AI-ML are not just random buzzwords in Digital Marketing World. They have been reshaping and redefining the way we do things. The majority of industries are already making use of both Artificial Intelligence and machine learning. Marketers are also using Artificial Intelligence and machine learning in incredible ways. Many enterprises are leveraging AI-powered business analytics and intelligence systems to guide their own digital transformations, something that will become increasingly important with the impending arrival of the Internet of Things.
Companies are leveraging AI-powered business analytics to guide their own digital transformations. AI and machine learning have particularly powerful applications that are revolutionizing marketing strategies.
Before we dive into the ways in which Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the nature of digital marketing, let’s make sure everyone’s on the same page about what AI really is and make your mind think, where you have noticed it while diving in YouTube or Facebook or Google.
- With the help of AI and ML, it is possible to cater to your consumers’ needs and provide the required assistance 24x7
- A lot of publications use ML tools extensively to create unique content for consumers
- AI and ML can take care of many repetitive or mundane tasks seamlessly without any manual effort
Refining Content
The major way that AI and machine learning are benefiting big brands has to do with the insight data it provides which enables them to create better content, relevant to the users. Major publications are already using this trick to take existing data and combine it with keywords to create unique content that attracts more visitors to a site. You may have noticed that the major news publications like the Hindustan Times, Indian Express, Times of India, or even The Hindu have been doing this for quite a while. You’ve probably read an AI-powered story from The Media houses in the past without even realizing it – that’s how good this can be.
There are multiple ways in which you can use machine learning to curate effective content that can keep your users engaged and interested. There are also tools that can help you decide on the best words, tonality or even subject lines that will have the maximum impact. A lot of publications use machine learning tools extensively to create unique content for consumers. These tools also allow us to deliver a personalized experience to the end-users.
While we may not be aware, but trust me when I say this, we all are consuming a lot of content that is showcased to us using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning capabilities. Some examples include Google News, YouTube Recommendations, Facebook Suggested Posts, etc.
The Major Example is your Facebook Newsfeed, which shows you the "Suggested" content. Brands use these tools as a way to offload certain basic content creation duties so actual humans are free to focus on bigger and more important things like OTT content or videos (Example: Youtube suggested content) that as it uses your behavior and other data to show the content.
Refining Email Marketing Process
Artificial Intelligence and machine learning are also benefiting Brands in terms of maximizing their email efforts. Marketers of all types use Artificial Intelligence to not only personalize campaigns based on preferences and past user behaviors but also to even automate things like A/B testing (testing two different versions of an email to see which one is better).
You can even use Artificial Intelligence to determine when the best time of the week is to reach out to someone. If you have an OTT service (Example Hotstar, Voot), for example, the chances are high that all users have wildly different engagement patterns because that’s part of what attracted them to your service in the first place. You can easily notice it on shared Hotstar Accounts. Brands use data collected by users' past behavior to see when they’re most active and reach out to them accordingly to maximize response rates because there are higher chances to get a lead when the user is online.
Refining Time Usage
As we have seen, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning can take care of many repetitive or mundane tasks seamlessly without any manual effort. This saves your time and allows you to focus on important tasks and work on bigger activities that require more human intervention.
Refining Web Design
Artificial Intelligence and machine learning have grown sophisticated enough that they’re being used to help marketers design better websites based on the real experiences of their past and existing customers. There are tools like Grid, for example, that take user-provided data from various sources to essentially “tell you” where to put things like images, text, or CTAs i.e. calls-to-action on a landing page. Let’s say you had an eLearning or mLearning platform and weren’t sure from a design perspective where certain elements needed to be in order to create the most accessible services possible for your customers. These applications will analyze how people are interacting with your platform and will remove all guesswork from the equation. You get to design a better service that’s naturally more engaging, and you get to do so at a fraction of the price. Everybody wins.
Through Artificial Intelligence algorithms, it could also be possible to extend the same gains into the realm of UX (User Experience) as well. You can collect and analyze all sorts of information like location, demographics, and even devices-browser being used and use AI to offer content that’s more relevant for each user in these categories.
In the end, it’s important to understand that AI and machine learning aren’t “redefining” marketing from the perspective of replacing human employees. Instead, almost the opposite is true. Digital Marketers are able to offload many menial tasks to these types of tools with incredible efficiency, allowing the actual humans to work smarter, not harder. This, in turn, creates a perfect storm of effective campaigns and very satisfied customers, which is a position that every brand wants to be in.
Refining Customer Experience
Improving and enhancing the customer experience is always a priority for all brands. Gone are the days when we had to manually look up customer data, analyze it, and provide a suitable solution for our customers. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are of great help here. The technologies are very fast, effective, and efficient in understanding customers, their behavior, their likes and dislikes, and, accordingly, process the information quickly to deliver a smoother experience to the end consumers with data-backed solutions.
The systems are easy to manage and operate seamlessly once you do the initial setup. One of the biggest examples is the popular usage of chatbots for customer support. Also, with the help of AI and ML, it is possible to cater to your consumers’ needs and provide the required assistance 24×7.
Refining Data Availability
We all have enormous data available to us that is a rich source of information about our audiences and how they respond. However, it can be a really tasking job to organize, understand and analyze this data and drive insights manually. Artificial Intelligence can be aptly used here to do this task effortlessly and gain valuable insights about the users. This can further aid in devising impactful marketing strategies that drive results.
Refining Customer Behavior
Many brands are using artificial intelligence to not only better understand past user behaviors, but to also take that information and use it to improve future ones, too. In simple words, If you can predict the behavior of someone based on things they’ve done or shown interest in in the past, you can generally predict what they’ll do in the future, too. This gives digital marketers an opportunity to effortlessly eliminate those people unlikely to convert, thus allowing them to focus all of their attention on those profiles that represent higher-quality leads.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning can analyze data at a huge scale in much lesser time. It also has the capability to generate apt predictions about future behavior and actions basis the available data. The predictive tools can also give you insights about consumers’ purchase cycle, patterns, preferences, time-based habits, etc., which can be rightly used for marketing plans.
Before I sum up the things, I am pretty sure the technologies will progress even further and take digital marketing as well as overall marketing to newer heights very soon. These were some of the ways we are seeing a change in the digital landscape through the usage of AI and ML. There might be a time when a machine program can read my thoughts and generate an entire blog post encapsulating my thoughts.