What the heck is AI & Why SMBs Should Care in today's Marketing Strategy
What Is Artificial Intelligence?
Oh my, artificial intelligence. Is it real? How does it affect my marketing? Just what the heck is it anyway? Will it get me and take me away? So, Webster’s defines artificial intelligence as the “theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence.” This includes things like speech recognition, decision-making, and language translation. So yes, all of that is here and working for us already.
For most people, the term AI is still more likely to conjure up E.T. or computers that work mind control over us more so than thoughts of advancements in marketing. But seriously AI that exists today is a valuable tool that gets “smarter” about analyzing data, recognizing patterns, and generating insights over time. If you are asking yourself how this is being used in marketing or in general, in the real world, well here are some examples. Self-driving cars, chess-playing computers, voice-activated intelligent assistants like Alexa.
In Marketing, Why is AI Important?
The potential applications are diverse. But for today, we can focus on a couple of major points that marketers need to care about and that is AI’s ability to automate learning/discovery through data and add “intelligence” to products that empower consumers’ lives.
AI can help analyze more and deeper data — and, of course, machines don’t get tired during high-volume tasks. This means that marketers can better understand audience segments and target ads more effectively. AI is making the goal of achieving personalization of your business and your customer base a reality.
Lastly, marketers should be thinking about AI as it relates to interfaces like Google Home, Amazon Echo, Alexa and all the rest coming onto market soon. Not only is it important for marketers to develop a voice strategy that takes into account how these “intelligent assistants” can and will answer, but,similar machines can be combined with large amounts of data to improve many technologies at home and in the workplace, There really is nothing artificial about intelligence.
-Roy