AI in Marketing – Why Marketers are excited about AI?

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is already transforming the marketing industry. AI can help improve customer experiences and increase conversions by optimizing and speeding up a range of marketing operations.

If you work in enterprise marketing, chances are you already have some sort of AI-powered solution in your martech stack. However, many marketers are still unaware of the advantages of AI and machine learning over “non-intelligent” marketing tools.

You’re not alone if you haven’t totally jumped on board or are merely considering dipping your toes in the water. Investing in new technology is a big step, and it’s much scarier when it’s based on complicated concepts like machine learning algorithms.

Artificial intelligence isn’t just a science-fiction notion anymore. AI has the ability to improve your marketing operations in a variety of ways, from analytics to user experience.

Aspects Of AI That Terrify Marketers

1. Marketing As An Art Form Is Being Phased Out

When it comes to biases, I’m definitely biased on this one! Being a marketer has given me the opportunity to exercise my creative muscles, which is one of my favorite aspects of the job.

Will we reach a moment when marketing no longer appreciates creative skills if AI can generate new forms of visual arts or brand logos and if algorithms can mimic creativity?

We’re not quite there yet in terms of delegating all creative decision-making to computers, but we’re getting close, and I’m concerned that as technology advances, marketers will have fewer opportunities to provide creative input.

2. It Will Make Us Less Intelligent

Artificial intelligence’s rise will allow us to delegate menial chores to machines, which I fear may limit some of the abilities marketers (and humans in general!) have traditionally used on a daily basis.

My parents, for example, did not allow me to use a calculator in primary school since they felt it was the only way I would learn how to do fundamental math in my brain. So when the cash register broke down at work for whatever reason, I was able to find out how to manage cash transactions quickly and efficiently.

While AI has the potential to solve many issues, I am concerned that as we become more dependent on technology, our own abilities may deteriorate, at least in the growing number of areas where algorithms can outperform humans.

3. Existing biases can be amplified by AI

Unfortunately, we all have biases, and while we presume robots are constructed without them, studies have shown that AI is picking up on some of humanity’s less desirable features.

John Giannandrea, Google’s Head of AI, has expressed his concern about the growing importance of bias in machine learning*. The reason for this is twofold:

• People that create AI technologies are flawed individuals who are disproportionately white and male.
• AI frequently gathers data from essentially human sources, such as social media and search engines, and incorporates those biases into their programming.

Biases in AI could lead to things like decreasing a lead score based on a person’s gender or not presenting marketing job advertising to persons of specific age groups or educational backgrounds, which could be problematic for marketers.

Why Marketers Are Getting Excited About AI?

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI) Is Becoming Increasingly Powerful

However, the most intriguing aspect of AI for B2B sales and marketing is what is still to come.

AI research and development is advancing at a breakneck pace, thanks in large part to a healthy balance of rivalry and collaboration among technological heavyweights. Apple’s move to open up its usually secretive AI research last year is an excellent example of this. Apple’s choice was both a significant boost to the already booming field and a clear signal of which way the wind is blowing.

So, what can we anticipate in the future?

Deep learning is still in its infancy in the business world, but it has a lot of potentials. Running more “basic” machine-learning algorithms on your marketing data, for example, can produce very useful results that can be used to inform future campaigns; however, deep learning has the potential to go even further, constantly learning from experiences in order to develop, refine, and correct its own algorithms over time.

2. Don’t Get Left Behind As AI Takes Off

The AI trend is increasingly taking on in B2B marketing—and demand generation in general. Predictive analytics and chatbots are just a few of the AI technologies that are already improving the way we do business. These tools may really learn from your historical data—for example, which types of leads closed transactions and which didn’t—to help you understand the kind of leads and accounts to target in the future using machine learning (a type of AI).

Furthermore, there is no smoke without fire; whether it’s account-based marketing and artificial intelligence (AI), or content marketing and social media marketing in their early stages, the excitement or “hype” is usually derived from a recognition that these developments do offer significant benefits— even if some commentators and practitioners get carried away early on.

