Artificial Intelligence redefines marketing operations
Smart devices paved the way for new-age Oil…
If humans time travels back to the origination of electronic devices, a bulky vacuum device that could alter the electrical impulse flowing through it was revolutionizing the world of computing. No one would have believed that the majority of the world population would be able to access computing devices, in other words, computing devices would be considered as an extension to their existence. Two key milestones in the world of consumer electronics are: Launch of personal computers and smartphones. These two remarkable inventions broke all barriers and reflected unimaginable use cases in reality — from handy cameras to social connectedness.
It would be surprising why do we even talk about the evolution of computing devices. Let’s imagine mobiles or PCs as a platform connecting businesses and consumers. From consumers perspective, mobile device serves as a trustable assistant which brings much-needed services from different corners of the world. Businesses leverage personal devices as a channel of sales and marketing, for instance, mobile devices are the retail real estate of eCommerce firms. At first, it seems that both sides are resonating well with the ecosystem with devices at its epicenters. Going one step deeper, as both consumers and businesses interact continuously through different channels — own Apps or site, google platforms, social media — live stream of information is being transceived. A one or two decades back, the computational power of servers did not permit to operationalize quantum of information, but later tech giants started perceiving data as the new-age ‘oil’ which primarily affected the marketing landscape of the business.
How can we leverage AI for marketing effectiveness?
Data gathered from a customer can be utilized for —
- Product development
- Personalized experience
- Targeted Advertising
- Exploring cross-selling opportunities
With the plethora of data flowing, customers needed to be shown relevant information at any time. Irrelevant or inappropriate information would hit customer satisfaction scores badly. With this as a critical point in the journey, marketers shall move from the segmented approach relying on intuitive heuristics to individualized preferences, personalizing value, and employing the right channels for customers. From an operational standpoint, human cognitive intelligence cannot deliver these activities at scale to keep customers engaged.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) shall be deployed to collect and derive insights from data at a much higher scale. In simple terms, AI is an integration of human cognitive skills built as a software element. It operates at a faster speed and a larger scale. AI enables machines to interact with humans understanding the complex language structure and providing the right answers to the user’s queries. One key advantage of using AI is that it becomes more powerful when new use cases are presented. It is expected that around 1.2 billion devices will have embedded AI by 2023. AI has the ability to interpret thousands of data lines about a single individual profile which will help digital marketers to target specific customer bases efficiently. AI helps both businesses and consumers to make the right decisions in limited time which in turn reduces the error rate. Traditional marketing techniques focus on the reaching the customers with the right products or services. Now, marketers started understanding how the customers reach their premises, in other words, mapping customer journey. AI plays a vital role in navigating information about user journey helping marketers to understand the user persona better. As AI takes up the role of data synthesizer, marketing teams now have the leeway to work only on strategizing core marketing competencies and campaigns.
AI powered use-cases for better results!
Technological evolution created precedence in consumers’ minds that services shall be available to them around the clock. Customer service, during the customer journey, happens at two stages: 1. Pre-purchase wherein customers would want to know more about products 2. Post-purchase — customers would require clarifications about purchased products. By automating these processes, firms would reduce their cost structures and earn brownie points for customer engagement. Chatbots powered with AI can be incorporated at all possible digital channels. It communicates with consumers naturally and has the bandwidth to interface with multiple customers at a time. An added advantage is that it can be scaled up to meet increased traffic without many difficulties.
Have you wondered when Amazon rightly found that ‘you have recently shifted to a new home’? The mastermind behind this prediction is AI again. By unifying the data from an individual, AI understands the pattern. Based on this pattern, AI engine will predict future behavior. This phenomenon is called ‘Predictive Analytics’. If marketers understand the next activity of a customer, they shall just focus on activities surrounding customer’s interests. For instance, Cardlytics provides rewards platforms to financial institutions — the platform analyzes the customer spending behavior and curates customized offers and deals.
AI interprets data, makes future predictions, communicate with consumers, and going one step ahead, AI also has the ability to create content. As organizations started leveraging data from customers activities, it was inevitable moving from static to dynamic websites — the website or mobile App is individualized for customers. AI architects the content to be shared with each customer based on past experiences with the customer. From a marketing perspective, this process is attributed to ‘Personalization’. The key benefit of content curation is the recommendation engine which enhances the cross-selling and up-selling opportunities thereby increasing the customer lifetime value (CLTV).
AI — miles to go for a better future!
The need for AI deployment in marketing is gaining momentum continuously. Companies of all scale wanted to exploit social media marketing and hence need some AI tools to increase the efficacy of the marketing campaigns thereby increasing the marketing ROI. As mentioned earlier, AI increases CLTV by engaging with the customers and reducing the customer attrition rate. Semantic searches are currently trending in the market which could optimize SEO strategy and gets customers straight to the intended pages. Going forward, tech giants will discover new impactful use cases of AI to empower their digital assets.
