For savvy marketers, Artificial Intelligence is no longer a new vocabulary. For those of you, who have been following industry developments, you must have come across AI Marketing. Through AI marketing, digital marketing practitioners have managed to improve their personalization approach. In turn, this increases productivity and performance. This data-driven marketing strategy has taken the digital marketing industry by storm.
Digital marketers say that Artificial Intelligence has led to a cheaper cost of consumer experience personalization. Basically, the traditional campaigns spent huge amounts to achieve consumer personalization. Through AI marketing, whenever a prospect or a consumer interacts with a product, this data is recorded and stored for future optimization.
Therefore, AI takes sales forecasting to a higher level. Further, marketers have the ability to understand their consumers better. Unlike traditional marketing practices, AI marketing leads to the creation of detailed and more accurate consumer profiles. Therefore, marketers are able to optimize their digital marketing campaigns.
In this article, we feature real-world examples of current Artificial Intelligence applications in marketing. We will highlight the application areas, followed by a brief explanation and example companies that have already implemented the application. Keep reading to gain more insights on how brands exploit Artificial Intelligence.
#1 Artificial Intelligence Helps Marketing Through Implementation of Better Search Approaches
A decade ago, if you used a search engine to look for a product, you would not find it unless you knew the actual name. However, today’s marketer’s benefit from Artificial Intelligence as it helps make search smarter. Therefore, with the improved search engine capacity enabled by AI, you are able to find products easily.
E-commerce sites have basically followed in the footsteps of Google. They have developed auto-suggest corrections and also have an advanced search feature. For instance, if you use Amazon search tool, or want to search a movie on Netflix, you will get tens of suggestions once you start typing. If you make a typo mistake on Google search engine, you will get an auto-correction suggestion. Through AI enabled search engines, brands can achieve more sales. Consider the fact that even if you don’t know the name of a product, alternative search terms help you find the product online.
These search engines use the Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Through these technologies, it’s easier for brands to be found online. Brands have gone an extra mile to create possible variations as keywords. Therefore, if you make a mistake and instead type a different name, you will still be directed to brands using the search term as a keyword.
Example
See the screenshot below. By inserting the term Food on Amazon search engine, there are several suggestions that pop up. This is courtesy of Machine Learning, which is part of AI strategy. Therefore, whenever you search on the E-commerce website, you can easily get relevant results relating to the search term used. This allows the E-commerce website to optimize the chances of making more sales.
#2 Programmatic Advertising
This is another example use case of Artificial Intelligence in marketing. Basically, Programmatic advertising refers to an automated process of buying and selling advertisements. The advertisers and publishers connect to ad inventory, where they exchange adverts for a fee. These Artificial Intelligence technologies use algorithms that are intended to analyze consumer behaviour. The data collected is used for real-time campaign optimization.
This is done through targeting the consumers, who show high chances of converting. Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) are used to facilitate the process of buying ad inventory. Cookie data is also collected to allow marketers make an informed decision. The publishers manage unsold ad inventory through Supply Side Platforms. This includes data showing for how long a certain prospect was on a certain site.
According to Seerinteractive.com, Programmatic advertising trends are growing among the marketers. Further, statistics by CMO indicate that seventy-six percent of marketers cited programmatic buying as important. Over 40% expressed their trust on Programmatic advertising to help them reach the target audience (CMO).
Example
The Economist is a real example of a company that benefited from programmatic advertising. The magazine realized that they were not attracting many readers. They embarked on a campaign that focused largely on reluctant readers. Through analyzing web/app usage, the Economist managed to identify reading preferences so as to better target their prospects. They also focused on matching cookie, subscriber and other data set to achieve robust segments and create lookalike audiences. Here is a screenshot showing the results of the campaign.
The success of this campaign is as a result of credible data gathered through AI enabled techniques. This improved the performance, and in the long run, the results of the programmatic advertising were impressive as illustrated above.
#3 Application of Artificial Intelligence to Assist in Market Forecasting and Closing of Deals
Brands want to ensure they can meet customers’ expectations throughout. Further, marketers want to be able to tell whether conversations with customers will yield a sale. Through these systems, brands can effectively predict the market demand. It is also through these systems that marketers can know whether to proceed to talk to a prospect or discontinue the discussion.
If you can better predict how many pieces of a certain product you will sell, then you know when to invest in marketing to drive higher sales. Further, you can stock your inventory. Ultimately, you will have better margin in your business accounts thanks to Artificial Intelligence for enabling business intelligence (techemergence.com).
A good example of software that uses AI to advice marketing reps is Qurious. The software uses natural language processing to identify success points and failure points. Then the software uses the data to advise the marketing rep on strategies to win the sale. For example, a marketing rep, who already uses it while talking to a prospect, the software can advise him whether to wrap up or to put more efforts to secure the sale. See screenshot below for an explanation of how brands can use this AI system called Qurious. Also, you will see a testimony from the CEO of StartEngine an equity crowdfunding company that uses Qurious software to aid marketing reps.
