What AI Marketing Is and How It Can Help your Business

Have you ever heard of AI marketing? Artificial intelligence has been often used to help improve marketing results, for example, through web analytics tools. AI can optimize several processes and diminish error risks.

It's important to get to know what benefits artificial intelligence has to offer, and understand how to implement it. Getting up to date with the latest marketing trends may put you ahead of your competitors, give you an expanded view of the market opportunities, and AI is an essential part of the marketing future. 

What Is AI Marketing?#

AI marketing can be defined as a set of strategies that are based on using artificial intelligence tools to enhance the performance of marketing actions. It's implemented, for example, to collect and analyze data, enabling us to make data-driven decisions and to build customer profiles. 

AI marketing can give a deeper understanding of the customer journey through big data analytics and machine learning. It helps to view the projects and campaigns you are developing from a broader perspective, and get new insights, corroborating to get maximum efficiency and optimize your teamwork. 

Many companies already are adopting AI as a way to improve their processes. According to the American Marketing Association research, in 2019, the AI implementation grew 27% compared to the previous year. 

A survey made by Deloitte, in 2020, showed that 3 of the top 5 AI objectives were marketing-oriented: enhancing existing products and services, creating new products and services, and enhancing relationships with customers.

Benefits of Using AI Marketing#

Improve Customer Service#

Implementing AI-driven tools can help you to offer better customer service by collecting data that enables you to create more accurate customer profiles, categorizing them in groups, identifying the steps on the customer journey, and what encourages them to act. 

By analyzing the data, AI marketing tools make it possible to create personalized messages, for example, for email marketing campaigns. They analyze customer behavior and point out the best ways to engage with them, for example, showing the content that performed better. 

With artificial intelligence, you don't have to guess what the customer wants, it's possible to view it through the data, creating much more accurate processes. Also, AI helps to optimize customer support, by using chatbots, and other tools to offer them the most efficient support. 

AI-enabled bots are used in several companies, for instance, to identify leads, and even create alerts so the sales team can get in contact with them. That's a feature that can be found in many CRM software. 

By using detailed data, such as real-time geolocation, AI helps the marketing and sales team to spot new opportunities, understand how to better solve customer demands, and also provide insights.

Help in the Decision Process#

Planning marketing strategies and putting them into practice includes taking a lot of decisions, but they don't need to be made on assumptions. On the contrary, with AI marketing you will count on tools to make more accurate decisions, based on data and analysis, which helps to predict results more effectively. 

For example, you can use machine learning to identify what works and what doesn't from previous campaigns and projects performance. Machine learning is trained using large quantities of data and is capable of making predictions and decisions with accuracy.

It can segment customers and anticipate how they will respond to different actions. Besides with AI analytics, you can follow results in real-time, detect when there is any problem, and make changes while the campaigns are still running. 

Increase ROI#

As AI marketing allows you to have a deeper comprehension of customer behavior and their journey inside your company, you can make more assertive investments, based on big data analysis and machine learning. Therefore, the chances to have a high return on investment (ROI) are bigger.

Reduce Errors#

The power of making data-driven decisions helps to diminish the risk of committing mistakes. You are going to count not only on human perception but also on a technology developed to help expand your perspectives. 

Human traits such as empathy are still essential for successful marketing campaigns, and AI can't replace them. Although, your team can be even more effective by having algorithms that can process and analyze thousands of information and give it to you in graphics and reports, for instance.

This reduces the risk of not seeing any valuable data that deserves to be taken into consideration. 

How to Use AI Marketing#

Make Marketing Researches#

AI marketing provides big data solutions that make it possible to deep dive into research and create complete ones with multiple types of information to develop more precise marketing plans. 

You can use, for example, web analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, to have a thorough view of your website performance. It gives you valuable data, like the number of traffic on each page, where the traffic is coming from, how much time is spent on each page, what are the main exit pages, heatmaps to know what parts of each page call more attention, and much more.

