How AI Will Shape Digital Marketing going Forward.
Recently, I had a candid conversation with one of my marketers; a savvy and experienced digital marketer working for a top automotive parts manufacturer. He complained that they have noted a steep decline in their Google Ads and Adwords return on investment. Reason? Google is now more than ever sponsoring video snippets in the search results meaning most individuals browsing the internet for solutions are less likely to read content when presented with such videos addressing their problem. This phenomena is just one of the many instances where artificial intelligence is being utilized to understand clients better. In this case, Google has come to the realization that clients (those browsing the internet) are more likely to watch a 1 minute video that solves their problem when presented with an alternative of reading an article of over 1500 words. What this means, is that digital marketers have to change the tune of their strategies to align to artificial intelligence, or else they will be forced out of the market.
A Tool For Defining Potential Clientele Behavior.
Going forward, digital marketers no longer have to waste marketing dollars on efforts that bear no fruits. Instead, artificial intelligence tools enables them to identify prospective clients with a high likelihood of responding to offers. In this regard, the digital marketer will understand the behavior of the client better and thus use this knowledge in curating campaigns that are more relevant and reasonable to the target audience, hence safeguard return on investments for the business in the long-term.
Better User Experience
Artificial intelligence is focused on delivering better user experience by ensuring that all digital marketing efforts do not appear simply as salesy but they have a human touch. In the efforts to improve user experience, Google, the largest search engine on the planet recently introduced the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) update that is focused on teaching their algorithm on understanding search terms better than before. In this regard, they are focusing one ensuring that they improve understanding of natural language better in presenting browsers the most relevant search results (Devlin et al., 2018). This also means that digital marketers have now to keenly focus on user-centric content by writing better content that directly satisfy the need of the searcher.
Real-Time Support.
With artificial intelligence, clients will no longer have to wait for days or even hours before their queries are answered. Digital marketing becomes more easier as the AI chatbots become more familiar with the needs of clients and offer more personalized assistance just like human customer care staff. They can answer questions regarding tracking of orders, answer frequently asked questions (FAQs) and also fulfill orders (Pathak, 2019). In the long-term, they will help to remove the lag that exists when a company is unable to have 24–7 customer support staff all-round the year.
Improved Email Marketing & Advertising.
In the past, failure to execute effective email marketing strategies often results to the massive subscription or redirection of business emails to spam folders by clients. Most of these challenges arise when there is a mismatch between the needs of the business and that of the client. With AI, digital marketers can understand perfectly the best periods during the day or week when they can send marketing emails, the frequency, and even the ideal type of personalized content. The same strategy can be applied in understanding client’s behavior and thus curating ideal content in advertising that will draw their attention rather than their wrath.
Conclusion
Overall, the times ahead are exciting for digital marketing as AI provides immense opportunities. There is no doubt that businesses will easily understand the consumption behaviors of their clients and potential clients. As a result, going forward, businesses can make informed decisions about the products and services to recommend, as well as the digital marketing channels, tools, and platforms to use in reaching out to the clients. Not only will AI assist in lead generation but also in customer retention by helping digital marketers only use methods that address client’s needs and avoid those that annoy them. Artificial intelligence is part of the modern revolutions in digital marketing, a concept that is here to stay with us. Despite the high costs of acquiring the AI technology and processes, it is a worthy investment to any business serious about remaining relevant, sustainable and profitable from 2020 and beyond. With this in mind, therefore, it is imperative that businesses adopt the tools, methods, and best practices of AI early enough since a failure to do so means their strategies will be outdates soon which could spell utter doom.