#4 Artificial Intelligence Enables Brands to Make Recommendations/Content Curation
Through AI systems, brands are able to discover, gather, and present digital content to target consumers. Note that content curation is different from content marketing! Content curation involves gathering content from various sources and delivering the content to target audience in an organized manner. Artificial Intelligence enables information to be gathered from different datasets.
A real example of content curation using Artificial Intelligence is seen in the development of a new cognitive coaching system. This system is developed by Under Armour and IBM. The aim of the system is to transform personal fitness and health. The project was powered by IBM Watson. Under Armour is a sports apparel company and they combine the user data from their record app. Through this data, the brand has an ability to offer relevant training advice on lifestyle based on the gathered data.
Screenshot: econsultancy.com
Brands can exploit Artificial Intelligence to come up with marketing strategies using a similar approach as above. Through content curation, a brand is able to target the right customers. Then they can send insights on a regular basis. This is a good approach to run a campaign that aims at maximizing subscriptions.
A brand can use AI to gather prospects data. Then, they push notifications to this consumer. These notifications act as marketing messages intended for attracting the attention of the potential customer. Eventually, the prospect will subscribe or purchase the product because it offers the benefits he/she wanted to receive.
#5 Use of Chatbots Driven by Artificial Intelligence
Chatbots are crucial in today’s marketing. Customers want to have responses to their inquiries. On the other hand, brands want to keep customers engaged. Considering that customers have dozens of alternatives, it is important for companies to employ the use of Chatbots, these help to increase customer retention.
Consider a company serving millions of customers. It’s hard to answer each one of them through a company’s customer service desk. So, what is the best solution? Such a company invests in Chatbots to keep the customer engaged. Then before long, a marketing representative starts talking to the customer. Through such an approach, the customers will always come back as they are answered.
KLM, a Royal Dutch Airline, invested in what is commonly referred to as KLM`s BB. This is a short form of BlueBot. The aim was to help customers book a ticket, send confirmation, deliver flight updates and answer passenger questions. The SVP was interviewed on the main reason for this move and here is a screenshot of what he had to say.
This use case shows that Chatbots are a huge asset in sales and marketing. Consider that clients want to have answers in real-time. Further, they need accuracy. Without BlueBot, KLM would probably not be able to record more than 1.7 million messages sent by 500,000 passengers. Driving customers’ satisfaction starts with being available to answer queries.
#6 Use of Artificial Intelligence to Improve Ad Performance
Brands want to be able to gain insights into their advertising activities. This is so as to be able to determine what works and what doesn’t work. Through Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, it is possible to gain insights, on which online advertising efforts work. Through such insights, companies can know where to invest and where not to invest.
AI is what enables the marketers to know the number of clicks that an ad got and in which region. Basically, the analytics results are based on the data collected from an advert. If an advert is getting more clicks in Asia, then it’s clear that the marketers should focus on showing the advert there. This has the potential of delivering a high Return on Investment.
Albert is a software that uses AI and Machine Learning to offer insights into the effectiveness of an online advert. The software helps marketers to extract data from different advert channels. These include emails, mobile, social search and also display. Effective sales and marketing would not be easy without such kind of software.
Therefore, they can be able to offer insights into the future when it comes to advertising. This way, brands can increase leads, lift their ROI, and at the same time increase conversions. Here is a real testimony from a company that uses this AI software to monitor the performance of their online advertising.
#7 Artificial Intelligence for Dynamic Pricing
Marketers don’t only want to be able to predict the market trends. They also want to apply effective dynamic pricing strategies. This enables brands to optimize sales when demand is high. For instance, Artificial Intelligence enables airlines to offer different prices for different dates. To determine such pricing, the airline would need to know how many people have checked out the flight availability data for that date. They will also check how many people have shown the intention to book in relation to actual bookings made. Then, using this data, they can determine whether to lower the prices to increase bookings or increase the price to take advantage of the high demand.
Example
Amazon uses dynamic pricing to determine the price of items. Therefore, you might check the price of an item in the morning and come back in the evening the price has changed. This is a good use case of Artificial Intelligence to set dynamic pricing. Top monitor price changes on Amazon check out https://camelcamelcamel.com.
To Sum Up
Artificial Intelligence enables brands to run various operations. There are several advantages of taking advantage of AI in running business operations. In marketing, marketers rely on AI to determine the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. Through this, they are able to determine where to invest more and where to stop investing. AI has also been resourceful when it comes to consumer engagements.
We have seen how KLM uses AI enabled Chatbots to attend to customer inquiries. Without Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing systems, this wouldn’t be possible. Businesses should adopt these systems to target their potential clients. If you check many websites nowadays, you will notice a chat screen that pops up asking you how you can be helped. This is another example of Chatbots in marketing. If you reply, then the chat bot sends you a message asking for contact details. These details are used to contact you later.
Modern day businesses should invest in AI Marketing. This not only simplifies marketing, but it also ensures you don’t miss opportunities. Consider use of AI in Search Engines. E-Commerce giants like Amazon help drive sales by learning what consumers search for and using this data to give suggestions. Through this, they are able to secure more sales. Is your brand on pace with the modern day marketing trends?
published under Digital Marketing Guide
