In 2018, business leadership is holding digital marketers responsible for generating revenue. Artificial intelligence (AI) is giving them a competitive advantage when engaging with customers. But is your team on track for the AI marketing revolution?
Many brands are still on the fence about AI marketing. It’s a big investment without many proven results. But recent applications are about to change that for good.
Most companies need a team to manage all digital channels and analytics. Digital marketers managed data manually. Responsiveness to customer behavior could be low or negligible.
Even newer POS and CRM technologies depend on human cognition to function. And there’s nothing like the human touch. But not in all cases.
Forbes says, “Marketers have more insights-related tools at their disposal that facilitate true data-driven decision making, but AI is needed to help integrate across tools, datasets, and platforms.”
What Is AI Marketing?
AI is a cognitive system that identifies the best possible path to a desirable outcome. Think of AI marketing as adding a new layer of decision making to the marketing mix. AI can perform much of the human cognition required to run campaigns.
This includes targeting campaigns across channels. AI will analyze customer behavior and act upon new insights without human involvement.
Leading digital marketers use AI for all customer engagement, even without prior programming. AI solutions can simulate any number of scenarios designed to meet specific objectives. They represent the next and biggest phase in the evolution of marketing technologies.
The result is a smarter marketing model. It means better, more frequent engagement with customers. It means greater responsiveness to customer needs as well.
Is AI Marketing Right for My Business?
You will hear a lot of about AI marketing in the conference loop. But AI adoption is only picking up.
The technology is not quite where it needs to be either. Data scientists are still skeptical about the results produced by AI marketing technologies.
But even as the technology improves, most marketers can’t wait. There are too many sources and data types available. It’s becoming harder to integrate them all to produce actionable insights.
Your competitors are attempting to do that now.
There are ways you can apply AI marketing techniques now to get your business on track. As the technology improves, you could already have a record of success. See how your competitors feel about that.
4 Ways AI Will Transform Your Digital Marketing Model
AI marketing won’t solve all your customer woes. But AI will deliver insights that help you make the best campaign decisions possible. And it’s already doing that for marketers.
The following are four advantages of AI that marketing teams are leveraging today. If you’re still on the fence about AI, prepare to update your digital marketing strategy.
Automation
Imagine if your team spent less time on tedium and more time on innovation? Even basic data parsing takes cognitive power. That’s where AI becomes your best new member of the team.
Think of some of the daily jobs below your teams’ skillset. Time-consuming tasks like reporting are necessary but don’t contribute to productivity.
59% of marketers believe AI will have a major or moderate impact on their productivity. They found that a team’s collective hard skills aren’t what make them successful. “Emotional intelligence, social skills, [and] level of creativity” are what add to performance.
Including AI isn’t about the machines taking over your team. It’s about maximizing your team’s potential. Help your all-stars spend more time creating value than reporting on it.
Predictive Analytics
You can apply AI to solve problems the way a human brain does. That includes analyzing data sets and producing actionable insights. Imagine your team spending more time acting on those insights than digging for them.
Predicting customer behavior and marketing trends is challenging for any team. There is room for predictive errors, and wasted time acting upon them.
AI cannot tell the future. “Predictive” is different than “prediction.” AI can discover trends and give your team what it needs to act upon them.
Your technology might produce billions of helpful data points. How many users are going to churn? Which users are the most likely to become customers?
AI gives your team what it needs to create realistic predictions. Spend less time digging through data and following false leads. Spend more time creating conversions and driving brand loyalty.
Applying Your Marketing Strategy
We’ve gone over some of the practical applications of AI. But what does AI mean for the “bigger picture”?
There are several dimensions to your marketing strategy. They include channels, targeting, and pricing, among others. AI can contribute to all of them.
You choose your marketing channels based on your audience and content. Your choices depend on the greater goals of your marketing campaign.
AI can automate marketing channel selection based on your objectives. It can look at data from previous campaigns and optimize the selection of your channels for future ones.
Your targeting involves reaching the best audience for your value propositions. You’ll zoom in on specific audiences within your marketing channels.
AI can analyze historical data and identify gaps in previous targeting. It can experiment with new forms of targeting before you launch your initiatives.
Optimizing Your Team
It might seem creepy to have AI tracking employees’ performance. But with AI doing so in real time, managers have more opportunities to nip performance issues in the bud.
Employees are often motivated by the question, “what will the boss think?” AI gives them a new motivator: “What’s the best thing to do?”
AI can spot when employees are losing sight of positive motivators. They can spot if they’re encountering skills gaps. Identifying these problems helps teams work together to prevent shortcomings in the future.
Building a Future with AI
Artificial intelligence isn’t just a business enabler. It’s a human enabler, too. Employees are already adjusting to their new “team members” in the workplace of tomorrow.
It’s time to start thinking about how AI marketing will affect your team. But you need to understand what it will do for your business before your next move.
Let’s connect. Contact me today to set up a short consultation. We’ll talk about your pain points and talk about what AI can do for you.