Presented by Emarsys.
Artificial Intelligence. The term brings to mind robots, time-travel, science fiction, and other descriptions only fit for the far-reaching future. However, marketing experts are seeing that the future is now. Artificial intelligence (AI) marketing is playing, and will continue to play, a much more significant role in the way brands market to their customers.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":2095690,"post_type":"sponsored","post_chan":"sponsored","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"marketing,","session":"D"}']By 2017, AI marketing is projected to be the dominant force in the marketing industry. Using this technology will allow marketers to manage campaigns and know audiences through a more data-driven and more uniquely personal level than ever before. This will also arm the industry with big data insights, greatly boosting campaign performance and ROI with essentially no extra effort from marketing teams.
But what, exactly, is AI marketing and what kind of impact will it have on the industry?
To best understand AI marketing, it’s important to fully understand the concepts of big data and machine learning. Big data is exactly what it claims to be: a way for a marketing team to collect and segment large amounts of data combined from several sources with minimal effort. This data can be used to send the right message to the right person at the right time, through the consumer’s channel of choice.
Machine learning allows marketers to identify trends and commonalities in behavior. Through this learning, marketers can then take this information to predict trends and the likelihood of reoccurring behavior in consumers. This intersection is where AI marketing solutions come into play.
The beauty of AI platforms lies in their ability to interpret and communicate like humans. While these solutions can look at massive amounts of data and quickly identify critical themes, they can also be used in free form content such as social media and email correspondence to do the same.
With that understanding, here are five ways AI marketing will influence marketing outcomes in the years to come — and make marketers smarter.
1. Search Smarter
Consumers, with lightening-speed search engines and social media, have access to more information faster than ever before. Because of this, consumers are not only searching quicker, but smarter and more efficiently. Marketers can use AI marketing solutions to analyze these search patterns, allowing better optimization of content.
Another area to consider is voice search. “As searches are starting to originate from virtual assistants like Siri and Cortana, instead of search engines,” notes one article on AI marketing, “marketers need to be aware of how voice affects search and how that then affects their existing SEO strategy.”
[aditude-amp id="medium1" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":2095690,"post_type":"sponsored","post_chan":"sponsored","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"marketing,","session":"D"}']
2. Advertise smarter
Going hand-in-hand with the need to capitalize on smarter searches is the need for better, more optimized ads. As most marketing experts know, when a consumer shares data, companies can use that data to personalize marketing tactics, including advertising.
By digging into online data including keywords and social media profiles, AI solutions can predict human-level outcomes and help marketers best appeal to their customers. Smarter ads are, at the end of the day, one of the bigger reasons why artificial intelligence will dominate marketing by 2017 and companies can expect more conversions.
3. Deliver content smarter
When data science meets execution, particularly through AI, marketers can find a new level of target marketing. AI platforms can allow marketing teams to identify audiences and deliver smarter content that is the most relevant to that audience segment.
By using audience analytics to go beyond the usual demographics, AI solutions can allow marketing experts to truly understand their audiences as individuals — something that time and time again, consumers have reported is of the utmost importance.
[aditude-amp id="medium2" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":2095690,"post_type":"sponsored","post_chan":"sponsored","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"marketing,","session":"D"}']
4. Smarter customer service
AI marketing solutions have access to a nearly infinite amount of information, or at least an entire internet’s worth, to assist in customer service issues. Static FAQs no longer suffice and can instead be replaced with AI-run chat functions and other direct-to-consumer engagement.
This can save both time and resources, freeing up invaluable employee time while providing a much more efficient service than their human counterparts.
5. Smarter learning
One thing those science fiction shows got right is that AI can, indeed, be taught. By uncovering additional customer insights, AI marketing solutions learn and implement new campaigns, optimizing outreach and highly targeting the best users.
Over time, that learning creates a more intelligent AI, a tool that will greatly increase conversions and promote real-time decision-making.
[aditude-amp id="medium3" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":2095690,"post_type":"sponsored","post_chan":"sponsored","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"marketing,","session":"D"}']
Final thoughts
Marketing software companies are working hard to create and implement innovative AI solutions. Those solutions can take over even the most of the tedious and time-consuming tasks that marketers struggle to deal with, giving marketing teams a most precious gift: time.
Interested in reading more about AI and other marketing predictions? Download our whitepaper to learn about five upcoming trends that will impact e-commerce marketers.
Sponsored posts are content produced by a company that is either paying for the post or has a business relationship with VentureBeat, and they’re always clearly marked. Content produced by our editorial team is never influenced by advertisers or sponsors in any way. For more information, contact sales@venturebeat.com.