Biggest AI Challenges That Affect Your Marketing Endeavors

So the new and exciting opportunities that adoption of AI brings to the marketing sphere have been well established. Because every business is now scrambling to stay on top of the competition by joining forces with AI. 

Having said that, it doesn’t mean things can’t go south and marketers can’t go wrong once in a while. A study done by data analysts in Teradata discovered that 80% of enterprise-level organizations were already using some kind of AI in their business, 32% of which was in marketing.  And over 90% also anticipated significant barriers to full adoption and integration.

Which means that marketers need to have a better understanding of this technology and be prepared to face the challenges head-on. 

Here are top 6 major AI challenges and how you can overcome them to maximize your marketing efforts:-

Shortage of AI Talent

Currently there’s a considerable amount of gap when it comes to AI skills and that can have a negative impact on businesses who want to develop their in-house AI marketing solutions. This problem is expected to get worse as the number of AI companies and job opportunities grow. Given the rapid change of rate and low barrier to entry, the talented individuals are becoming harder and harder to come by. 

Hence, to address this challenge, organizations will have to establish relationships with universities and trade schools. This will enable them to engage in various learning projects, be more involved through mentorship and also tap into the emerging talent at an early stage before they enter the workforce. 

Organizations can also go for internal training and development which is an effective alternative to external staffing efforts. For instance, individuals with a strong background in mathematics, statistics and engineering will make excellent choices for working with machine learning. And many companies are already equipped with enough talents who specialize in that area, making them perfectly eligible for the role. And for those organizations that run short of existing talent or don’t have the capacity to let current employees transition into new AI-related roles can also hire soft skill trainers and train for the rest. 

Inadequate IT Infrastructure

You must have a robust IT infrastructure in order to have a successful AI-driven marketing strategy. The AI technology can process a vast amount of data and to do that it needs high-performing hardware in place. Hence, you need to make sure that your computer systems are fully functional and running smooth, this is particularly important for smaller companies with more modest IT budgets.

Fortunately there’s also the alternate option to overcome this obstacle and that is cloud based solutions. In exchange for a reasonable monthly or yearly fee, cloud software vendors will provide you with the entire IT infrastructure and employees needed to run AI marketing software. These cloud services are the perfect solution for businesses that have insufficient IT infrastructure to build in-house systems.

Having Poor Data Quality

AI works by feeding on high-quality data. Having poor quality or inadequate amount of data will result into substandard results from the AI software. Companies nowadays are collecting an increasing amount of data because of the big data world that we’re heading towards, but oftentimes the data is not of the right kind or irrelevant to drive a successful AI marketing strategy.

To ensure that AI results are not skewed, stakeholders must have their existing data sets cleaned and be sure that the data being collected are of high-quality.

Lack of Clarity When Using AI Software

Despite its popular demand, AI can still be a complex technology for most. And technical employees who are not yet trained in AI can be unaware of its capabilities. Businesses need to be more careful of AI and make sure that certain applications do not seem too human or accurate.

One popular example to use would be when Target used their data to find out that one of their young customers was pregnant before she could tell her family. This just goes to show that while recommendation engines are an effective marketing tool, their use can sometimes be intrusive if the software seems to know a person all too well.

Inadequate Budget for Implementation

Another challenge that businesses face with implementing AI is the issue with insufficient budget. It costs a lot of money to deploy and maintain AI technology, mainly because it requires complex software and high-performance hardware. Despite the impressive ROI offered by AI solutions, business case still needs to be made to invest in the new solutions. This does turn out to be difficult for small businesses as they’re already working on stretched budgets. By opting for affordable AI vendors in the market, marketers with small businesses can curb this problem. Not only has AI become much faster than before, but it can be implemented in an extremely affordable price.

Need for Privacy and Regulations

The influx of AI into the marketing industry is certainly promising but that has led to an alarming rate of user data being unsafe and at the risk of falling into the wrong hands. Having realized this, laws such as the GDPR and CASL have come into effect and that’s only the beginning of a much tighter security around user data in the days to come. 

Savvy marketers who understand this have successfully made the switch to a consent based approach to doing business; not just to avoid the hefty penalty but also because they know that long-term relationships with their clients are not to be jeopardized. Same goes for the future prospects. 

Organizations must now know what data they’re collecting and why as this can save them a lot of trouble and quite possibly the ordeal of ever being penalized.

Final Thoughts

Remember that challenges like the ones mentioned above can weigh your marketing efforts down and the results may turn out to be adverse. To ensure that both you and your customers make the most of AI, be responsible and understand what this technology is capable of.