Marketing is a constantly-changing landscape, and it can be hard to stay on top of it. More and more is expected of business owners each year. That's one of the main reasons that the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to grow so rapidly.
When used effectively, AI can become a powerful marketing tool. It can help you enhance the strategies you already have in place, as well as develop new ones – enabling you to better meet the demands of your audience. All you need are a few basic strategies in order to make it a success.
In this post, we’ll explain AI marketing in more detail. We’ll also discuss some of the ways you can make use of it on your site. Let’s get started!
What AI Marketing Is (And Why It's Important)
Marketing is an essential part of any business strategy. It’s also one of the most lengthy and complex tasks you'll have to deal with. This is where AI comes into the picture. AI-driven marketing involves leveraging customer data using machine learning, in order to create better advertising, offer a more effective service, and so on.
Put more simply, AI uses machine learning to mimic the way humans behave – and is more common than you might think. For an example, consider the popular streaming service Netflix. That platform uses machine learning to carefully monitor the actions its users take.
Netflix then uses that information to suggest TV shows and movies it thinks you will like. The gathered data can even be used to craft entirely new content. In fact, the show House of Cards was created because user viewing habits suggested that it would be a hit (and it was).
AI will absorb and analyze all of the data you provide it with, in order to find patterns and make predictions. This means you can use it for just about any purpose – including marketing. Incorporating AI into your marketing campaigns can save you a lot of time over the long term, and even help you automate key tasks.
3 Ways to Use AI in Your Marketing Strategy
The wide range of available AI technology means there are numerous ways to implement it within your existing marketing strategy. Let’s start by discussing one of the most common forms of AI online.
1. Improve the Chance of Conversions via Chatbots
Although chatbots are most commonly used to deal with customer queries, they can also be an effective way to guide the purchases your website visitors make. Let’s consider popular fashion brand ASOS's chatbot as an example:
The ASOS chatbot helps mobile customers navigate their search through outfit possibilities, presenting products it thinks each visitor will like based on their answers to a few simple questions. It will then direct the user straight to where they can find those products online.
Another smart way to increase the likelihood of sales is to develop a chatbot that promotes certain products directly to the Facebook Messenger or email inboxes of prospective customers. This type of feature takes a lot of the hard work out of making a purchasing decision, and provides your customers with a more personalized service.
Fortunately, setting up a chatbot is surprisingly simple. There are plenty of solutions that can help, such as DigitalGenius. Services like WhosOn also provide chatbots that are designed to engage with customers on a more 'human' level.
2. Learn More About Your Audience With Social Listening
Social listening is the process of paying attention to what people are saying online, in order to grow and improve your business. Finding and collating this feedback can often be a complex process, but the use of AI greatly simplifies it.
Social listening tools built using AI technology are now able to track your brand’s mentions across the web. This means you can get a better sense for what your audience is talking about and interested in. In turn, you'll be able to increase the speed, scope, and relevance of your campaigns.
To help you gather more accurate and measurable data, all you'll need are the right tools. Ubermetrics and Mention, for example, are two AI-powered social listening platforms that are worth a look. With them, you can learn which products appeal to your audience, identify any problems in your approach, and discover relevant trends.
3. Improve the Content You Create
A lot of your marketing efforts will involve content creation, and although this is essential, it can often be a time-consuming process. You may be surprised to learn, however, that AI can help you produce certain types of (basic) written content.
WordSmith is a particularly effective writing bot, which can transform structured data into a written document. Software like this is more commonly used that you might expect. Machines have been automatically generating content for years. In fact, the search engine Yahoo regularly uses WordSmith to develop content for its fantasy football drafts.
Naturally, this form of AI isn’t quite ready to construct long editorial pieces. Still, it can help you produce more straightforward and routine marketing content. This is especially useful for social media posts, marketing emails, and even responses to customer queries.
You'll want to review the results before sending or posting them, but you'll be saving time over having to produce all that content yourself. Using AI for this purpose can greatly free up your available resources, which can then be used in other, more pressing areas. Plus, this technology is likely to continue to improve as time progresses – so it may not be long before it can create entire articles for you.
Conclusion
Marketing is an essential part of running any business – but if you're not careful, it can take up a lot of time. Introducing AI into your marketing toolbox will help you automate certain tasks, and even improve your campaigns' effectiveness.
Today, we've discussed three of the ways you can use AI within your marketing strategy:
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Improve the chance of conversions via chatbots.
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Learn more about your audience with social listening.
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Improve the content you create.
Image credit: geralt.
