Wait, AI and Marketing are actually teaming up?
With the world becoming increasingly digital, marketing strategies are evolving too.
An exciting development is integrating AI technology into marketing practices. At first, it may seem odd to rely on artificial intelligence for a field that revolves around human connection. However, AI has proven to be a game-changer in the marketing arena, providing unique insights into customer behavior and market trends. In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of using AI in marketing and the solutions to some common AI challenges.
Marketing with AI: Use-Cases
Marketing means resonating with your target audience’s interests. But within the target audience, there can be several distinct groups – each with unique concerns. These groups can be further segmented based on their interaction with social media strategies. Yet, this is complex and manual. What if this could be made simpler? What if AI could automatically sort people based on their social media engagement, past, and reviews, and even craft personalized ads while being overseen by human supervisors? Just imagine the result – efficient and brilliant!
AI is already being utilized in marketing for these exact reasons. Yes, we can create marketing ads with AI!
While there’s still room for improvement, significant progress has already been achieved. Below, we briefly describe different AI technologies and their applications in marketing.
AI Technologies Used In Marketing
Social Listening
AI technologies: Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Semantic Search, Sentiment Analysis
AI tools: Brand Mentions and Sprout Social
If you could know right away what customers think about your products or ads – that could help your plans, right? Social listening is the key. It taps into trends and opinions on social media for deep customer and market insights. With AI, you can make this process even more efficient. This is one of the ways how AI can help with social media marketing. For instance, a fashion brand can swiftly gauge demand for eco-friendly fabrics and tweak ads. AI-powered social listening speeds up the strategy review and refinement process.
Audience Segmentation and Personalization
AI technologies: Machine Learning (ML)
AI tools: Peak.ai and Optimove
Have you ever wondered how some businesses know exactly what you want? It’s possible through AI-driven audience segmentation and personalized messaging. AI categorizes customers by their preferences and enables targeted communication. AI also aids in programmatic advertising. It is a mechanism that works by selecting top-performing and personalized digital ads. This focus on expert audience segmentation and personalization help foster brand loyalty and effective marketing and, in turn, increases Return On Investment (ROI).
Competitive Intelligence
AI technologies: Named Entity (NER), Neural Networks
When it comes to big competition, simply having a good product won’t cut it. It’s essential to stay informed on what your competitors are doing too. This is where competitive intelligence (CI) comes into play. AI tools can help identify your competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, and strategies by monitoring their online presence, industry news, and engagement with customers and suppliers. This makes it easier to make well-informed decisions and stay ahead of the competition. CI is another excellent way how AI can help with social media marketing.
Okay, but what are the real examples?
Want to know how far we have really reached? You’ll be surprised!
Let’s have a quick look at the top 3 examples of how big companies are using AI in marketing processes.
1. Netflix works with AI to personalize movie pitch
Take “Good Will Hunting” – if you’re into romance movies, they’ll roll out Matt Damon and Minnie Driver; but for comedy buffs, it’s all about Robin Williams.
Source: Netflix Tech Blog
2. Amazon uses a predictive analytics recommender system
It suggests products to consumers based on its data on past purchases and interactions of all customers.
Source: Woo Commerce
3. Imagine Business Development sees a 100% conversion boost through AI-driven email timing
Source: HubSpot
You receive the emails precisely at the time you are most likely to open them.
Result? 100% increase in conversion rate!
Bonus: Dept and Hello Monday Using AI Shoe Mirror
The Shoe Mirror checks out what people wear, finds matching shoes in Augmented Reality (AR), and even copies how they walk past stores.
A great way to increase your brand visibility and customer engagement!
Source: Dept
The potential for doing marketing with AI is limitless. The examples given are just a few among many possibilities.
What can we learn from this? AI has offered exciting new opportunities for converting leads to sales for anyone with a sellable product or service.
However, we also need to be aware of the challenges AI presents in order to make informed investment decisions and determine how much trust we can place in AI technology at this point in time.
AI Marketing Challenges and Smart Solutions
Below we list some of the most prominent challenges of marketing with AI, along with their solutions.
Challenge: Poor Data Quality
In AI marketing, the quality and sufficiency of data are vital. Inadequate or poor-quality data can lead to subpar AI results, which hamper successful marketing campaigns.
Solutions
Data Quality Assurance: Clean, preprocess, and enrich data to ensure accuracy.
Smart Data Collection: Choose credible sources and gather data systematically.
Data Augmentation: Generate synthetic data to supplement limited datasets.
Human Oversight: Involve experts and prioritize interpretable models.
Challenge: Ethical Concerns & Lack of Trust
Some people doubt doing marketing with AI because they worry about data being mishandled or misused.
Solutions
Transparent Data Practices: Tell people how you gather and protect their data. This builds trust.
Adherence to Regulations: Stick to rules like GDPR to use data responsibly.
Cybersecurity Measures: Make sure your data is safe from hackers.
Ethical Data Usage: Only use data in ways that benefit customers and respect their rights.
Challenge: High AI Investment
Using AI in marketing can be costly, which raises concerns about whether it’s worth the money.
Solutions
Cost-Benefit Analysis: See if AI’s benefits outweigh the costs for your business.
Start Small: You don’t have to dive in completely—start with a few AI tools first.
Prioritize Strategies: If AI isn’t the top priority now, concentrate on other essential things.
Challenge: Job Losses
People worry that AI might take away jobs from human marketers.
Solutions
Human Touch: AI can’t replace human skills like creativity and connecting emotionally.
Team Up: Make AI and humans work together for better results.
Takeaway: we are in for a ride!
It’s clear – the marketing world will get even more exciting with the rise of AI!
Big tech companies are investing a lot in using AI for marketing, and they’ve already automated about 40% of data-related tasks. It’s smart for businesses to embrace AI, as it’ll help them stay competitive. AI will bring great things to marketing, like improving data handling, creating chatbots that chat like humans, and deep customer insights to plan clever campaigns.
If we handle the challenges and use AI responsibly, this mix of AI and marketing can bring fantastic results – smoother work, brighter ideas, and doing things the smart way!