“Artificial intelligence (AI) may be mankind’s most astonishing creation to date”.  Business Insider

Coined by a group of mathematicians in 1956,  Artificial Intelligence (AI)  was devised, in its simplest form to allow computer systems to simulate or mimic human behavior by performing tasks that usually require human intelligence. In 2020 AI has come of age and is revolutionizing the way we do business.  Using machine learning, deep learning and beyond, AI provides intelligent data to almost every aspect of the global economy.   From healthcare and agriculture, to automotive, cyber-security, manufacturing and finance, we are feeling the powerful reverberations of AI.

Why Marketers Love AI

For marketers, this is especially true.   AI removes the danger of guess work,  quickly extracting vital insights related to identifying key customers, providing the necessary information to personalize customer experiences and create data driven campaigns. By  increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty AI is ironically helping to deepen the human connection. The Use of AI to streamline and automate marketing operations is yet another advantage. Social algorithms have been proven to influence consumer behavior and the brands they engage with.  From a creativity perspective, perhaps one of the most appealing benefits of AI is the ability to free up marketing teams to do what they do best, ideation and experimentation.

4 Ways AI is transforming Digital Marketing

Conversational chatbots: Chatbots are everywhere, on websites and landing pages, on social media and messaging platforms, and for good reason. They simulate natural conversations through pre-planned exchanges, identify customer challenges and provide them with customized solutions.  In the lead generation chatbots we create for our clients, users receive personalized responses based on their choices in their buyer’s journey.  This allows us to identify the user’s pain points and give them customized answers that speak to their needs. A chatbot can identify conversations based on keywords, identifying  them in a query and providing corresponding responses or through natural language processing (NLP) and context which analyzes the customer conversation and identifies the intent of a conversation.

“By far the most advanced  contextual chatbots “utilize Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to remember conversations with specific users to learn and grow over time. Unlike keyword recognition-based chatbots, contextual chatbots are smart enough to self-improve based on what users are asking for and how they are asking it”. Chatbots Magazine

SEO: AI has become mission critical in how search engines rank pages. Black hat marketers first felt the reverberations of AI when bots began penalizing web pages for black hat activities like keyword cannibalization, spammy backlinks, duplicate content and auto generated content pages. A boon for us honest marketeers, we now had Big Brother monitoring activities through the use of “deep learning” capabilities ensuring that SEO best practices were met. In fact, Google’s algorithms can identify high quality content, the appropriate use of metadata and backlinks.

Furthermore, building block SEO tools including Moz, SEMRush, Google’s keyword tool and others rely on AI to give us the information needed to make decisions pertaining to keywords, website health, identifying new backlink opportunities and beyond.

AI Assistants: From Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Google’s Google Assistant, AI assistant technology is big business (Facebook has been trying to edge into the AI assistant game too over the years with less success). These typically cloud-based programs require massive amounts of data in order to provide “natural language” Q & A interactions, while continuing to accrue intelligence with every new interaction through their powerful algorithms:

“The computers that power our everyday actions are getting increasingly savvy about using signals based on location, previous searches, personal preferences, and the contributions of other users. They crunch this data to predict what you want and to deliver it as accurately and promptly as possible — and then ferret it away for improving future interactions”. TechPrevue.com

Analytics Intelligence and Personalization: 

Marketers rely heavily on AI rich tools for a/b testing, heat maps, content management, and most fundamentally –  behavior based and predictive analytics tools. Google Analytics has been using AI for years to provide “user personalization” providing insights on user and website data. With the knowledge gained from these insights marketers can future plan campaigns based on the behavior of the people who visit their platforms. Tools like Google Analytics literally provide actionable steps to take to optimize the user experience.

Furthermore, users want this type of  personalization. From the first click, users are expecting to engage with content that is relevant for their age, physical location, financial and educational brackets. They expect brands to know what their interests and relationship status is.  They get frustrated when they are shown product or content recommendations that are not relevant. For example, if dynamic pages are not utilized (pages that change based on the user’s buying or other previous behaviors) users may express their displeasure by opting out of the customer journey. According to the AI research and advisory company Emerg a study conducted by Research International which surveyed marketers revealed that personalization has strongly advanced customer relationships and sales:

“54 percent said their clients or companies experienced a 10 percent increase in sales, while 13 percent of marketers surveyed reported a more than 30 percent lift…97 percent of those surveyed say they will continue to allot and invest in personalized marketing efforts.” Emerg

Companies should expect to use AI in almost every aspect of their marketing initiatives as they head into 2021. From the tools that are used, the customer data gained, the landing pages created and the customized content used, AI will proliferate campaigns and improve the customer journey.