How to Use AI to Redefine Your Marketing

Insights from Marketing Tech Buff Ameeta Soni on the Marketing tool you’re missing: Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence is fast transforming the way business is conducted, with machine learning techniques being implemented at all waypoints along the sales journey. Gartner predicts that by 2020, 85 percent of customer interactions will not involve human intervention.

In my work as Chief Marketing Officer, I am finding that AI is quickly becoming the critical element in the drive to increase revenues and profits, to stay competitive, and to improve key aspects of a company’s operations.

So how can AI help make your marketing efforts more effective? Let’s take a look.

1. AI-driven Customer Insights and Personalization

According to the Salesforce State of Marketing report, customers are 52 percent more likely to switch brands if communications lack personalization. AI algorithms, able to ingest large and disparate sets of customer data, can look at multiple facets of the customer journey and help marketers identify the best target segments.

Armed with these insights, AI can use intelligent personalization such as custom website content and targeted push notifications to enhance the website visitor experience and increase conversion rates.

All the while, AI tools continuously monitor the sites to flag data issues and surges in website visits.

2. AI-enhanced PPC advertising

The days of manual pay-per-click campaign management are numbered. AI is especially adept at repetitive or large-scale tasks. Bid management, keyword variables, layout optimization, and targeting can all be facilitated by automation and machine learning, allowing humans to focus on strategy and creativity.

While Google and Facebook are using AI for their ad delivery optimization, companies using multiple channels can do so by using in-house or third-party AI tools like Acquisio.

3. AI-powered content strategy and creation

AI tools from companies like Hubspot, Concured, and MarketMuse, use machine learning to help marketers identify, validate, and track new content ideas. Another service, Crayon, uses AI to determine what competitors are doing online.

By incorporating insights from the analysis of customer reading patterns, topics of interest, and engagement, natural-language generation holds tremendous potential for content creation as well. AI-assisted emails can provide specific content offers as well to boost response rates.

4. AI-based Chatbots

AI-based chatbots, connected to vast repositories of customer data and learning from past experiences, are adept at detecting patterns, spotting recurring issues, and predicting with high accuracy the root cause of a customer’s problem.

In addition to customer support, these chatbots can also answer customers’ product-related queries and help them decide among different options. We can expect the adoption of AI-based chatbots to increase vs. the simpler rule-based chatbots as they improve in both quality and depth of knowledge.

5. Customer engagement and retention

AI tools can analyze usage patterns and compare with the larger customer data sets to identify customers at risk of non-renewal or churn, often specifying the churn-stage, and then protecting the relationship with appropriate emails, push notifications, and incentives.

In sync with other AI initiatives, look for opportunities where AI can make the most significant impact in your marketing efforts. As with any digital property, ensure that your AI meets the spirit and letter of regulations regarding security and compliance, including the GDPR. Locate the relevant data sets, making sure they are large enough and labeled for adequate training. With all of this in mind, you can use AI to redefine your marketing is one of the best ways to have a competitive edge in today’s marketplace.

Ameeta Soni focuses on driving revenues and profits for technology and digital health companies as Chief Marketing Officer and consultant. In her consulting practice, she often serves as an interim CMO. Her expertise includes strategy, new product development and launch, demand generation, and business development. She is a big believer in using new technologies and tools to gain an edge. Ameeta is a Springboard alum and past chair of the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge.