Artificial Intelligence in Marketing

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a discipline of computer science that emphasizes the creation of intelligent machines powered with the capability to process information, take strategic decisions and perform complex business functions. Organizations across the major industry verticals have started to embrace the potential of AI for digital transformation as well as to design innovative ways to engage with their customers. AI can help marketers analyze a large amount of heterogeneous data and discover actionable insights about customer preferences. They can utilize it to enhance their digital marketing campaigns to offer personalized customer experiences.

AI is already present in many aspects of our daily lives. Siri and Cortana, the personal assistants on our phones or computers; Google ’s autocomplete function; and our computers’ ability to designate a certain email as spam are just some examples of AI with which most of us are familiar.

AI has impacted the different fields of marketing-

1. Pre-emptive Marketing: With AI, marketers can swim through large amounts of data finding any patterns that may exist to determine consumer behavior. Once this is done, marketers can preemptively promote solutions, products etc. to the targeted audience. Netflix and their ‘you may also like’ prompt is a successful example of this implementation.
2. Content Generation: With AI it is possible to generate articles and reports and draw visitors to websites. AI content writing programs are able to pick certain elements from a dataset and write a ‘human sounding’ article. In fact many financial and sports based articles are now written using AI content writers. ‘Wordsmith’ an AI writing program by the firm Automated Insights wrote 1.5 billion pieces of content in 2016. Brands are constantly turning over to such programs to see if such programs can help to enhance their brand.
3. Search: Probably the most significant area where AI has had an impact is how users conduct online searches which had changed the way marketers create and optimize content. Applications like Apple’s Siri, google home and Microsoft’s Cortana incorporates voice search and now instead of typing people can rather ask a device what they want to know.
4. Customization: - We all have faced the annoying ads appearing on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. These platforms allow users to hide ad content that users find inappropriate. These insights are then used to algorithmically curate a better news feed suited to user tastes and preferences.

Conclusion

Today customers have become increasingly tech-savvy and quality conscious so it becomes important for marketers to continuously revamp their marketing strategies. This is imperative in order to design innovative ways to engage with customers. AI presents a plethora of opportunities for marketers. AI-powered systems minimize the manual tasks involved in handling cross-channel digital marketing campaigns as well as it promises better ROI due to the strategical alignment of resources. It provides a fast pace for marketers to generate higher revenue streams by delivering a personalized experience to customers. Therefore, marketers should embrace the power of AI to delight their customers and at the same time sustain their market share and stay ahead of their competitors.