How AI Will Take Over the Marketing World | Bridge Blog

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has entered different areas of our world and it will continue to reshape our lives.

Many people associate this technology with intelligent machines with a mind of their own, capable of making decisions, performing different complex tasks, or even developing human-like emotions.

But, scientists are still a long way from creating robots with a sense of self.

However, there is one field in which AI is set to revolutionize and disrupt the way we do things — Marketing.

Recent breakthroughs in this advanced technology have made it possible for marketing to benefit from its different automation, time-saving, and performance-improving features.

1. Content Personalization

As technologies develop, consumer expectations grow.

What used to be a staple 5 years ago has become obsolete and archaic these days. So, if you want to wow and keep your audience, you need to keep pace with all these novelties.

One of the most important abilities of AI is processing, analyzing, and interpreting huge volumes of data, and that’s exactly what allows it to tap into the uncharted territory of unstructured data.

As a matter of fact, data analysis is the main focus for businesses, and on-site personalization has been identified as the second most frequently cited use case for AI.

It used to be practically impossible to take advantage of this text-rich information as it doesn’t follow any predefined data model and it’s not organized in a predefined manner.

However, with the emergence of Natural Language Processing (NLP), which is a subset of AI, data mining, and text analytics, marketers have got powerful methods for identifying patterns in this kind of information and obtaining a plethora of valuable insights into customer behaviours, interests, and preferences.

All this means that marketers can have a pretty good idea about whom they are targeting with their content. In other words, it will enable companies to tailor their content based on what their potential customers want to read and the topics that are relevant to them.

But, what does personalization mean in terms of content?

Your prospects have some pain points that they want to solve. With the help of big data and AI, you can unearth these issues and direct your efforts at creating content which addresses them and provides an effective solution.

But this is just a layer of personalization — your prospects use different platforms and channels of communication, meaning that some of them prefer emails, while others browse Facebook or LinkedIn in search of the content they’re interested in.

Also, not everybody wants to read blog posts. Some people are too busy and they’d rather consume the content by listening to podcasts or watching videos on their way to work. 54% of consumers want to see more video materials from the brands they interact with.

AI will help you find out your target audience’s preferences and segment your outreach and content so that it fits their individual needs.

2. Chatbots

These smart algorithms are all the rage at the moment. Companies in different industries have noticed the huge potential of chatbots for improving user experience, boosting retention, and gaining valuable insight into what their customers need.

By adding an AI-powered chatbot to your website, you’ll be able to engage with your customers better and provide them with 24/7 support in a cost-effective and practical manner.

According to 64% of people, 24-hour service is the best chatbots’ feature.

Different dilemmas people have when it comes to product or service features. It’s only logical that the lack of timely answers while they’re making their purchasing decision can be a surefire dealbreaker. That’s why chatbots play a crucial role in successful customer retention strategy, as they are available non-stop, and capable of handling a number of customer queries at a time.

The fact that your potential customers will have all their questions answered without being put on hold can do wonders for your engagement and conversion rates.

Apart from engaging your prospects and establishing meaningful relationships with them, these programs have another important role — they can collect a vast amount of customer data which they can later use for personalizing their future interactions. This data can also be processed and analyzed thus allowing you to learn more information about your target audience.

3. Personalized Product Recommendations

“Customers who bought this product also bought” or “Customers who bought this product also viewed” are the kind of messages that you can see on different e-commerce websites.

Popularized by Amazon, these product recommendations help the online retail behemoth generate 35% of its revenue.

Now you can have your own AI-powered and data-driven algorithm which will track and analyze your customers’ buying habits, on-site behaviour, and preferences and come up with relevant and fairly accurate suggestions regarding the products and services that they might find interesting.

Needless to say, by displaying your highly-personalized recommendations to your customers, you can significantly increase your conversion rates. AI significantly accelerates the entire process as it processes all the customer data much faster and more accurate than humans.

Such a recommendation algorithm draws the information from every single customer’s purchasing history, the items they viewed, put in their cart, and liked, as well as what the other people with a similar taste and interests bought and viewed.

4. Predictive Analytics

Instead of throwing darts in the dark, marketers can now make informed, data-driven decisions that can help them predict the future outcomes of their campaigns.

This strategy leverages data mining, statistics, and other advanced techniques and technologies to find a way to better reach their prospects and ensure that this outreach is appropriate.

Predictive analytics will help marketing and sales collaborate more closely, which is of crucial importance for increasing conversions. AI will allow these two departments to take advantage of a more precise lead scoring system, meaning that marketing will forward to sales only the leads that are most likely to make a purchase.
Also, the same lead scoring process will be improved so that salespeople won’t have to rely on misleading buying signals and waste their time on prospects with no intention of actually making a purchase.

Finally, nurturing campaigns will be created based on a particular audience segment as well as the stage of the sales process.

Conclusion
And all these use cases of AI in marketing are just the tip of the iceberg. This technology is developing very quickly and soon it will allow marketers to be even more productive and effective, as well as to automate and personalize their efforts to the fullest.

Originally published at https://www.bridge-global.com on November 26, 2019.