3. Access Of Complex Tools And Algorithms

Until recently, the only firms capable of processing massive volumes of data were large global corporations such as IBM, SAS, and Microsoft, which sold goods and services that were beyond of reach for small and midsize marketing budgets.

It took thousands or millions of raw data points to figure out which clients are the most profitable or which media to buy and at what price. These skills, which were previously only available to Fortune 500 organizations and major enterprise IT firms, are becoming more widely available to startups and smaller businesses.

Marketers may now use technologies like Salesforce Einstein to help surface marketing leads that are more likely to convert into paying customers, or InstaScaler to evaluate your website, determine the best traffic sources for your product, and develop dynamic ads to boost traffic and conversions.

4. Menial Tasks Will Be Automated Out Of Existence

One of the great promises of AI is that it will relieve marketers of some of their time-consuming manual activities, allowing them to focus on higher-value jobs.

For example, not long ago, many businesses devoted a percentage of their sales force to manning the website inbox and addressing any questions that came in through the chat window. These employees spent hours answering the same questions again and over, but today’s intelligent chatbot solutions, such as HubSpot and Drift, can harness data from millions of encounters to automatically answer typical inquiries without the need for a human.

5. You Can Start Using It Right Now

It’s important not to take technology’s ability to be used instantly for granted, especially when it comes to AI, which is still in its infancy.
When someone says “AI,” weird thoughts like these spring to mind. That’s reasonable; cyborgs and supercomputers capable of outwitting humans are the stuff of science fiction.

But, as exciting and possibly life-changing as these technologies sound, they are still many years away from practical implementation, let alone commercial availability. (However, a robot once defeated a human world champion in “Go,” the world’s most difficult board game… But I don’t think it’ll be picked up by Hollywood.)

On the other hand, less visible applications of Artificial Intelligence are gradually becoming a part of our daily lives—from Siri to Alexa, and, of course, Tesla. AI applications can also be found in products. For example, Facebook’s capacity to recognize your friends’ faces from their photos, as well as Amazon.com’s extremely effective targeted marketing, are both powered by AI technology.

So, although their more fantastical but as-yet-unfeasible siblings are making all the news, these and many other more practical Artificial Intelligence technologies are nowhere, in the real world—and providing very real benefits and opportunities to organizations of all types.

Marketers’ Role in AI

Artificial intelligence has been around for decades, but it appears that the term has become unavoidable in recent months, particularly among marketers.

AI, like so many other advances before it, has become the industry’s “it” term, the gleaming new thing that we’re all eager to adopt as widely as possible.

Here are a few reasons why marketers are so enthusiastic about AI.

1. Personalizing the Customer Experience

“According to a survey by management consulting firm Accenture, over 40% of consumers switched companies owing to a lack of trust and insufficient customization whereas 43% of people are more likely to buy from businesses that cater to their specific needs.”

The way people react to and interact with marketing communications is changing. Traditional marketing methods like newspaper advertisements and direct mail are no longer as effective as they once were. One reason for this is that today’s consumers demand brands to personalize messaging based on their location, demographics, and hobbies. Non-personalized marketing will elicit little or no response from most people.

Marketers use AI to customize their messaging on a per-person basis.

This technology uses data from previous brand interactions to forecast customer behavior.

This means that marketers may provide content and marketing communications at the optimum possible times to convert leads into sales.

Flipkart, for instance, has a track record of:

• You’ve spent money on everything you’ve ever bought.
• Your browsing history for products
• The places you’ve lived and worked, as well as the things you’ve hoped for, such as TV series and music you’ve listened to and apps you’ve downloaded.
• Devices you’ve used to watch movies or download ebooks Product ratings and reviews you’ve left.
• It can use this information to provide product recommendations based on your preferences, previous purchases, and what other people who bought the same goods as you have purchased.

2. Algorithmic Ad Targeting

A/B testing was the standard method for optimizing marketing messaging and displaying ads.

It was a tiresome effort to speak with a salesperson, set up the details of a contract, and then have it implemented.

With AI, you may use algorithms to optimize your adverts on a continuous basis based on conversions and interactions.

