How is Artificial Intelligence changing the future of Marketing ?
Intro: Artificial Intelligence (AI) empowers the marketers in mining the relevant data and deriving valuable customer insights, says Deepa Sayal
The global phenomenon of digitalisation has transformed the marketing landscape. The new-age marketers are not only aware of this transformative evolution of marketing, but also are putting the latest technologies such as Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Big Data Analytics to edge out the competitors. According to recent research by IBM Institute for Business Value, 91 per cent of marketers in companies that outperform their competitors are positive about the impact of Artificial Intelligence is going to have on their organisations and its marketing strategies.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) empowers the marketers in mining the relevant data and deriving valuable customer insights to tap on the potential customers with the right products at the opportune time. Still, only a quarter of marketers worldwide integrate these emerging technologies into their marketing strategies and practices.
With digital innovations impacting their lives now and then, customers have high expectations from the companies regarding their marketing approaches. Irrelevant or exaggerated marketing content does not interest them. What they want to consume is the content that’s useful, engaging, and related to their interests and preferences. hence, the brands should focus more on understanding their target groups well if they strive to form enduring relations with them. And, AI is the important tech that can help them in doing this with precision.
To the aid of marketers
The first concern of every marketer is to know his customers, their behaviour, and interests. With digital platforms such as search engines and social media bombarded with tons of data, marketers can get much-needed insights into the complex customer behaviour and interaction with the various products, services, content, and campaigns. Armed with such useful and precise data and insights, marketers can ease the arduous task of crafting and delivering compelling messages to target audiences for a better marketing experience. But, getting hands on such data, which is the new gold, is as complicated as the customer’s behaviour. There are countless online channels on which customers land up, browse, purchase, and quit. The large data sets need to be extracted so that the useful and accurate inferences can be drawn from it. This is something that asks for a lot of time, relentless efforts, and cognitive intelligence from humans. Thanks to AI, this highly challenging task can be accomplished in only a few hours.
Helping understand the customers
AI-powered tools interpret every action taken by online users and filter the raw data to deliver curated data and information such as how they interacted with a marketing campaign, at which page they spent most of their time, did they take the desired action on a landing page, or how much time did they take in decision-making. When the marketers have such minute information at hand, they can customise their marketing strategies as per customers’ preferences and direct their marketing activities towards the prospective customers, bringing efficiency and effectiveness to the process. The marketing content such as videos, creatives, and articles based on customers’ behaviour is sure to yield results because the message delivered through it will directly appeal to the customers. With this, AI not only saves the marketers’ crucial time and energy, but it also improves the quality of marketing practices, encourages conversations, and fosters customer trust and loyalty.
Drives data efficiency
With the growing use of digital technologies amongst customers, organising a large amount of pertinent data sourced from multiple channels and platforms is overwhelming. Further, processing and analysis of massive volumes of unstructured data are a bit too much for human analysts to do single-handedly. But, it’s not for AI, which automated all such labour-intensive activities and repetitive tasks that require the least attention from the marketers. Automating data collection and analysis, AI sets the busy marketers free from the burden and allows them to perform high value and creative tasks such as campaign planning and execution. Serving the marketing team as another member, AI ultimately helps in increasing the revenue and driving more traffic to the website by supporting the marketers to deliver a rich and personalised experience to the target groups.
What truly matters
Offering customers a world-class product alone cannot accentuate a brand or increase its revenue unless the product is impressively promoted and marketed to the customers. Today, the main objective of any marketing activity is to delight customers and engage them with the brand. A successful marketing effort is the one that fascinates the customers with new information or unique perspective on the things that they miss to discern. Also, it must trigger them to awe-inspiringly act in a certain way or take the desired action, improving the ROI. This happens only when the interaction between a brand and the customers is truly a rewarding one. But, customers are unpredictable and so are their evolving interests. The only way to keep a track on their evolving behaviour and preferences is to trace the data they produce. Analytics coupled with creativity is the key to win in the cut-throat competition. And, AI gets you both.