can improve your marketing?
Andrew Ng, an AI, and machine learning expert say, AI is the new electricity. Just as electricity was used to power everything 100 years ago, AI is now added to everything. And in marketing, there isn’t anything better than AI-empowered tools and techniques to spot opportunities.
Businesses face many market challenges and so do the teams such as the marketing team, social media team, and IT product team. All find it challenging to know what their customers or competitors are doing in the market, to build brand and customer relationship, to track and improve brand reputation, and to easily track the current market trends and customer’s changing requirements.
Now, to solve all such challenges, business professionals are finding unique solutions to keep the sales engine running. Marketing has evolved from traditional to digital, and in this progression, organizations are making use of combined digital marketing strategies to rule the industry. This is where Artificial Intelligence comes into action.
WHAT EXACTLY IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, MACHINE LEARNING, AND DEEP LEARNING?
Artificial Intelligence- The next big thing!
Or, to quote it in other words, “Artificial Intelligence is the revolutionary beginning of living life with less of artificial and a lot more of intelligence.”
Clearly, after the internet, which has connected the entire world, and microchips without which no modern human being can survive, AI is the next big thing that is revolutionizing the world.
According to the father of Artificial Intelligence, John McCarthy, AI is “The science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs.”
In basic terms, collecting data about the world and using that data to make predictions in the short and long term, applies to both people and machines.
Machine Learning is a subset of AI that empowers machines to automatically learn and improve from different experiences without being explicitly programmed. Machine learning focuses on the development of computer programs that can access data and use it to learn for themselves.
Deep Learning is a subfield of machine learning concerned with extremely large neural networks and a massive collection of algorithms that can mimic human intelligence.
In simple terms, Artificial Intelligence is a branch of computer science dedicated to creating intelligent machines that will work and react like humans.
(Just like Sophia, the latest human-like robot, springing from a serious engineering and science research and accomplishments of an inspired team of robotics & AI scientists and designers.)
But do we want it? Answering this can be difficult!
AI AND MARKETING COMING TOGETHER- WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD?
The world of AI is incredibly large. Since the invention of computers and machines, their capacity to perform and achieve various task went on growing exponentially. Humans are developing the power of computer systems in terms of their diverse working domains.
We live in a time, where if a marketer isn’t using artificial intelligence in their marketing approach, they are already out of the game. AI helps marketers to form and execute their marketing strategy very effectively and precisely. Artificial Intelligence, Neural Networks, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Big Data, Automation etc, the practice of all these terms has given rise to digital marketing as we know it today.
The real impact of AI in digital marketing is being discovered with passing days, and digital marketers around the globe are still in the learning phase with the intrusion of AI in marketing.
In the year 2018, AI was moved away from forecasting to actual implementation. This year brought AI across the board where numerous businesses practiced it, embraced it and received impressive results. Digital Marketing being immensely crowded by data has been one of the early adopters and has witnessed extra-ordinary benefits of AI in marketing.
- TURNING DATA INTO ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS
With increased digital consumption, the world is creating huge amounts of data every single day. According to Domo’s reports, there are 2.5 quintillion bytes (1 million terabytes) of data created each day! And it is estimated that a staggering 1.7MB of data will be created every second for every person on earth by 2020. Now to crunch such prodigious amount of data is no less than a nightmare for human teams. But with well-trained use of AI, it is absolutely possible to turn huge data into actionable insights and tweak the ad strategies on multiple platforms in real time, creating more qualified leads to show. The biggest business trend by 2020 will be the creation of new businesses based on collecting, analyzing, and delivering data.
- PREDICTIVE MARKETING TO UNLOCK YOUR BUSINESS POTENTIAL
Predictive analytics is a form of computerized AI analysis that uses current and historical data, machine learning algorithms, and real-time status or performance information to make predictions of the future.
It predicts which customers are most likely to convert, and also deliver the most lifetime value before you have even reached out. Sounds like a marketer’s dream, right?
A company’s database of customers and leads is bigger than what their sales team can realistically deal with on a day to day basis. So naturally, the sales team will have to prioritise which leads they feel, offers the best chance for a sale.
Thankfully, Predictive Marketing could help you unlock all your company’s data and quickly develop an accurate predictable single view allowing you to develop the sales and marketing strategies that will drive substantial improvements in business performance. But how?
