Technology itself has affect all aspects of life, and one part of it is Artificial Intelligence. This part of technology is been integrated into many facets of life and it includes Marketing.

Marketing is been enhanced with artificial intelligence so much that some people think that one day, marketers will be out of jobs. But is this really true?

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This article is packed with information on what artificial intelligence is, how is it presently impacting marketing and how you take full advantage of artificial intelligence to get better marketing results

What is Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the creation of intelligence machines which are capable of think and react like humans. Artificial Intelligence can perform tasks more accurately.

Recently, it has been treated as the next industrial revolution, people believe that artificial intelligence can provide a solution to most of the problems, and challenges exist right now in the world.

Also, AI can solve the problems which might occur in the future. Artificial intelligence has the potential of creating new industries, technologies, and environment altogether.

3 Types of Artificial Intelligence

Presently according to research made available, there are 3 types of artificial intelligence. They are

• Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) – ANI is the weak AI stage because that is developed for a particular task.
• Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) – AGI is also known as strong AI or human-level AI. A machine can perform any intellectual task like a human.
• Artificial super Intelligence (ASI) – It’s been said that ASI is smarter than humans.

We will now consider 7 ways in which artificial intelligence is changing marketing

7 ways Artificial Intelligence is changing Marketing

Chatbots

The chatbots are computer programs developed for interacting with online customers and they also complete order for them.

Chatbots can be integrated into websites and social media pages. Chatbots boost engagement, they can help customers 24/7 and they can handle several customers simultaneously.

Importantly, Chatbots can respond immediately to customers queries through chat interaction. Many online businesses already implement chatbots to provide better customer support. The beauty is that In many cases the customers do not realize that they actually interact with the machine.

Semantic search

This search method helps users significantly to find answers for their search much faster. It is also a data searching technique that understands user’s intent and contextual meaning of a search query rather than keywords.

AI can do this by understanding the meaning of search phrases. It involves finding the relationship between words and phrases in the search query.

Machine learning technique helps search engines to understand what information user might need based on their search history and user persona. With the help of machine learning, the search quality will increase constantly.

It considers some factors like,

• User’s search history
• Previously stored data
• Current location
• Spelling variations
• Seasonal trends
• Local information
• Synonyms
• Concept matching
• Time of search

Content Creation and curation

Content creation AI called Wordsmith that produced 1.5 billion pieces of content in 2016. Wordsmith is a natural language generation platform that transforms your data into a readable narrative. Wordsmith creates financial reports for the associated press.

Artificial Intelligence can write data focused contents such as sports stories, stock updates, and financial reports.

According to Gartner, by 2018, 20% of business content will be authored by machines. AI is capable of producing 2000 articles per second. Also, Content creation with Artificial Intelligence will be more effective.

Content curation is the process of gathering, organizing information relevant to a particular topic. Content curation is the form of Artificial Intelligence.

The best example for content curation is e-commerce websites like Amazon. They recommend similar products based on what you have previously looked or purchased.

According to Mckinsey, 35% of Amazon’s (e-commerce site) revenue is generated by its recommendation engine.

Ad targeting

Ads are essential for brand promotion and AI can generate and promote online Ads. It can generate or improve Ads content based on user’s interest, preferences, likes, and dislikes.

Google Ad platforms already use artificial intelligence and machine learning to target the audience. AI can deliver Ads to users based on their search history, previous purchase, demographics, interests etc and finally AI can display right Ads to the right audience at right time. This will give better ROI to advertisers.

According to eMarketer, by 2019, 84% of digital display Ads in the US will be programmatic.

Predictive marketing

It focuses on forecasting marketing success and AI can help marketers to predict future business accurately. Predictive analytics refers to use data mining, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to analyze the historical data to predict the future trends.

Predictive analytics refers to use data mining, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to analyze the historical data to predict the future trends.

When the user’s browses on the internet every time AI collects the information related to the user’s online behavior and analyze that data. This data reveals a lot of information like buying frequency and brand preferences of the user.

Artificial Intelligence has the ability to understand the needs and preferences of the consumer with the data it has already analyzed. By segmenting the audience, AI helps companies to understand what their customers want. It helps to predict the purchasing behavior of your target customer.

Predictive analytics helps companies to manage their production plan, and it is based on the demand and supply prediction.

According to narrative science, 44% of executives believe that AI’s most important benefit is decision making.

Voice search

According to a recent study, it is estimated that 50% of all searches will be voice search by 2020. Apple and Google developed their personal assistants known as Siri and Google assistant.

Voice search is an easier and quicker way to search for information. Voice search will change future SEO strategies so it is necessary for marketers to optimize their content with voice friendly long tail keywords.

Optimize your site for local search it is very important because the user’s say words like “near me” in voice search. Create web pages that provide direct answers to the questions because Voice search always looking for WH questions.

Target right audience

Targeting the right audience is very important in online business. Google analytics powered by Artificial intelligence can segment the audience depends on location, demographics like age, gender, education, income, profession etc and psychographics like interest, preferences, attitudes etc. It helps to decide which target audience is best for your product or service.

Artificial intelligence analyzes millions of data line item on a single user profile, that will help digital marketers to market the products to the various customer segments effectively.

Will Artificial Intelligence replace Marketers?

AI has revolutionised the customer experience in so many ways. From full facial recognition in hotels to automated customer interactions, there is very little limit to what AI can when it comes to marketing.

