7 Reasons AI is a Marketing Manager’s New Best Friend
When most people hear the term Artificial Intelligence (AI), their mind turns to the quirky AI assistant on their mobile phone, and its somewhat amusing ability to provide any number of answers on why the chicken crossed the road.
It’s an entertaining distraction for a long bus ride home, but the underlying technology has been going through rapid developments that promise to make AI a powerful tool for busy marketing managers.
With social media on just about everyone’s mind, and more businesses going digital, opportunities for advanced marketing techniques are becoming more accessible. Couple these opportunities with affordable yet advanced data analytics tool and we see that marketers are steadily shifting towards a more data-centric decision-making process.
It has taken a while, but there is a growing acceptance among marketers that in the average data set there hides a ton of marketing potential. However, digging out the hidden gems can be a difficult task.
Traditional marketing tools such as charts, spreadsheets, and databases have been an essential part of a marketer’s toolset for the more analytical, results-driven marketer for some time now. However, they are often clunky and time-consuming, and the quality of their output mostly depends on the skill of the user.
AI, on the other hand, can learn, adapt, and develop a deeper understanding of human behavior over time. That’s a good thing considering that the best marketers are the ones who can connect with their prospects at a more personal level.
The marketer’s goal is to achieve more sales, but understanding customer wants and needs has always paved the way for sustainable growth. AI-powered technology empowers marketing managers to make every transaction more meaningful and personal. Here are more reasons AI is a marketing manager’s best friend.
1. AI Helps Marketers Connect with Their Customers
A regular role of the marketing manager is to find and act on the emerging patterns that reveal themselves in the constant stream of data flooding their inbox every day. It’s a time-consuming task that keeps many dedicated sales managers at their desks until the day’s end.
AI is more ideally suited to finding emerging trends and patterns and can scan massive data sets more rapidly than any human. AI also doesn’t need copious amounts of coffee or lunch breaks, and once set to the task, AI will keep going until the job is complete.
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One practical use of AI allows marketers to connect with customers in real-time as soon as they visit a website. Chatbots are now sophisticated enough to take the place of a human operator at a rudimentary level, providing timely information 24 hours a day, providing answers to simple questions, and even taking orders.
Whether the chatbot is a real person or not, the result is that the customer feels like they have connected with the organization at a more personal level, rather than just interacting with a piece of technology.
2. AI Improves Efficiency
Without the need to scan through vast amounts of data, marketing managers will now be able to spend more time focusing on the people who make up their team, as well as have more time to communicate with clients and research new ways to enhance the customer experience.
3. AI Will Improve Customer Support Response Times
Customer support is necessary but is often a massive drain on a company’s resources. AI can considerably reduce the workload of beleaguered support staff, and even prompt engagement before the customer even knows they have a problem.
AI’s ability to scan huge datasets will help identify bottlenecks, faults, and hang-ups so all customer concerns can be dealt with quickly. Artificial intelligence can also highlight trends which indicate a failure in the sales process. The problems can then be dealt with promptly before they become a much larger disruptive force and tarnish the organization’s reputation in the marketplace.
4. Reach Customers at the Right Time
A big part of making a successful sale involves getting an offer in front of the customer at the right time. Artificial Intelligence will help find patterns in customer behavior that will help put your product or service in front of prospects at a time when they are most likely to buy.
There is a wealth of consumer hidden knowledge about consumer behavior hidden in online data such as keyword searches and social media profiles. Artificial Intelligence will allow the development of smarter more effective campaigns that focus on human behavior to reach customers, at the exact time they are searching for a solution.
5. Personalizing Messages
AI can sniff out market segments and help managers understand what motivates them. Marketers will then be able to tailor a pitch or ad campaign that targets the customer’s most significant pain points or desires. As a result, stronger, longer lasting relationships are forged.
6. Improve Accuracy
A lot of marketing success comes down to trial and error. As AI developments continue, and it continues to learn from the data it receives, strategic marketing campaigns will be more focused and accurate in their delivery. A deeper understanding of the demographic will mean that marketing managers will spend less time guessing, and more time connecting with highly qualified leads.
7. AI Integrates Data across Tools and Platforms
Massive streams of data arrive at a marketing manager’s desk in a variety of formats and protocols. The various tool sets available to marketers rarely play well together and are often completely incompatible. It can be difficult to make sense of the mess and keep track of everything — especially when you introduce human bias into the mix.
AI-powered software has the capability to integrate many sources of data into a single stream and provide marketing teams with a bird’s eye view of any emerging patterns.
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Conclusion
AI offers great potential to streamline data and results for any marketer — if they’re ready to push the boundaries and try something new. By being able to connect with, learn about, and reach out to current and potential customers in a personalized way, the chances of growing your customer base and improving results on ad campaigns and marketing efforts is limitless.