Predictive analytics allows marketers to extract information from data and uses it to predict purchase trends and user behavior patterns. The Adobe predictive analytics tool analyses large volumes of data and helps to uncover the most impactful insights. It also helps determine how customers will react to marketing messages and make purchasing decisions, as well as optimizing asset performance to improve business efficiency.
- CHATBOTS FOR RIGHT AI MARKETING SOLUTIONS
As cited in the Chatbot Magazine, “Messaging apps are the platforms of the future and bots will be how their users access all sorts of services” shares Peter Rojas, Entrepreneur in Residence at Betaworks.
You must be aware of Siri/ Alexa/ Google Assistant. It mesmerizes me the way they answer all the questions with instant replies on some websites’ chat-boxes no matter what the time is. Consumers are changing due to AI-powered tools and devices being involved in consumer search, choice set construction and purchase decision making.
“A chatbot is a service, powered by rules and sometimes artificial intelligence, that you interact with via a chat interface.” – Chatbotsmagazine.com
Recently, NAB (National Australia Bank) launched a customer assistance chatbot to help customers find answers to common banking queries. The bot is able to answer more than 200 common questions related to banking.
source: CMO
Chatbots can assist customers with 24×7 and also retain customer data. This makes the customer experience more enjoyable. They can handle several customer requests simultaneously, so the waiting time is reduced to nil. They have the features to track customer purchase patterns. This allows the business to revamp their existing marketing strategy and simultaneously increase sales.
In the words of Google: “Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or engaging. Make your website stand out from others in your field.”
For further adoption, developers are making chatbots with more human-like personalities, capable of recognizing speech patterns and interpreting non-verbal cues to make interactions even smoother.
- CONTENT GENERATION TO SCALE-UP CONTENT MARKETING
“Create content that reaches your audience’s audience.” – Marketing Profs
Content Marketing Strategy help brands build and hone their marketing goals, brand positioning, and competitive landscape.
Many tools, like Wordsmith, a natural language generation (NLG) engine “that lets you turn data into the text at any scale and in any format or language,” was able to create around 1.5 billion human-sounding articles in 2016. This is used by marketers to convert data into sensible text. This auto content generation technology involves artificial intelligence that saves a lot of time.
Another AI-powered tool is called Acrolinx, a tool that uses machine learning, NLP and other notable algorithms to demonstrate campaigns to multiple channel and devices. It regularly creates content for leading brands like Facebook, IBM, Microsoft, Nestle and Caterpillar.
As per an article published on Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute:
“Acrolinx uses a variety of techniques in its multilingual natural language processing (NLP) engine, including machine learning and knowledge-based approaches to ensure the best combination of scalability and precision.”
source: slideshare
AI cannot replace niche content experts, but they can certainly boost the production of content based on sports matches, financial reports, and market data.
- ACCELERATED MOBILE PAGES FOR FASTER, OPEN MOBILE WEB
Every time a webpage takes too long to load, it loses a reader and the opportunity to earn revenue through advertising or subscriptions. That's because advertisers on these websites have a hard time getting consumers to pay attention to their ads. When the pages load slowly, people disregard them entirely. Thankfully, there is a solution, which aims to dramatically improve the performance of the mobile web.
In October 2015, Google announced AMP webpages, which are a lighter version of the traditional webpages and aim to drastically improve the performance of the mobile web, such as reducing page load time to improve the user experience. AMP content automatically shows up in priority placement areas. AMP page also increases your chances of ranking on the top three search results of Google.
- RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENTS
To engage customers on the website, recommendation is one of the best examples in AI. E-commerce websites, blogs, and many social networking and media websites use AI to analyse your activities on the internet and recommend your products and content for better conversions.
SUMMING UP
In simple terms, AI can be considered as an amalgamation of numerous human brains cascading together for a specific outcome through machines. AI is intelligence shown by machines and is an active technology on the rise. It can create wonders in a vast number of fields.
The changes that AI has brought and will bring in digital marketing are huge. From B2C companies using machine learning to enhance their customers’ experience with them, to B2B companies using it to predict their marketing results. We are moving fast into a world where AI and Marketing go hand in hand. Artificial Intelligence, Predictive Insights, Machine Learning, call it anything, it’s the new normal and it’s going to stay, making your job as marketers, easier and much more efficient.
The AI revolution is not the future, it’s already here! So, get ready to devise an action plan to skyrocket the marketing curve.