Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Marketing
The realm of artificial intelligence has grown exponentially since the concept was first introduced back in 1966. AI has evolved to encompass so much, impacting our daily lives and helping to improve efficiency in a variety of industries. In a nutshell, AI is the term for technology that allows machines to perform complex tasks that typically require human intelligence.
Few industries have experienced AI-driven change more than marketing. From using chatbots to better interact with customers to relying on AI analytics to collect consumer data, AI has far-reaching implications across the world of marketing. The future will see more and more companies of all sizes harnessing AI technology to improve efficiency and better understand how to serve their customers, effectively driving conversions.
How AI and Analytics Are Connected
Improved customer service starts with data collection and analytics. By understanding the needs of your customers, you can tailor products and services to meet those specifications. Many companies have already successfully implemented analytics into their sales platform, including Google and Amazon. In fact, Amazon attributes AI to its meteoric rise in recent years, as the company continues to tweak its algorithms with help from machine learning.
Amazon raked in $72.4B in sales in Q4 2018 alone, a strong indicator that the company’s AI is deft enough to understand and predict the shopping habits of its customers. According to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the numbers can be partially attributed to improvements to Alexa, its voice recognition software. VentureBeat reports that advancements in machine learning helped improve Alexa’s ability to understand requests and answer questions by more than 20% in 2018. Developers also doubled the number of Alexa skills to more than 80K.
Google is also at the forefront of data collection and analytics. Marketers can integrate current tracking and data collection tools, such as landing page builders and chatbots, with Google Analytics to develop a clear picture of customer trends and create a phone call dashboard. According to CallRail, “These dashboards can be customized to fit any marketer’s needs and to help them keep track of the key performance indicators (KPIs) that are important to their business.” KPI metrics can include form and online purchase completions and onsite live chat initiations.
Content Strategy, AI, and the Cloud
We’ve understood for years that high-quality content can improve a company’s visibility and drive sales. Today, AI is helping to streamline the content creation process. AI can fuel your content strategy via automated content creation mechanisms and AI-powered solutions that recommend your content to target viewers.
Cloud computing allows businesses to share their content to a wider audience than ever before, and many large-scale cloud providers offer full suites of AI-powered solutions. AI deep learning speech software assists with accurate translations, helping entrepreneurs reach a global audience. And since machine learning engines build upon pre-existing knowledge bases, you can use predictive intelligence to better tailor your content to meet the needs and interests of your audience.
While content creation itself is best left to humans, your future content strategy should integrate human-built content and AI platforms. By delegating some of your daily tasks to machines, you free up more time to focus on marketing that matters and converting more leads into long-term customers.
AI Trends Changing the Marketing Arena
As you work to stay ahead of the competition, you should harness the myriad opportunities that AI brings to the arena. A personalized experience is an important aspect of a successful marketing campaign, and you can use AI to achieve that sense of personalization. A customer’s tailor-made experience can stem from product recommendations or via forms of immersive experiential marketing.
Experiential campaigns aim to engage customers through real-world events and interactions, and they’re a highly successful tactic. Of all US marketers using experiential campaigns, 95% found it effective. What’s more, a full 98% of attendees say they feel compelled to make a purchase following an experiential marketing event.
AI is increasingly part of the user experience within experiential marketing campaigns. Interactive kiosks, some equipped with VR technology, can be used to attract leads, showcase products, and input data regarding user feedback and experience. Information and marketing data gathered from experiential campaigns can then be used at future events and across your company as a whole. In this way, humans and AI work together to collect and interpret valuable data while engaging customers in the real world.
AI is reshaping the marketing industry, giving businesses of all sizes innovative tools that can help their company grow and thrive into the future. With help from AI, more daily tasks can be automated, more human errors can be eliminated, and more valuable consumer-based data can be collected. Savvy marketing professionals understand the need for widespread AI implementation across all aspects of the business, from analytics and content creation to customer engagement and beyond.
