AI is everywhere these days. It powers our personal assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Home, prevents credit card fraud, and even successfully overturns parking fines. With each passing month, AI becomes ever more integral to our world. Last month we learned how AI is changing the job of designers. But the impact goes further than that. Advertising and marketing are at the fore in terms of partnering with digital creative agencies to find unique uses for the technology. In fact, AI is transforming digital marketing in many ways from machine learning to building custom content.
AI is a relatively broad term that encompasses a number of approaches to building computer systems that can ‘think’ and perform tasks as well as, or in some cases better, than humans. Here’s a look at five of the applications for AI that are already revolutionizing digital marketing.
1. Machine Learning
Machine Learning (ML) is AI tech that allows machines to learn from past processes or actions. The technology can also improve its decision-making for similar processes and actions in the future. The uses for marketers include lead generation, search optimization, and ad targeting.
By enabling machines to make these types of decisions, company owners and employees are able to spend more time on the creative aspects of their work. One such business application is the use of personal digital assistants that can arrange meetings between colleagues or business executives.
2. Behavior Analysis
AI is largely about analyzing vast amounts of data and making decisions based on the findings and predictive analytics is a big way in which AI is transforming digital marketing. Given that marketers base campaigns, ads, and other materials on buyer personas and other data collected from buyer journeys, AI analysis seems like the perfect tool for the task. Our Meltwater consumer insights solution does exactly that.
Platforms and websites already collect numerous kinds of data so consumer patterns can be analyzed. It also allows for the site, ad, campaign, and the like to be optimized as the marketer learns more about customer behavior. AI can sift through and spot behavioral patterns and individual idiosyncrasies much faster and with far more accuracy than a human ever could.
In the near future, these systems will be in command of large datasets from a range of platforms. They will be able to handle bigger campaign decisions and possibly build their own outreach strategies to connect with new consumers by creating copy that matches the profiles of the individuals they have been observing online.
3. Integrating Insights
AI is also great for gathering and integrating different datasets from multiple platforms, like social media, websites, apps, and more. The more developed this becomes, the better the technology will get at targeting consumers and customizing ads for individuals.
Using meta-analysis, AI can corral and analyze datasets in much more complex ways than say, Facebook Insights or Twitter Analytics currently allows. Spreading this information over more than one channel which will enable automation in ways that are hard to imagine today.
4. Creating and Presenting Personalized Content
AI programs like Wordsmith are already being used to generate content for news outlets and some businesses. Essentially, the AI program gathers and reports on data fed to it by a spreadsheet or CSV file, based on a range of rules such as ‘if not that, then this’ to fill pre-set templates in with text.
In terms of presenting personalized content, AI will be able to direct you to the articles, ads, or clips that have been determined to be most relevant to you based on your history. The AI system will provide similar content in much the same way that Netflix suggests movies and series you may like based on your previous viewing history.
5. Generating Leads
Just as AI can quickly and easily sift through large amounts of data to create its own buyer personas, it can do the same to find your ideal customers, clients, and work colleagues. What’s more, it can even rate how warm a potential lead is.
In terms of recruiting, sifting through piles of CVs and applications is already becoming outdated. AI is helping screen candidates and creates shortlists to help employers recruit faster and at lower costs. Similarly, systems like LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator allows users find employment leads and potential clients.
AI-enabled tools are being used more in businesses of all kinds to reduce costs, take over mundane or finicky tasks (such as sifting through data for a particular fact or story), and speed up information-sharing.
Analytical tools, content creation, chatbots, and organization are just the tip of the AI application iceberg. Digital marketers will not only need to understand how to engage these systems but also how to do so ethically and without crossing the line from cool to creepy when putting their super AI powers to use.
This article originally appeared in Wax Marketing Blog, it was written by Bonnie Harris from Business2Community and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@newscred.com.