When it's about ecommerce, you can use AI to evaluate how customers interact with the products, check the number of conversions, and understand how you can create actions to encourage them to complete the purchases.

It's possible to trace the whole path a customer makes to get to your online store and decide to buy. Besides, AI can be used to research other aspects that may affect the market, such as world events, business trends, local context, and much more. 

Create Marketing Strategies#

Developing marketing strategies for your company depends on multiple factors such as budget, objectives, and who your target audience is.

Since AI marketing is based on data analysis, and you are going to have access to deep research created with the assistance of AI software, you will have more resources to develop efficient strategies.

Different from making plans out of nothing, you can rely on accurate data to guide you through finding the best ways to achieve your marketing objectives. You can find multiple types of apps that already use AI to help you with marketing planning, like CRM software, website optimization tools, SEO, and SEM tools.  

Creating Ads#

Artificial intelligence can help you to target the right people, make the most of your ads, and maximize return on investment.

AI can analyze multiple data sources to define how probable it is that your target audience is going to be triggered by different types of ads, showing you how to build an effective campaign. 

Besides, you can use artificial intelligence to keep track of your leads and customers actions on your website, to send them personalized offers.

It's possible to identify, as well, the main social media networks and websites that your target audience use, for instance, being able to invest in ads in the right places, where they are going to be seen by who you want. 

When we talk about pay-per-click advertising, AI is helpful in several ways: 

• Smart bidding
• Micro-moment targeting
• Responsive ads
• Performance analysis
• Dynamic search ads
• Price optimization
• Account management

Sales Forecasts and Dynamic Pricing#

AI enables you to anticipate customer behavior based on their past purchases, making it possible to predict which products are going to sell better, for example.

AI analyzes not only customer behavior but also other factors such as world events and trends that could indicate there is going to be a rise or in demand for specific items.  

This helps to identify what products you should invest more or take out of your store, and also which ones your marketing campaigns should focus on. The same logic can be applied when it comes to dynamic pricing, determining a product's price by demand or supply. 

Enhance User Experience#

With AI power to collect and analyze an extensive amount of data, you may have the necessary information to build websites, apps and software focused on what your target audience value.

AI will provide you with useful insights, which allow you to create features, develop the design, and write content that aims to enhance the user experience. 

You will create experiences based on what your leads and customers desire. For example, many ecommerce websites use artificial intelligence to provide a more personalized experience. When you are browsing on the online store, the AI suggests products on your feed based on what you have bought previously. 

AI Marketing Examples#

Starbucks#

Starbucks has an internal artificial intelligence program, called "Deep Brew". It's used for several functions, personalizing drive-thru experience, automating time-consuming tasks, inventory management, and even for preventive maintenance on its internet of things (IOT) connected espresso machines.

The company also uses AI on its popular Starbucks Rewards app. The AI analyzes the customer's previous orders and gives personalized food and beverage suggestions. But, it also takes into consideration other factors such as the weather, the time of the day, and how often the customer visits the store.

Unilever and Ben & Jerry's #

AI is a valuable tool when it comes to research for business opportunities, Unilever knows that and used its data center for new insights.

It was through it that they realized a connection between breakfast and ice cream, which is even mentioned in at least 50 lyrics in the public domain. They enjoyed this opportunity and created cereal-flavored ice cream with Ben& Jerry's.

Amazon#

Amazon is known for its AI marketing strategies. The company is a pioneer in using machine learning to provide personalized recommendations for customers when browsing on their marketplace.

In 2019, they released the Amazon Personalize tool, which enables developers to build applications using Amazon machine learning technology to provide real-time personalized recommendations. 

The Future of AI Marketing#

As you can see, AI Marketing has been growing and artificial intelligence shows to be useful for several purposes, such as increasing conversion rates, building customer loyalty, improving engagement, and selling more. AI marketing has a lot to develop yet, keep your eyes on it if you don't want to be left behind.