How AI is revolutionising Marketing and why you should use it
What is AI and what has it got to do with Marketing?
Artificial Intelligence is a term we are quite familiar with before the breakthrough of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, owing to popular media like the Terminator movies. But what does Artificial Intelligence mean, and how can we use it to leverage the marketing strategy of our enterprise? AI can be defined as a
system that tries to mimic a human being’s thinking and rationale, therefore having the capability to make cognitive decisions for a given task.
AI is being integrated into almost every business aspect that we know of and interact with. The most obvious example would be of social media platforms like Instagram to tailor ads and content based on the users’ past interactions with the app. This roots from the goal of marketing any content or product, which is to create an avenue for users to engage with the business directly.
In the case of Instagram, AI is being used to view and analyse the vast data of user interaction with the app to recommend similar ads and tailor the content specific to the user’s interests. This is much more effective than having a human being do all this manually; AI brings in efficiency to match the speed with which customers interact with products and services today.
A few marketing success stories from AI:
Not just limited to Instagram, AI is also being utilised in our day-to-day grocery shopping. Woolworths chain has employed the use of an AI chatbot called ‘Olive’. The inclusion of ‘Olive’ came from Woolworths being unable to manually answer the huge number of customer queries it received. Now with Olive- when a customer supposedly makes an online order and views that there are a few missing or spoiled items, they can simply text Olive and within an instant it places a reorder. This is done simultaneously for multiple customers, without losing any time.
AI is also being used for diagnosis of fatal diseases like breast cancer. By training AI to read mammograms, it can compare between a normal one and a not normal one. In a study based in Sweden: 80,000 women’s mammograms, out of which half were looked at by AI before a final look by a radiologist, and the other half were looked at by two radiologists. The study found that the AI studied group had 20% more cancers detected than the radiologist-only group.
AI is also making waves in our personal finances by being integrated in banking. AI is enabling banks to analyse spendings to help the customers to manage their finances more effectively. The ‘Bill Sense’ feature in Commbank helps predict bills and cash flows of customers based on their past expenditure to help them manage their money better.
These features in each industry root from the same idea of Instagram, which is customer engagement and satisfaction. AI is the way forward with which businesses can unlock multiple ways to interact with their users and build a loyal user base in an effective manner.
Tools and technologies you can use for your business:
Chatbots
Businesses now have multiple avenues to leverage the powerful tool that is AI. Tools like chatbots for E-commerce sites (e.g., Amazon Lex) streamline customer queries, and respond to them efficiently without wasting any time, also offering 24/7 assistance. Chatbots provide quick resolution to the simpler customer queries like refunds, re-ordering, etc. An easy resolvance of a query offers convenience for customers, which in turn builds customer loyalty (e.g., Ceba chatbot, Commbank).
Robotic Marketer
AI can also be used in curating marketing strategies for business. Services like Robotic Marketer utilise AI-powered tools to design marketing strategies that are specifically curated for the business associated. It utilises big data and machine learning technologies to understand the business’s customer segments and develop strategies to engage with them effectively. These strategies range from social media interaction to direct marketing - where each of these strategies is curated accordingly with the business.
How can you best implement AI into your business?
AI can be implemented into existing marketing strategies in the following methods:
- Including AI services like chatbots to assist customer queries and make customer engagement efficient.
- Use AI to build analytics and visualisations to drill down on customer segments and preferences.
- Customer’s preferred channels of engagement can be gauged and catered to using AI.
- AI tools can be used to automate regular marketing content, such as email marketing, direct messaging of offers, app notifications, social media posts, etc. (e.g., Emplifi).
In any of these following ways, AI can be integrated into a business’s existing marketing strategy. It is a tool that makes the marketing methods that we are accustomed to efficient. Without the room for error that comes with manual efforts, AI can be leveraged to maximise the returns from the marketing initiative of a business.
But these benefits also come with several potholes that businesses can step into if they are not careful. Though AI's advent has revolutionised data analytics and the understanding of customer behaviour, it can also easily tip into being invasive and possibly hurt a customer’s digital identity if some boundaries are not set. Social media applications like Facebook have been mired in controversies and lawsuits that originate from the same, invasion of a customer’s privacy. Hence, it is important to lay down a policy and boundaries within which AI should operate in one’s business before including it into your business model.
Where do we go from here?
The way customers are interacting with businesses is changing in a rapid fashion. AI is being used in shopping to automate checkouts with self-checkouts. There is also development of a technology where all the items the customer selects through the shop is recorded and at the checkout it gives you the amount for all the items without once having to scan any item. AI is also touted to provide sound investment advice to users, where the volatility and returns on a particular stock, bond, or ETF can be gauged - which in turn provides a diagnostic report of the investment device to the user. The inclusion of AI chatbots in WhatsApp, Instagram, and Snapchat, users can simplify the way they interact with these platforms. What may have taken a few clicks and active navigation can now be done instantaneously. The users can now use these chatbots to navigate the whole application, this both builds user engagement and also leverages the data it gets from the user to tailor content and target ads.
AI is a powerful tool that, if used responsibly, can unlock a vast number of opportunities for one’s business and maximise its marketing efficiency. Don’t leave this tool hanging for your business. Do you need more help with your marketing strategies? Contact Marketing Eye’s Fractional CMO services or our outsourced marketing solutions for further assistance with your business’s marketing strategy.
Ready to take a step forward and level up your strategies? Contact Marketing Eye today to prompt your business into success.
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