The impact that artificial intelligence has been making in marketing and business has been huge. We live in a world where it doesn’t matter where you look, you’ll see some form of AI implementation. Search engines, chatbots, self-driving cars, and even digital assistants are just a few examples.
Things are moving so fast that companies that are still waiting to adopt it into their marketing strategy may never catch up. A paper published in ResearchGate defines Artificial intelligence marketing (AI Marketing) as “a method of leveraging customer data and AI concepts like machine learning to anticipate your customer’s next move and improve the customer journey.”
AI in Marketing. Source: Mondovo
With the evolution of big data and analytic solutions, marketers can now build a clearer picture of their target audiences, all of which lie in AI Marketing. A good example of this is Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms like Salesforce, which help marketers streamline their jobs by providing channels to access everything they need to improve their marketing strategies.
Here you have a few ways you can embrace AI Marketing into your business:
Improve customer experience
It’s surprising to see how lightly that term is tossed around sometimes, but customer experience is, in short, the perception the customer has of your brand, and this is the root of how digital transformation has been rising for the past couple of years. Look at how companies' logos, websites, apps, and marketing campaigns have changed since the last decade. And believe me, AI has had a fundamental role in this.
CRM solutions can provide your marketing team with a myriad of sales tools to access and integrate customer data into their campaigns. You can see information about products, clients’ locations and accounts, any prior transactions or questions the customer has had in the past, and recommended next steps to close your sales, all from a single pane of glass.
Automated customer segmentation
Accurate customer segmentation is essential to deliver an effective marketing strategy. By dividing your target audience into smaller groups, you can create more impactful campaigns. However, traditional marketing segmentation strategies tend to result in large, generic groups, making it difficult to deliver more targeted messages that can be significant to your customers.
Salesforce, for example, analyzes patterns and trends throughout your customer data and even gives you a better idea of your customers’ lifetime value so you can better focus your marketing strategy and boost productivity to a whole new level.
As an example: IT Toolbox explains how CRM tools can be used for better customer segmentation.
Boost innovation in products and services, and marketing strategies
Manage infinite meetings, calls, emails, make presentations and reports, to then go home and do house chores and so on. With such a busy life, how could someone have time to think about new ideas?
An article recently published on Forbes discusses the notion of how leveraging artificial intelligence to overtake our less important tasks can save us a lot of time to work on some new ideas. Or as Mika Breakstone puts it: “...making humans more productive or efficient will actually indirectly increase their ability to innovate -- simply by creating the time and space for innovation.”
Furthermore, artificial intelligence doesn’t only save you time, but it also helps you in developing and shaping those new ideas on how to tackle this new automated market.
AI and humans working together. Source: The Next Web
Smarter machines = smarter humans
History time: On March 15, 2016, the world was hit by one of the most iconic artificial intelligence breakthroughs. Similar to the 1997 chess match between IBM’s Deep Blue and Garry Kasparov, an AI named AlphaGo --this time, brought to you by Google-- beat the 18-time world champion of Go, Lee Sedol, by an outstanding 4-1.
After losing the match, one of the things the famous Go player said was “I’m better already” meaning that he learned a lot just by watching the machine making moves that were unthinkable for him and, even so, outstandingly good.
This is just an example of how humans can learn from AI since they can foresee moves in a game, as well as sales opportunities and leads we haven’t thought of before.
Did you notice how I wrote “history time” before telling you a story from 2016? Well, that’s how fast things are evolving. AlphaGo has gotten much better already and, with AI tools at your disposal, so can your business.
Faster and higher quality interactions
In today’s hyper-connected world, buyers want their purchases to be home before they even thought of making that purchase. And that may sound like an exaggeration, but it’s becoming more and more believable with the rising demand for fast and reliable services. This is called “instant gratification”, and even though most people don’t know what that means, they’re demanding it more and more these days.
Every second counts to the consumer, and it’s important for businesses to deliver answers to them as fast as possible or otherwise they’ll look somewhere else. “Tools such as chatbots that immediately respond to common customer service requests or take orders are becoming more popular, and many companies are replacing the “add to cart” button with a “buy it now” option. Ease of transacting and consumption are key.” says an article published on Forbes.
Do you know something that computers can do better than humans? They’re fast! They’re much more accurate than us when evaluating large amounts of information and can make better predictions based on the data they have to work with.
Salesforce CRM has a lot of AI-powered features. They even have a name for the artificial intelligence behind all their automated processes: Einstein! Apart from being the brain behind Salesforce’s automated solutions, Einstein also has its own services like Einstein Supervisor and Einstein Case Management.
Einstein. Source: Salesforce
By wisely implementing artificial intelligence in your marketing strategy, you will be able to get more accurate outcome predictions, improvements in personalized shopping experience and automated interactions with your customers, and incredible data mining capabilities that would be just a dream in a non-AI-powered business.
Are you interested in leveraging Artificial Intelligence for your business? Contact us and book a time. We’re always happy to help!
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References
- Thiraviyam, T. (2018). Artificial intelligence Marketing. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328580914_Artificial_intelligence_Marketing
- CRM Desk. (2016). 4 Ways to Use CRM and Customer Segmentation to Benefit Your Brand. Retrieved from https://it.toolbox.com/blogs/johndoe/4-ways-to-use-crm-and-customer-segmentation-to-benefit-your-brand-060916
- Breakstone, M. (Mar 6, 2019). Three Ways Artificial Intelligence Can Drive Human Innovation. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2019/03/06/three-ways-artificial-intelligence-can-drive-human-innovation/#44ad5a207940
- Tjepkema, L. (2019). What Is Artificial Intelligence Marketing & Why Is It So Powerful? Retrieved from https://www.emarsys.com/resources/blog/artificial-intelligence-marketing-solutions/
