If you are new to artificial intelligence marketing, you may be one of the few. According to Forbes, 84% of marketing organizations are implementing or expanding AI and machine learning in 2018. Today, we’ve decided to unpack the increasingly popular practice with answers to five common questions about marketing with artificial intelligence.
What is artificial intelligence marketing?
Artificial intelligence marketing is a method that uses AI techniques such as gathering customer data and machine learning to market to customers. What this means is that by incorporating AI techniques into your marketing strategy, you can personalize and improve the customer journey. Artificial intelligence marketing is often used by brands to organize the large volumes of customer information now available via various digital marketing channels.
One real-world example of AI marketing is the way some companies have replaced chat features on websites with AI bots to target different customer segments and personalize the conversation.
What are some crucial elements of artificial intelligence marketing?
One of the most useful applications of artificial intelligence marketing is in data analysis. AI can often streamline the manual work required to pull and analyze large swaths of customer information, minimizing the amount of time it takes for marketers to uncover actionable insights. It can even serve to predict outcomes based on a prospect’s historical data through techniques like predictive analytics.
Machine learning takes this one step further. Machine learning is an application of artificial intelligence that allows systems to automatically learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed to do so. Imagine that your website could populate different products based on an individual visitor’s purchase history.
However, one of the most critical aspects of artificial intelligence is a lot less machine-like. AI holds the ability to leverage data to interpret human emotion and connection. By accurately interpreting engagement in websites, online advertising, social media, and even email, AI can provide the path to a more personalized customer journey.
How can AI marketing be used?
There are many ways you can enlist AI marketing to support your business goals. For example, if you have a list of thousands of possible leads, but no time to create a customized approach to pursuing them, your business will suffer. AI marketing can leverage predictive lead scoring to prioritize them for you. Some AI software can even recommend different plans on how to approach them.
As another example, programmatic advertising is a way to use artificial intelligence to optimize and automate the process of buying and selling digital ads thus making ad buys more efficient.
To add, AI’s data management and organization capabilities make it a lot easier to customize your marketing approach for different customers. With data management barriers removed, you can increase productivity and regain your most valuable resource as a marketer, your time.
What are some of the barriers to AI marketing?
Although all of this may sound like an amazing way to improve efficiency and increase the scope of your marketing efforts, there are barriers to any new technology. One of the chief barriers to AI marketing success may be your ability to support the large amounts of data required for it to be effective. For instance, if your website does not generate enough traffic to meet the minimum requirements from your AI tool, AI marketing may be a non-starter.
Another issue that many companies face is finding talented employees who understand AI well enough to incorporate it into your business. In fact, three out of five marketing executives in the Forbes Insights survey say that the availability of personnel with the needed expertise is a moderate to severe challenge in fully implementing AI solutions.
Marketers who intend to implement AI marketing solutions must take the time to ensure that their business can support it on both a practical and “personal” level.
Are other marketers using AI Marketing yet?
As reported by Forbes, 58% of enterprises are already tackling the most challenging marketing problems with AI and machine learning. With the majority of today’s marketers on board, it’s only a matter of time until the late adopters fall in line.
Still not sure if you are ready to take the plunge into AI marketing? While barriers exist, there are many different ways to implement AI incrementally to minimize risk. Consider incorporating different aspects of AI into existing marketing efforts and building large-scale projects into your marketing roadmap down the line. In the end, you may find that the increase in productivity you gain makes artificial intelligence marketing all the more attainable.
Lilly is a former Digital Engagement Intern at RDW. When she’s not busy learning about digital marketing and PR you’ll find her shopping or at one of Rhode Island’s wonderful beaches or restaurants.