GET READY TO MAKE A REVOLUTION IN MARKETING USING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Aleksey Zavgorodniy
Unicsoft
Published in
7 min readOct 16, 2018

Artificial intelligence, commonly referred to as AI, is definitely not a new concept. Since the time when people first started building machines, they’ve thought about giving them the same intellect we have. Back then it was a fantasy, now it’s as real as it can be. AI is now used in a lot of areas of our everyday life, and it’s about to be used in a lot more, from medicine to education. However, one of the most notable areas of expertise AI would be able to largely improve is marketing.

AI Today: Overview

Artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science and at the same time the subject of this field. It studies the way of creation and operation of programs that work and react in the same way an average human does. It is quite difficult to define more clearly, which is why there are a lot of types of AI out there.

One of the most important and impressive ways the AI is often used is to analyze huge amounts of data to understand its context and the context of the request. The program is able to provide the result of such an analysis in the form of an answer or some sort of action. This ability of contextual analysis is very important for marketing, which is why the use of the technology for data analytics is becoming more and more popular.

Data and the changes in it are the most important factors in the decision-making process. That’s why more and more marketing managers are starting to adopt artificial intelligence applications to help them better analyze market. Over 50% are already using some sort of AI as a helping hand. Furthermore, the technology is now ready to be used in other areas of the field, in some cases even for data and content creation.

However, according to some sources, around 34% of people in executive positions think that the industry is still not ready to implement the technology, at least in some areas. In order to understand the problems AI implementation has and the future of the technology, here are some of the most notable example of its use.

3 Real-Life Examples Of Implementing AI And Machine Learning In Marketing

1. Content personalization

The main goal of most websites and services is to keep a person glued to the screen. In order to achieve such a prolonged attention, a service has to excel in understanding what content or goods should be recommended to the customer based on their previous experience. The best way to improve the recommendations is to embed machine learning algorithms.

It is a type of AI that makes an alteration to the process and then either adopts it or discards based on the outcome. This set of algorithms would recommend you a bunch of different content similar to something you’ve already watched. Then it would narrow down your preferences based on the recommendations you’ve accepted and declined, iteratively getting to the ideal situation of 1 click per recommendation. Such services as Netflix, Spotify and Amazon have already implemented these algorithms into their systems, which means that content personalization will only be growing more popular.

2. Smart sales assistants

The creation of the Turing test has led to the emergence of one of the first applications of artificial intelligence — chatbots. Although chatbots are still not able to pass the Turing test, they are actively used by sales platforms as smart assistants. They are very useful for automatization and improvement of different aspects of the sale. They can provide basic information, answer general questions, set up meetings and look into inbound leads, and it’s all thanks to natural language processing (NLP).

NLP is one of the branches of AI that focuses on “teaching” the computer how to understand human speech. There are a lot of different ways to do so, and they are being improved upon all the time. The simplest way to understand the process is to think of it as a breaking of every sentence into different fragments, each of which is then compared to basic fragments stored in the memory. Such systems are used as a foundation for basically by every modern smart virtual assistant, for example, Siri, and Cortana, as well as Bixby.

3. Targeted advertisement

In order to make your ads as personal as possible, websites often use targeted advertising to grab your attention. The targeted advertisement is a process when the AI picks the ads you’re going to see based on the information it has about you.

The most notable parameters that are often used to target different ads are the sex of the user, their age, and the previous activity they’ve had, like the goods they’ve bought and the searches they’ve run. Machine learning in advertisement is one of the ways to target ads, too.

A lot of programmatic advertising services use ad targeting on their users. The popular social networks are the least shy about using artificial intelligence in advertising. For example, Facebook and Twitter often use the personal information of their users to provide target advertising.

Artificial Intelligence In Marketing: What’s Next?

The evolution of AI will definitely lead to enormous changes in the way we picture marketing system as a whole. Here are some examples of how the AI implementation will influence this field:

  • The rise in the efficiency of artificial intelligence marketing campaigns. The bigger role the AI will play as a part of your team, the less you will have to worry about the correct marketing segmentation, as well as campaign tracking and keyword tagging. Basically, every little detail that deals with data science will be taken care of;
  • The constant sense of unpreparedness. The technology is only at its beginning stage of development, and soon it will be evolving at a great speed. In order to stay in the loop, you will have to constantly be on the edge of your seat. This will definitely cause a certain sense of uneasiness, even if you use state-of-the-art technology.
  • The shift from analysis to creation. According to rumors, Netflix has already started testing software that will create movie trailers based on the preferences of each user. Such innovations are not uncommon — different types of AI are being created, including ones that won’t analyze the data, but rather create content (or at least help in its creation).

Based on these trends and the other available information, here are a couple of technologies that marketers will need to adopt as soon as possible:

  • Image recognition — this technology has a great potential. People share billions of photos every day, so being able to analyze these images become a great source of information. If this information is later used for targeted advertisement, you will get the most accurate ad design out there.
  • Customer segmentation — although it can be efficiently used even without the AI, customer segmentation would be an even better tool with the use of the newest technology. With the help of artificial intelligence, you would be able to not only determine all the different customer groups but also find the best way to market your product to each and every one of them, thus potentially increasing your brand value.
  • Content generation — AI-generated content might not be up to par yet, but with further developments, it will definitely improve. What’s more important, it could be targeted towards every separate user — something no one would ever have the time to do.

The Bottom Line

Whether we want it or not, AI is going to dominate a lot of aspects of our life soon. It will definitely change the marketing industry, but is it really that bad? The use of Artificial Intelligence for marketing opens new ways for making creative strategies, lowers the price of the overall work you’d have to do and broadens the horizon for new ways to advertise the products.

The new report from Accenture reveals that successful application of artificial intelligence right now could lead to an increase in profits by an average of 38% by 2035. So, let’s start thinking about future and study more about AI. Whether you work in a hospital, car manufacture, customer service, marketing or branding agency; are responsible for cybersecurity in an IT company or an eCommerce entrepreneur building your own virtual assistant — AI opens a whole lot of new advanced opportunities to perfect your niche.

And you can always rely on the help of our team. Contact us anytime you have a question or ready to jump in with a new project!

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Aleksey Zavgorodniy
Unicsoft

CEO at Unicsoft. Innovative technology boutique. Blockchain. Artificial Intelligence