Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the way businesses approach marketing and sales. AI can help marketers and salespeople increase efficiency, optimise budgets, improve performance and enhance customer engagement.
It’s not about cyborgs putting people out of work – it’s about using available software to become more efficient and to make better use of opportunities
What can we use AI for in Marketing
AI marketing is the application of machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing and other artificial intelligence technologies to solve key marketing challenges. AI marketing can help marketers and salespeople:
– Cut operational costs by accomplishing more, in less time, with a smaller team.
– Make the most of your budget with data-driven decisions.
– Automatically apply optimisations based on performance data.
– Quickly write more effective copy to increase conversion rates.
– Bid smarter in your campaigns.
AI marketing can also help us marketers create personalised and relevant experiences for our customers. AI does this by analysing customer behaviour, preferences and needs.
AI can help deliver the right message, to the right person, at the right time, through the right channel.
How to Design an AI Marketing Strategy
In a 2018 McKinsey report, marketing was identified as one of the areas of business operations where AI will have the most financial impact.
However, many marketing departments still lack a coordinated, strategy-focused approach to implementing bigger projects with AI. To design an effective AI marketing strategy, marketers need to:
– Understand the types of AI applications available today and how they may evolve in the future. Some technologies, such as chatbots or recommendation engines, are stand-alone and focus on narrow tasks. Others, such as predictive analytics or content generation, are part of broader platforms and assist with broad tasks or augment human efforts.
– Identify the key marketing challenges and opportunities that can be addressed by AI. For example, AI can help with lead generation, customer support, cross-selling or upselling, inbound call analysis and routing, content creation and optimisation, social media management, email marketing, web design, optimisation, etc.
– Assess the data availability and quality for each AI application. Data is the fuel for AI, so marketers need to ensure that we have enough data to train and test our AI models and that the data is accurate, relevant, and unbiased.
– Evaluate the feasibility and impact of each AI application. Marketers need to consider the technical complexity, cost, time, and resources required to implement each AI application. We also need to estimate the potential return on investment (ROI), customer satisfaction (CSAT), and other key performance indicators (KPIs) for each AI application.
– Prioritise and execute the most promising AI projects. Marketers must select AI applications that align with our strategic goals and offer the highest value. We also need to monitor and measure the results of our AI projects and make adjustments as needed.
Examples of AI in Marketing
AI is already being used by many businesses across various industries to enhance their marketing and sales efforts. Here are some examples of how AI is revolutionising marketing:
– Wayfair uses AI to determine which customers are most likely to be persuadable and show them products based on browsing histories.
– LinkedIn uses AI to recommend content, connections, and jobs to its users based on their profiles and behaviour.
– Persado uses AI to generate persuasive copy for email subject lines, headlines, calls-to-action, etc. They cite an increase in conversions of up to 41%.
– CIENCE uses AI to generate and qualify leads for its B2B clients using natural language processing and web scraping.
AI is a powerful set of tools that can help us marketers achieve our goals faster, better (and maybe cheaper).
By using AI in marketing, businesses can improve efficiency, optimise budgets, enhance performance, and create personalised experiences for our customers.
However, to leverage the full potential of AI in marketing, businesses need to design a clear and coherent AI marketing strategy. We need to identify the best AI applications for their challenges and opportunities, ensure data availability and quality, evaluate feasibility and impact, and execute and monitor their AI projects.
AI isn’t a magic bullet that can solve all marketing problems. It is a valuable ally that can help marketers deliver more value to our customers and to our businesses.
Full disclosure: this article took 40 minutes to write, edit and format with the help of AI.