Back to the future? Artificial intelligence in today’s marketing world
One can easily notice that our contemporary world is inseparable from wide variety of different brands. Just think about it for a second. In the morning you wake up to an alarm sound from your iPhone, quickly scroll through your Instagram feed (most definitely see an ad or two), brush your teeth with Colgate toothpaste, make yourself a cup of Nescafé coffee, etc. You see, one thing that unites all these activities I just mentioned is BRANDS. Seldom do we think about how we got exposed to those products and why we ended up buying them, while in the world of an entrepreneur reaching the customer and providing the best user experience is one of their biggest priorities. This leads to businesses evolving their marketing strategies and in many cases welcoming the help of an artificial intelligence (AI).
SO WHAT IS AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?
The easiest way to explain this would be to compare AI to human intelligence. It can imitate human mind, perform tasks and make simultaneous decisions similarly to the way people do. Since to numerous people artificial intelligence sounds new and foreign, many do not even think about the impact it makes on businesses routines. People are used to hearing about artificial intelligence in scientific fields, but what they actually do not notice is how they are affected by this invention on everyday basis and how modern businesses integrate it to work passively in their favor.
SOCIAL MEDIA GAME CHANGER
It shouldn’t be shocking that the biggest social media outlets out there are using AI. Today I’m going to talk about our, or at least mine, black hole of time “Instagram”. This chart-topping social media platform mainly targets two types of crowds: the ones who uses it for entertainment purposes and the ones who are utilizing this platform for business or personal profit. In 2017 alone Instagram had over 25 million business accounts, just imagine how much that number skyrocketed over the last three years.
Have you ever tried switching your personal account to a business one? If so, you probably took a look at all the analytics of your account. So it would be ridiculous to just assume that a team of pour overworked analytics has to constantly update the analysis for all these +25 million accounts. That’s the part where AI is coming to rescue. All the demographics, follower active hours, engagements with posts and other insights are provided by none other than an artificial intelligence.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE— DIGITAL AGE MARKETING GURU
Most likely, you’ve encounter artificial intelligence on daily basis without even thinking about it. Many bigger companies are utilizing this invention to aid monotone and simple everyday tasks. Think about all the chatbots you encounter in various websites, personalized emails from businesses, updates you receive on your purchase delivery status and so on. Sure enough, artificial intelligence plays huge role in marketing goods and services. Have you ever googled a product once or twice and afterwards saw it on every possible social media outlet? Then I’m guessing you’re probably familiar with cookies. These cookies collect your browsing information and use it for marketing or researching purposes, especially if you are logged into your google account while browsing the internet. Even though for most people it is an annoying feature, it provides repetitive exposure for businesses altogether elevating the marketing strategy from its foundation.
AI AND STRATEGIC MARKETING DECISION MAKING?
So we already know that AI is a great tool in tactical use, but what about strategic marketing decision making? As once said by an interviewee in T. Eriksson, A. Bigi and M. Bonera’s research on AI role in the marketing strategy formulation, artificial intelligence is no longer a barrier in strategy creation, on the contrary it’s an enabler. AI has successfully integrated in business decision making by analyzing large quantities of data and transforming it into information and knowledge that is easy to process. While efficiently making some non-strategic decisions like short-term investments, AI is still just a valuable tool. People are worried about AI in strategic decision management level since making such significant decision requires both creative and rational thinking. However, many people think that while AI excels in the rational part, still, the creative component cannot be compared to human creativity possibilities and effectiveness. Nevertheless, some sources stresses the fact that AI is capable of condoning both elements.
THE HYBRID APPROACH
“As things stand, AI is a more than capable performer on the rational side of the equation. But humans retain the upper hand where imagination and creativity are concerned. At least for now.“ -Strategic Direction journal (2020)
There are many people who are still not willing to welcome this innovative change, but the ones that dare to do so are in for a treat. While AI might be capable on making strategic decisions, it is still thought that humans are more reliable at performing this task. Therefore, many companies use AI in marketing strategy creation with the hybrid approach. It is believed that it’s better to give the rational analytics part to the AI and simultaneously giving the creative and the main decision making part to humans, where they can provide more added value. Who knows, maybe there will come a day when humans no longer will need to make these strategic decisions by themselves and AI will takeover this work.
