Today’s marketers face a relentless flood of data from every direction. For many, navigating this sea of information feels overwhelming, if not impossible. But AI marketing insights are changing things for the better.
AI and data analytics provides a life raft to marketers who are drowning in data. Between measuring engagement rates, search engine rankings, conversions, cost per lead, and a myriad of other KPIs, every insight feels like a priority.
With AI marketing insights, marketers can make sense of more data in less time — and know what to do based on those insights.
Let’s explore the role of AI marketing insights and how they help you shift from merely tracking performance to confidently driving strategic decisions.
Contents:
What Are AI Marketing Insights?
The Value of AI Marketing Insights
Real-World Applications of AI Marketing Insights
Challenges in Leveraging AI Marketing Insights
Best Practices for Using AI Marketing Insights
Transform Your Strategy with AI Marketing Insights from Meltwater
What Are AI Marketing Insights?
AI marketing insights use advanced algorithms and AI-driven technologies to connect the dots between data points. AI can analyze vast amounts of data quickly and find hidden patterns that might not be obvious to the human eye.
AI reviews the data, but it doesn’t just spit out numbers and facts. It takes the next step in spelling out what the data means and can even make suggestions on what to do next.
The Value of AI Marketing Insights
Using AI to analyze marketing data helps marketers surface insights in everything from consumer behavior to market trends. These real-time insights can help predict future behavior, which can help generate more targeted campaigns.
For example, a clothing business might segment customers into broad categories, such as “women’s clothing” and “men’s clothing.” Without AI personalization, broad segmentation may fall flat and fail to capture the nuances of what attracts each customer.
An AI algorithm can analyze a customer's browsing history, past purchases, and engagement with email campaigns to predict their preferences. For example, a customer who frequently browses athletic wear might want to see more of this type of clothing in their emails.
Using AI in marketing analytics can help marketers execute more effectively across the entire marketing spectrum. It can help with all of the following:
- Improve decision-making with real-time insights to optimize every campaign.
- Automate repetitive tasks to free up time for strategy and focused work.
- Proactively adjust budgets and ad placements based on forecasted trends, behaviors, and campaign performance.
- Scale marketing efforts without compromising on quality or personalization.
- Optimize ad spend and other resources to reduce waste.
- Re-engage customers to boost loyalty and retention.
- Stay ahead of competitors by identifying untapped opportunities and responding quickly to market changes.
Finding key marketing insights manually is like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. It’s doable, but it takes considerable time and resources. Adding AI marketing insights is like finding that same needle with a metal detector — it’s faster, more efficient, and delivers optimal outcomes.
TIP: To learn more about how AI marketing insights can help you supercharge your customer segmentation, download our Personalization at Scale guide!
Real-World Applications of AI Marketing Insights
Businesses across industries can benefit from AI marketing insights. It’s all about learning who your customers are, how they react to messaging and trends, and what drives them to choose you and take action.
Let’s explore how different industries can apply AI in marketing analytics.
Retail: Predictive product recommendations
Using AI, retailers can analyze customer purchase histories and browsing behaviors to suggest products. AI can also predict future trends to know what to stock in their stores that customers are likely to buy.
Healthcare: Patient engagement and education
Healthcare providers can use AI to send tailored reminders for annual visits, check-ups, or medication refills based on patient histories. It can also deliver educational content to patients based on specific conditions or health goals, leading to higher engagement and trust.
Hospitality: Dynamic pricing
Hotels use AI marketing insights to adjust room pricing based on demand, seasonality, and competitor rates. They can use this same approach to personalize guest experiences with dynamic discounts or add-on packages to enhance their stay.
E-Commerce: Abandoned cart recovery
AI marketing insights can help E-commerce companies understand the reasons behind cart abandonment and automatically follow up with shoppers. Based on AI findings, the follow-ups might include special incentives to complete the purchase, such as a coupon, discount, or low-stock alert.
Entertainment: Content recommendations
Streaming platforms like Netflix and Spotify use AI insights to recommend new content to users. It examines preferences, watch history, and engagement, then serves up new recommendations to increase customer satisfaction and retention.
Automotive: Lead scoring and follow-up
AI marketing insights can help car dealers prioritize leads based on website data that indicates purchase intent. Sales teams can focus on high-value prospects and send personalized offers to increase conversions.
Fitness: Engagement and retention
Gyms and fitness apps can send workout recommendations to engage members and help them reach their goals. AI can suggest workouts based on activity level, goals, and other factors. Members who see results may be less likely to cancel memberships and more likely to recommend the gym or app to others.
Restaurants: Menu customization and promotions
AI can alert food and beverage companies about new flavor trends or buying habits. They can use these insights to create new menu options, re-examine price points, and deliver targeted promotions.
