How Much Can We Rely on AI and Big Data in The Age of Digital Marketing?
AI and Data Analytics in Marketing, Explained.
Artificial intelligence has become accessible anywhere, intending to assist humans in today’s world — automated email series, website assistant chatbox, Alexa voice assistant, recommendation engines like Netflix and Amazon, etc. The AI services market was worth $34.87 billion in revenue in 2021 and expect to grow to $70.94 billion in 2023. And companies are all jumping on the AI trend to improve customer experience or analyze big complicated data to predict sales. In fact, 80% of retail executives expect to adopt AI-powered intelligent automation by 2027. So what it is that makes every marketer so crazy about AI, and how much we can rely on it?
What Are AI Marketing and Big Data Analytics?
In marketing, AI helps automate data collection and behavioral targeting to help businesses achieve their goals. We often hear the term “algorithm” to describe AI computers using a program to analyze consumer online behavior data to generate content or things that a customer is highly interested in. You might wonder, where are companies getting our data? The short answer is you probably gave it to them when you clicked “Accept all cookies.” when you first visit a website. Moreover, if you use google chrome as your primary web browser, you’d be surprised when you see your Ad personalization data list with them.
Google collects user’s information like demographic, psychographics, and searches history to personalize the ads. The list of information they have on you is probably more than your BFFs. Check your data by visiting “adssettings.google.com” and you will get nuts by the accuracy of the data. Feeling your privacy has been invaded yet? The good thing is that Google allows you to turn them off, but you also lose the convenience of finding products you are interested in. With the data companies collect and the AI they develop, businesses can easily find the target audience and push content and promotions to generate sales. And that’s a considerable benefit every marketer dreams to have.
Common Use Of AI and Big Data in Marketing.
Businesses use AI in many different ways in the marketing world; the primary goal of implementing AI and data analytics is to improve user or customer experience and reduce workload for marketers.
The most common one is a customer service chatbot, where a company programs an automated communication system to help solve problems or questions from customers on a 24/7 basis.
Automated emails are also commonly used to improve customer experience and optimize personalization. Brands send out welcome emails with promotions to increase the conversion rate. With AI improvement, some E-commerce retail brands can automatically generate a product promotion email base on products that users have viewed on the website.
Bidding on programmatic Media buys like google ads and meta ads are the two main places where AI contributes massive efforts. It helps marketers place advertisements and messages in the right place and reach the right audience.
What is the downside of Using AI?
AI heavily relies on data and analytics, and getting consumer data is getting more challenging when the world moves forward to a new place — Privacy First World. In 2021, Apple launched IOS 14 with a users’ privacy protection framework, which has caused businesses a significant conversion decrease. The impact is critical that Meta expects a $10 billion in revenue decrease from the efforts on the IOS privacy framework.
Have you noticed CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) is getting so difficult to verify you are an actual human? Well, we are not the only ones adding products to the shopping cart; fake bots too and they are getting smarter. There are 470 million online shoppers who are bots and fake users. Insufficient data leads to bad decision-making, don’t let counterfeit data fool you and your marketing budget.
AI-powered customer service communication automation provides consumers 24/7 customer service, yet, we are still yelling “representative!” or “speak to a human!” when AI trapped us in the loop of unhelpful automation. The simple conclusion is that AI is not smart enough to replace 100% human intelligence.
Bottom Line
AI and data analytics are remarkable tools to empower human marketers to improve customers experience and enhance operational efficiencies. Human touch and emotional marketing are still valuable keys. While the AI-powered paid ads system helps find the target audiences, we still can’t forget to find ways to grow business organically. Only combining AI and human power can bring the best result.