Google has recognized that assessing performance in aggregate isn’t the best way to figure out how advertising work. Because the click-through rate (CTR) is a misnomer, they’ve switched to conversion metrics (CV). It’s no longer a reliable indicator of actual intent. The intent isn’t measured by aggregating behaviors by ad format. It is rather by knowing the events in the buying funnel that influence purchasing behavior. And here’s our primer on Artificial Intelligence and why it’ll be the next step in the CMO’s evolution.

AI Algorithms look at the accounts a user follows and display the adverts that are most likely to be relevant to them. Because fewer ads are shown to people who aren’t interested in them, the user gets a better experience and the advertiser gets a better ROI.

3. Bots That Assist Customer Service

Apps like Instagram, Snapchat, and WhatsApp have made it easier for customers to contact businesses and tell them what’s on their minds, whether it’s for inquisitiveness, purchasing, or after-sales assistance.

Some companies are now adopting chatbots to deal with frequent client queries and deliver rapid responses at any time of day or night, in order to minimize effort and provide a faster response to customers. Chatbots can be configured to respond to frequently asked queries with pre-programmed responses or to route the chat to a human agent if the subject is too complicated. This saves time and decreases strain for customer service employees, allowing them to focus on situations that demand a more personalized response.

“Alexa, Please switch on the Lights!”

We’re becoming increasingly familiar with chatbots, and in some cases preferring them to a real person, thanks to virtual assistants like Alexa, Siri, etc. Chatbots are not only less expensive than adding more team members to handle inquiries, but they can also do so more quickly and, in some cases, more “humanly.”

4. Content Curation

“Most brands, according to Gartner, struggle not with gathering enough data, but with offering enough content to provide a personalized experience for everyone.”

Stylist magazine featured three autonomously generated articles developed by Articoolo in its special “Robots” edition, demonstrating how sophisticated AI for content production has gotten.

In a variety of ways, artificial intelligence (AI) may assist you in speeding up and optimizing your content marketing. News stories and reports that would take human writers hours or days to compose can now be generated in seconds by automated content technologies.

You might not be considering replacing your copywriter with AI software just yet, but it’s possible that we’re closer than you think. Several prominent businesses, like Forbes, are already publishing material that is generated in part by artificial intelligence.

This application of AI speeds up and streamlines content creation, allowing marketers to scale up their content marketing efforts – something that 47 percent of marketers claims is their toughest issue.

5. Dynamic Pricing

Dynamic Pricing is a pricing approach in which the price of the same product or service varies depending on the customer’s ability to pay, urgency, or other factors.

To maximize both sales and profitability, AI is used to dynamically set product prices based on demand, availability, client profiles, and other criteria.

The website camelcamelcamel.com, which tracks the price of Amazon products over time, is a good example of dynamic pricing in action. For each item, a graph depicts how much the cost varies depending on the season, popularity, etc.

You’ve probably seen dynamic pricing at work if you’ve ever browsed for a flight and then returned a few days later to find the price had gone up a few hundred dollars.

6. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

From modest database product searches on e-commerce sites to search engines like Google, which are used by millions of people every day, search algorithms are always improving.

AI-assisted search can detect misspellings and suggest alternatives (“did you mean…”), as well as be impacted by your previous browsing or purchase habits.

When a user searches for “stationery shops” on their phone, most search engines assume they’re looking for a shop within a few miles, rather than investigating coffee shops in general.

To interpret complex patterns in speech and recognize meaning from spoken search requests, which are substantially different from standard typed searches, artificial intelligence is required.

Marketers may also employ AI to optimize content for voice search, which can assist improve SEO and site traffic as we move closer to a voice-controlled digital world.

Conclusion

In a world where technology is becoming increasingly important, ignoring the benefits and possibilities of AI in marketing will ensure that your company falls behind its competition.

While advanced artificial intelligence may appear frightening, marketing software that incorporates this technology is extremely user-friendly and simple to integrate with existing systems. Yesterday was the perfect opportunity to dive into the realm of AI-powered matches if you haven’t already.