TIP: See how Pernod Ricard uses AI marketing insights from Meltwater's consumer intelligence tool to analyze flavor trends and create new cocktail flavor combinations!
Challenges in Leveraging AI Marketing Insights
The benefits of AI marketing insights shine brightly. Still, many marketers struggle to bridge the gap between theoretical benefits and successfully executing AI in their marketing analytics. Several challenges add various layers of complexity, including the following:
A lack of data quality and accessibility
Marketers need to place a great deal of trust in their data if they’re relying on it to make decisions. AI depends on high-quality data too, but marketers often struggle with fragmented, incomplete, or outdated datasets. Integrating data from multiple internal sources can also be time-consuming and complex.
Integrating AI with existing systems
Adding AI tools to familiar platforms can mean steeper learning curves and compromises in how to use the tools together. Integrations are often necessary so the AI has access to the most complete data, which leads to better outcomes.
Ethical concerns
Using consumer data for AI insights might not align with privacy laws like GDPR or CCPA. The mere thought of ethical AI principles can be daunting for marketers.
Dependence on technical expertise
Marketers may lack the technical skills they need to use AI tools effectively. However, it’s worth noting that some AI tools are democratizing the process, making them user-friendly regardless of skill level or knowledge.
An over-reliance on automation
While AI can streamline processes, over-reliance on them may mean a loss of the human element. This can result in marketing messages that feel hollow and inauthentic, which can be a turnoff to your customers.
Resistance to change
Teams get used to doing things a certain way. Resistance to change is common, but it can make trying new (and potentially better) methods a little scary. This resistance can lead to “analysis paralysis” and slow down adoption rates of AI technologies.
Understanding and using AI insights
AI can produce helpful insights, but marketers might lack the expertise they need to use these insights effectively. The misunderstanding of data can happen with or without AI tools. One workaround is to use AI solutions that, in addition to generating insights, also explain how the insights were generated, what they mean, and why they matter.
Best Practices for Using AI Marketing Insights
Adding AI marketing insights to your strategy can give you pieces of the puzzle you didn’t realize were missing. When applying AI to your existing tools and processes, these best practices will help you minimize change and maximize impact.
Understand AI’s role and potential limitations
AI can be a powerful addition to your marketing analytics, but it’s not a crystal ball to answer all of your questions. AI has a role to play, just like your other technologies and human analysts.
Define what that role is and how it can enhance the way you analyze marketing data. For instance, do you want to apply AI to predict new trends, understand consumer behavior, or uncover hidden needs?
Also, recognize that while AI can give you the insights you need, there might be issues with its outputs. For example, AI relies on the quality of the data you feed it, so errors might skew results. AI requires oversight to make sure its recommendations align with your business goals.
TIP: AI tools are also known to produce hallucinations, or made-up data, in an effort to give you the response it thinks you’re looking for. It’s a best practice to always ask your AI tools if any data or examples it gives you are actual or hypothetical; they will usually tell you.
Choose specific problems to solve with AI
When adding AI to your existing processes, it’s best to start small and scale gradually. This gives you time to test your AI tools and surface its value and limitations, allowing you to decide the best way to use it.
For example, do you want AI to help you make sense of the customer journey? Solve personalization challenges? Once you know where to implement AI, you can start building out processes and testing its impact.
Use AI to complement human creativity (not replace it)
AI can handle data-heavy tasks and provide insights, but leave the creativity to humans. Your creative team and AI can work together to achieve common goals.
Maintaining the human element lets you create campaigns that emotionally resonate with your audience.
TIP: Download our new guides to AI for Social Media Management and AI for PR and Communications to learn more about how AI can complement your team's creative output!
Monitor and validate AI outputs
AI isn’t perfect, so make sure you review AI-generated insights and match them against what you already know. This will help you build trust in the AI models so you can make confident decisions.
If the AI generates something that doesn’t seem right, you might need to refine your approach. This might be using a different prompt or adding more specific filters, for example.
AI is evolving quickly, and its power and potential are still largely untapped. Keep up with the latest trends and advancements to make sure you’re getting the best results.
Transform Your Strategy with AI Marketing Insights from Meltwater
Meltwater’s AI-powered consumer intelligence platform helps you get to know your customers on a deeper level. It combines consumer behavior with social listening and brand monitoring to learn what your customers need and want from you.
AI marketing insights from Meltwater help you deliver on your customers’ expectations. Learn what they’re saying about your brand, other companies they buy from, hidden interests, and new trends you need to jump on. With top-notch insights, you can meet customers where they are and go beyond their expectations.
Learn more when you request a demo by filling out the form below!