Thanks to machine learning, marketers can now predict and shape consumer behaviour like never before. Thanks to data mining, we can now discover patterns in large sets of data to personalise the customer experience so that engagement improves, more people are converted and e-commerce revenue increases.

But just because AI is so powerful, doesn’t mean that marketers need to worry. There will always be a role for marketers in the future, even as AI evolves.

Here are some of the many important things marketers will always need to do in the workplace…

Developing strategies

Marketing automation has freed marketers from having to carry out repetitive tasks. Now that behavioural triggered emails and product recommendations are automated, marketers have more time to focus on areas like strategy.

Cultivating brand culture

A brand’s culture encompasses the shared values of the people behind that brand. It is the passion that employees live, breathe, maintain and spread, and is something that simply cannot be replicated by a machine.

Customers know an authentic, passionate brand when they see one, and whether or not a company has state-of-the-art machine learning or not, this is something that technology cannot put a price on.

Interpreting results

While machines are fantastic at producing incredible reports and results, these reports tell us nothing without being interpreted.

Humans are able to analyse these results in ways machines simply cannot, and without the keen eye of a human behind some fascinating results, who knows what important information will get missed?

Creative edge

While AI can be used in countless ways to help businesses succeed, one way in which it will never be replaced (we hope) is creatively. Can AI write, edit and design? Can it use simile and metaphor, or creative a message with a double meaning behind it?

For now, the answer is definitely no. Human creativity is insightful, intricate and nuanced, with many layers to it. It simply cannot be replaced by a machine.

Branding and marketing in the Workplace

Branding and marketing are 2 key areas where humans will always be needed. Consumers love a brand that they can truly connect with on a deep and meaningful level and in a way that resonates with them.

Some of the world’s most successful brands have clear strategies based on communication, connection and identity. These brands understand human needs and how to meet those needs. And machines definitely cannot achieve this.

As a marketer, your role remains valued and important. Technology is here to augment and complement your role, not replace it.

How to make use of AI in your Marketing

There are several ways you can use it to your advantage, which are listed below:

Sales Forecasting

You can use AI Marketing for gathering data about past deals. It will study the data from emails, meetings, and on some occasions phone calls. AIM can relate the data to the outcome of the possible sales of your current and future campaigns.

Understand customers

Through the data gathered by AIM solutions, it can be easier for marketers to understand what their customer’s needs are as well as how and when they want it.

Marketers can also create customer profiles to make it easier for them to segregate people who are interested in their product from those who are still considering or will not purchase.

Find the trend

AI Marketing and its ability to analyze large chunks of data can be used to detect upcoming trends by “joining in” real-time conversations or events of your users.

While there are more ways to use AI for your marketing campaigns, you also need to see some concrete examples of how to use it in your strategy. Take a look at the following five examples of how to use AI in marketing:

Programmatic Ad Targeting

Basically, programmatic ad targeting is automating all or parts of the ad-buying process using software-driven technology.

The traditional way of buying/selling ads is a long, tedious process that starts with talking to a salesperson, setting up the terms of a contract and then having it executed. The future of AI in digital marketing changes that into a simpler automated process.

With the data from cookies of mobile applications and websites you used/visited, the AI can target specific customers that match the advertiser’s or business’s criteria.

The criteria can be anything from location, age, gender, and time, among others. If it does match, the ad-buying system will automatically bid on the impression and displays the winning content.

A good example of this is Facebook’s ads. It allows marketers and advertisers to use data analytics in digital marketing to create custom profiles to target and retarget their ads. Keep in mind that this is data you share on social media platforms when you agreed on the end-user license agreement (EULA).

Chatbots

Be it for inquiring, buying, or complaining, messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, Viber, and WhatsApp have made it easier for a customer to reach out to companies and tell them what’s on their mind.

It’s free and easy to use for a lot of people. The sad reality about using messaging apps for businesses, especially for big companies, is that it can be hard to reply every time a customer sends a message.

Imagine having to reply to thousands of messages within your work hours, and most of them are asking the same question!

So what do you do to keep up with your customers and answer their queries? Enter the chatbot – an AI program that can simulate a conversation with a user in natural language.

Businesses can now set predetermined answers to the frequently asked questions of their customers or help them find and buy a product they like. This significantly reduces the time that’s needed for human intervention and response, thus, saving time and money.

Speech Recognition

The manual generation of content is a tedious process. But imagine having a website that can generate its own content. You don’t have to hire writers or editors, and you’ll have a self-sustaining website that can earn for you.

Life would be easier for you as a marketer. What if you knew that an AI’s machine learning algorithms can already go this far? This is called content generation. You’ve probably read one without even knowing or noticing it.

Sadly, it can’t create long and eloquently written articles by CEOs, industry leaders, bloggers, and other talented writers offering in-depth knowledge about any given topic.

Content generation, as of this writing, can only cough up simple stories such as stock updates, financial reports, sports news, and the like.

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If you need help in generating personalized content for your website, there’s another way to do it called content intelligence. Unlike content generation, this provides creators with data-driven feedback and insights for more effective content that will yield better results.

With all the benefits of AI Marketing, does it mean that it will soon take over the jobs of marketers and content creators?

Although machine learning is making big leaps in improving its algorithm, you can sleep well for the next few years or so, knowing that AIs are still far from being perfect.

Nonetheless, AI in marketing is a very powerful tool that marketers need to be using now. It’s something marketers must adopt in their marketing analytics techniques to achieve better results and, possibly, boost the business’s ROI.