Artificial Intelligence is taking marketing to a whole new level. Marketing campaigns are not only more targeted they also cost less too. Imagine getting a better return on your investment because the ads that you purchase online know your customers and who to put the ad in front of.
That’s the power of Artificial Intelligence in marketing. Every time someone does something with your product or offer, that action is recorded by the Artificial Intelligence software. This allows that person to be retargeted again and again with better offers or solutions that will fit their needs.
Perhaps you sell printers which need ink cartridges. Retargeting that person with new refills when the cartridge runs out is highly beneficial to both the customer and you as a business. At the same time, using the power of A.I to target them with the exact right refills based on their printing habits. This is an outstanding customer experience and takes away the customer effort.
Imagine if you could do this across the board with your clients and scale it! That’s what Artificial intelligence is bringing to the marketing landscape.
There are many ways that A.I is influencing the marketing industry and we’ll explore some of them below:
Intelligent Chatbots
Many consumers don’t want to pick up the phone and much prefer to interact via a company’s messenger app such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or a website chat.
Artificial Intelligence allows this information to be collected and used to target customers with a more personalised approach. This can be anything from solving customer problems to helping customers make the right purchase.
Another benefit of A.I and chatbots is they don’t sleep. That means your communications can be handled twenty-four hours a day seven days a week.
Highly Personalised Email Marketing
Email marketing for a long time has been a strong tool to promote products and services. Email marketing software allows marketers to segment their customers by gender, age, location and many other factors.
This enables them to send the right email messages to the right segment. However, Artificial Intelligence takes this to a whole new level. A.I can be used to capture data about individual behaviour by tracking what they view on your website, what links they click on your emails, what videos they watch and what blogs they read. Then it can use this data to send highly personalised email messages at the right frequency.
One customer might get several emails a month while another customer might get one every three months. Each email tailored to what the A.I system has determined relevant to that customer.
Recommended Products and Content
Anyone who shops on Amazon knows when you visit the Amazon website, you’re offered products that you want or, at the least, are highly interested in.
Using data from your Amazon search history, previous purchases and wish lists Amazon has the ability to provide tailored recommendations in real-time.
Netflix and Spotify also use similar A.I technology to provide you with recommended films and songs.
In fact, Netflix states that its A.I-powered personalised film recommendations save it $1 billion in revenue each year by avoiding cancelled subscriptions.
Now brands are using a similar type of A.I technology on their websites to provide customers with
Netflix Research: Machine Learning Platform
Visual Search and Buy
The ability to search the internet using an image and then buy what’s in the image is a retailer’s dream.
Take for instance someone reading a celebrity magazine and they see a celebrity wearing a per of shoes they like. By taking a photo of the image they can then use software powered by A/I to find where the shoes can be bought or at least
This is now possible with Artificial Intelligence.
ASOS enables customers to do this using their own visual search tool called Style Match.
Another example is Snapchat which allows you to take a photograph of an object and buy it on Amazon.
In 2017, Google released an app called Google Lens, which allows the user to bring up relevant information using visual analysis. For example, you might want to know the breed of a dog, but you can’t search for it the standard way because you don’t know what to search for. Google Lens enables the user to take a picture of the dog and use the picture as search criteria, giving you the name and details of the breed.
Snapchat + Amazon Visual Search Demo – TechCrunch
Online Advertising
Every marketer knows the hard work, brain power and testing that’s required to write advertising headlines and copy.
In 2018 Google Adwords incorporated A.I into its framework. The A.I technology makes suggestions for optimising your online ad campaigns. It does this by reviewing data from previous campaigns which includes ad headlines, descriptions, extensions and other relevant information found on landing pages.
There is some debate in the marketing community on the benefits of this technology. On one hand, it removes a lot of work from marketers making life much easier. On the other hand, some argue that Google’s interest is about making money from clicks. The more clicks an advert gets the more money Google makes. However, these clicks don’t always turn into sales, which is at the expense of the advertiser.
There’s a simple way to solve this and that’s to test the A.I ads with a budget while running human-led campaigns. That way you can make a decision based on facts. However, it’s another powerful A.I tool for the marketer’s toolbox.
Rapid Reactions
Artificial Intelligence is allowing brands to react and solve problems before they become too big.
A.I enables companies to analyse social media and social conversations about their products and brand. By seeing what your customer or prospective customers might be saying about you and your product, you can make the adjustments needed for better sales, marketing or ease of use. This data used to take months, sometimes years to collect.
Think about the Automotive industry for example. The recalls done are often months or years later, but with the new A.I technologies, they will know much sooner if there is a component failure and what that failure is so that they and take action.
Future Predictions for Artificial Intelligence in Marketing
Traditional marketing
Massive competitor advantage: early adopters of A.I will see their businesses shoot ahead of the competition. Those who are hesitant will fall drastically behind and may make costly mistakes by trying to catch up without a proper A.I strategy.
Websites will evolve: they’ll be A.I driven and adapt to the individual’s preferences. They’ll also be more optimised for voice search as well as having their own voice search facility.
Conclusion
Artificial Intelligence is drastically improving the customer experience and customer journey. Enabling personalised experiences that provide the customer with what they want when they want it.
Successful companies such as Amazon and Netflix have already taken advantage of artificial intelligence, which has helped them to become world leading brands.
It’s unlikely A.I will replace humans in the marketing department, but it will make marketing departments more powerful while also removing the mundane tasks. Our advice is to embrace it.
Marketers need to start working Artificial Intelligence into their strategy and plans before they get left behind.
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Ollie Sulley – Co-Founder
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