The use of AI in Marketing

The year 1950 saw the rollout of industry 4.0 and a lot has changed since then. The technological advancements have revolutionized the way businesses plan and execute strategy. The principal focus of this industrial revolution was towards automation. The main highlight in recent years has been the use of artificial intelligence. Artificial Intelligence is the need of the hour and has been talked about a lot lately. As we are growing in the digital age the use of AI in almost every field and business has been increasing. Many magnanimous players of the industry have been successful in making smart learning machines that have been able to do the same work as done by humans more effectively and efficiently. One such field is now trying to use AI in the field of marketing.

AI in Marketing

Google has defined artificial intelligence as the theory and development of computer systems that are able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. Over the years the marketing techniques and methods have evolved. According to Philip Kotler, the best way of marketing is “word of mouth” but there are various other techniques that have been used by marketers over the years to convey their message to the consumers. We have seen marketing evolve from using banners, posters, television ads to organic and paid marketing on social media websites. With the growing digital age marketing methods have also moved towards digital marketing. But as we are advancing every single day the advancement in marketing has led to the use of artificial intelligence in marketing. According to researches, 72% of marketers consider AI as a business advantage as it helps in reshaping the marketing spectrum to create better and more seamless digital marketing strategies. The AI in marketing uses customer’s data and with the help of machine learning, it understands the buying behavior of the consumer. The biggest advantage of this is that it can make use of big data and help marketers easily segment them. With the use of AI, marketers can craft marketing analytics techniques. It has also helped marketers to target the right people at the right time and feeding them the right content.

Importance of AI

The impact of AI on digital marketing has been huge. According to research by smart insights, out of 100 senior marketers, 55% have been implementing or looking forward to implementing AI in their marketing strategy. Another important aspect is that in 2020 76% of customers expect their companies to understand their needs and buying behavior. With such great potential marketers have embraced AI and are constantly learning from it and incorporating it in their plans wherever possible. With the right AI, marketing strategies will become more effective.

How to use AI in marketing

There are several ways in which marketers are making use of artificial intelligence in marketing

? Sales Forecasting: AI is used to gather past deals and data related to earlier purchases. It will examine the data from emails, phone calls, meetings, etc. and will help in deciding the future marketing campaign.

? Understand customers: Through data gathered by AI from various sources, the smart machines are able to read and understand the buying behavior and mentality of the customers. It has also helped marketers to create customer profiles to make it easier for them to segregate people who are interested in their product.

? Find the trend: The ability of AI to study large chunks of data has also helped in detecting the upcoming trends by joining in real-time conversations.

? Programmatic ad targeting: Through AI the time consumed in the traditional method of buying and selling ads has reduced drastically. AI uses the data generated from cookies of mobile application and the website a user visits and targets the customers which meet its business criteria.

? Chatbots: With the use of Chatbots AI has made it easier for the customer to connect with the companies and make them aware of what they require. It would have been difficult for the companies to answer each and every query of their customers therefore the Chabot AI programming has made it simple and has been proven really effective.

? Speech Recognition: According to researches 55% of the households will have smart speakers in their households by 2022. Also, sales from voice shopping are expected to jump to USD 40 billion in 2022 from USD 2 billion in 2018. This data itself “speaks” the importance of speech recognition in marketing.

? Content Generation: The manual generation of content is very tedious but imagine having a website that generates its own content. This has been possible by using artificial intelligence.

What lies in the future

Artificial intelligence has the potential to change the structure of marketing. Many jobs and tasks can be up for replacement especially tasks that can be easily automated. Some business professionals also believe that by 2025 marketers as known today will change. Recruiters in the future might even require marketing professionals to have some experience in coding, pattern identification and strategy or programming to work well among AI systems. Technology has been able to change things in different industries and marketing is no different. The benefits have come with the introduction of AI in marketing but it has also generated a need to adapt.