Are you using AI for marketing? If not, you’re rapidly losing your competitive edge. AI tools are transforming the way marketers do business. Those that don’t use them will find themselves left in the dust—probably sooner than they think.
In our last series, we explored the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) on society as a whole, as well as on businesses in general. In this series, we’ll take a closer look at how AI and ML are affecting the entire customer journey, beginning with initial customer acquisition and marketing.
How AI is shaping marketing right now
PPC is one of the first areas to make use of AI and ML. We see this happen in two different ways. The giant ad platforms, like Facebook, are offering ad delivery optimization to help advertisers find untapped demographics and target their ads more effectively. But we’re also seeing AI used for PPC by individual organizations. An example of this is Albert. An autonomous media buying platform, Albert uses AI-enabled predictive analytics and deep learning to choose and optimize advertising delivery channels. Solutions like Albert require significantly less human interaction than manual or programmatic advertising systems—and they’re usually more accurate.
Social media is another area that has benefited dramatically from artificial intelligence. Take Rocco for example. Through Slack and social media integrations, Rocco uses ML to gather insights on your business and brand voice. It then suggests content that your audience is likely to engage with. This kind of audience analysis and social engagement is already driving fierce competition across Twitter and Facebook.
But the benefits of AI for marketing don’t stop with curation. Marketers have begun to use AI for full-fledged content creation. Using Natural Language Generation (NLG), apps such as Wordsmith can generate content based on simple rules and datasets, such as stock market insights and sports games. While the idea of AI writing an entire book is still the stuff of science fiction, machines have become adept at creating short, personalized content that can be built using simple rules. This is expected to increase through 2018, with Gartner predicting 20% of content will be created by AI (source).
Another application of AI for marketing is the chatbot. From customer service to personal Slack assistants, chatbots are popping up all over the Internet. For marketers, one of the most lucrative uses is seen in Facebook Messenger bots. Messenger bots are the next example of marketers engaging with customers where it is most natural for them. These kinds of bots are becoming increasingly attractive, as they’re relatively simple to use for those without a data science background. They’ve also been found to be more effective than traditional digital advertising avenues, at least for now (source).
Finally, one of the areas where organizations are using AI for marketing is in customer insights and engagement. Take Vidora for example. Vidora analyzes data across channels to predict when your audience is likely to stop engaging and presents them with relevant offers and content through push notifications, emails, and social. Solutions like Affinio and Dynamic Yield use machine learning to analyze customer data for the purpose of segmenting. Based on factors such as social behavior, psychographics, and purchase actions, these applications let businesses identify who to include in various marketing campaigns, when to introduce new products, and even which customers are more likely to return specific items.
It’s important to note that there are limits to the benefits of AI. One such area is transcription services, which still requires a human touch to remain effective.
Next week, we’ll cover some of the ways in which AI is informing supply chain management decisions. If you don’t want to wait, get in touch with the Hanu rock stars today to learn how we’re helping businesses just like yours transform through artificial intelligence and cloud technology.
