Artificial intelligence (AI) has the power to help businesses by turning vast amounts of data from various sources into actionable insights. What used to require hours of human analysis can now be done by an AI-based application in seconds and with far more detail.
Marketing is one area where AI can make humans’ work easier and more targeted and accurate, resulting in saved time and money. From providing an enhanced customer experience to predicting buyer behavior to using just the right words in an ad, AI-powered programs can push any company’s marketing efforts to the next level.
Any kind of business can benefit from these insights, including retailers, business consultants, creative companies, or IT firms like BairesDev. Here we explore 5 ways in which AI can support your marketing efforts
1. Understand Your Customers
Using data gathered from customer interactions, AI systems can understand the needs of customers as a group, as smaller interest categories (such as those who have purchased specific products in the past), and as individuals. This process includes grouping customers into those who have the greatest chance of purchasing versus those who have a lower chance, enabling you to spend your resources on encouraging the first group to take the next step toward a final sale.
This information can help you in numerous ways, such as more proactive communications. For example, as an online pharmacy, you might notice that customers purchase certain products, like toothbrushes, on a regular basis. You can send them reminders in advance of the time they would normally make that purchase to ensure they pull the trigger again.
Amazon takes this idea a step further with its Subscribe & Save program, which enables customers to set a subscription to receive a product on a set schedule without having to do anything further.
2. Create Content
AI can contribute to your content strategy by helping you understand what content works best. For example, you can discover which keywords, publishing frequency, and topics are most likely to help paying customers to find you. Email platform Rasa.io uses AI to automatically develop highly personalized content for newsletters, based on the time of day they’re most likely to read it and the links they’re most likely to click.
Another application, Pattern89, uses AI to design online ads. It does so by analyzing the performance of previous ads, including which channels perform best. When you use a similar system, your ad dollars can be spent more wisely on highly accurate pieces that optimize bids, budgets, and channels, and bring in more sales. In other words, more insight leads to more revenue.
3. Improve Social Media Efforts
In addition to helping with content creation, AI-powered applications can assist with placement. Some tools give you the ability to auto-generate content across channels, including auto-scheduling and placing the appropriate hashtags and shortened links. You can use other tools to help you monitor social media channels to see what’s being said about your brand or about your products and services in general.
This information can help you identify what customers like or don’t like and adjust your marketing accordingly. It can also help you find new places to promote your company or trends that might affect how your brand is perceived. You can even use this method to update your products or services based on what people are saying.
4. Deploy Dynamic Pricing
You can use AI-enabled programs to generate dynamic pricing, which is costs determined by supply and demand for a particular product or service. For example, a hotel may use this method to rent rooms at a lower rate when demand is down. Another example is when ride-sharing services raise their rates during times of peak demand.
You can incorporate this information when you create promotions for customers looking for a good deal. Dynamic pricing can also be based on customers’ buying habits as well as competitors’ prices. Using this strategy, you can get more business by charging different amounts for the same product or service under different circumstances.
5. Set Up Chatbots
Chatbots are AI-powered applications that enable customers to interact with your company at any time from a variety of platforms. Though it doesn’t provide human feedback, it does use natural language processing (NLP), meaning customers can use words they feel comfortable with and the system will interpret it correctly most of the time. Chatbots offer many advantages, including convenience for customers and low cost for companies.
You can integrate chatbots into your marketing by giving customers the option of using them to get their questions answered about your products or policies. Having this handy alternative to making a phone call or waiting for a response to an email or digital chat enhances the customer experience, making visitors to your site or store more likely to buy.
Many companies are setting up chatbots to appear every time their websites are accessed, essentially giving customers an online version of a “store greeter” in case they want someone to talk to right away.
However, remember that not all customers will want to talk with a machine. Be sure to always have an option for a human alternative.
Every company must market its offerings, but marketing can be time-consuming and you never know if you’re really hitting the mark. With AI-powered applications and software, tedious tasks like analyzing customer preferences can be accomplished quickly and accurately, making your marketing more successful and cost-effective. You can read this whitepaper to learn more about the role of AI in business.