How to use AI in your marketing campaign
How to use AI in your marketing campaign
AI is one of the buzzwords that’s being thrown around by magazines, start-ups, influencers and businesses nowadays. And since it gets so much traction, there must be something in it, doesn’t it?
AI is not exactly what you might think it is. It’s not a robotic mastermind that plots to take over the world. It’s usually a program used by businesses to make their work more effective. In this article we will talk about using AI in your marketing campaign. We will not only cover the areas of AI application, but most importantly, the factors that will make it an effective marketing tool!
Make sure your data is good!
Your AI needs to learn. Just like a kid in school, it needs good ‘books’ and conditions to get the most valuable knowledge. This is especially important with advanced deep learning systems. You need a huge quantity, but also great quality of data.
Why is that? Let’s suppose you have a lot of data of low quality. Your AI will munch them, but because they hold little value, the system won’t be able to recognize many patterns and trends.
Same goes for a situation, in which you have good quality data but in a tiny amount. Well, in this case your AI might be able to interpret what you gave it and come up with some solutions. Although quality should always be your top priority when it comes to data, quantity is also important if you want scaleable results.
Take care of capturing your data from all possible angles, make sure it’s thoroughly documented and that your staff knows exactly what to do with it. In that way you will be able , to get the most out of your AI.
A little word on automation
The phrase Artificial Intelligence is often paired with automation. It’s so often done in a grim context of people losing their jobs and the robots taking over.
However, when it comes to marketing, AI can have plenty of applications. One of them is automation of all the menial and boring tasks you have to do. Setting up email lists, personalizing each message, sending out messages at the right time. It’s a hassle, isn’t it?
AI-augmented processes can help you with that. They can sort your leads into different categories in a matter of seconds. They can put a name of your lead into an email they will receive. They can collect and interpret the data. Seems like a lot, doesn’t it?
But don’t be scared, AI won’t take your job! If anything, it will do all the repetitive tasks for you, which will leave you with plenty of time to do what’s most important in marketing – coming up with campaigns that will really resonate with your customer base. As of now, AI is used more as a supplement than a substitute. It’s good to use it to automate certain processes, but creative work is still better when it’s done by a human.
Make sure your customers trust you
Ever seen Matrix or Terminator? These two hit movie series have given AI a bad face and made people feel fear and anxiety towards it. With the recent data scandals around Facebook and frequent data leaks (Equifax being the one of the most recent one), it’s no wonder people can approach AI with a sense of mistrust. There’s also the uncanny valley phenomenon (read more here https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/13/robots-human-uncanny-valley ).
There’s also another group of people who view AI as a sort of magical thing. We’re talking extremely advanced robots, talking phones, etc. Artificial Intelligence is a fresh technology and people still need to come to terms with it.
What can you do about it?
First of all, be absolutely transparent with everything you do! Handling data of hundreds or thousands of people is a very fragile situation. And while it might be tempting or even profitable to start misusing the data for profit, keep in mind that this is a sure way to losing your customers and your credibility in the public eye!
Second of all, educate the people. The Internet gives you plenty of opportunities and platforms to show your customers the ways you use AI. Videos, webinars, social media, blog articles, white papers – these are only some of the content types or online places you can utilize.
Where can you use AI in your marketing campaign
Chatbots
Ever visited a website to ask something and realized that there’s no one available to answer you? Or that there’s only a contact form for you to fill. It says they’ll get back to you in a day, but you need the answer right now…
AI-powered chatbots are one of the more recent additions to the world of customer service. They can be optimized in a way that will allow them to answer any type of question your customer might have. Let’s assume someone wants to ask about a specific aspect of our shipping policy that wasn’t exactly explained in your FAQ. An AI chatbot can do that for them. They will receive a concrete answer in a matter of minutes leaving them satisfied.
Additionally, the chatbot will collect the data on the customers who use it. For example, if someone asks about your shipping policy, the data collected by your chatbot will indicate that there’s something missing in your FAQ.
Lead Generation
The goal of any marketing campaign is to get people to buy. In an ever-changing sales landscape marketers need to constantly look for new ways to find the customers. AI is definitely one of the bigger things in lead generation.
Let’s suppose you have a Landing Page set up. There are leads flowing in to your database. But how do you know, which ones have the potential to become prospects or customers and which are not valuable? An AI can quickly and effectively process your leads and sort them into groups so that you know how to approach them in a most effective way.
AI can also create customer profiles by analyzing your social media or CRM.
Predictive analytics
Data rules marketing. But it can be overwhelming for a person or even a team to sort through. A successful marketing campaign requires a lot of data and going through them would take a lot of time.
AI can analyze the data and find patterns quickly and effectively. Unlike non-AI analytics tools, it ‘thinks’ for itself and is able to notice some data errors that otherwise would provide unreliable results.
Why are predictions important? In marketing you need to know what ground are you treading on. If you launch campaigns without looking at what data tell you, you are more than likely to be unsuccessful. It would be like walking in a really thick fog without a map trying to find a hidden treasure.
AI-powered predictive analytics dispel the fog and give you a detailed outline of the terrain you’re moving in. It allows you to create focused marketing campaigns that will actually translate to sales.
Advertising
Even a small business is likely to have at least a hundred or even more customers. How do you know what sort of products does each of them need? You have to analyze their online behaviors, Cookie files and the product pages they look at. Seems like an arduous task? Well, AI comes to the rescue once again! It can analyze all this data and decide, which ads will be displayed for whom.
AI is also useful in Facebook Ads. With 2 billion monthly users, each of them providing a huge chunk of data on their own, Facebook needed to provide a solution that would not only be able to interpret all the information, but also ‘think for itself’. That means, sorting the users and throwing out fake accounts, inactive ones or accounts with inaccurate data (for example, someone who tagged themselves in Lancaster, PA when they actually live in Lancaster, UK). Such optimization allows for getting better results from your PPC campaign.
Summary
AI is the future. Data is also the future. When combined, they form a powerful tool, a sort of marketing superhero that will assist you with all your campaigns.
Let’s recap all the information you’ve got from this article:
- AI in marketing is as good as your data,
- Automation is good, but don’t automate everything,
- There are some prejudices against AI that can undermine your business’s credibility. Make sure you educate the people,
- You can use AI in your marketing campaign in areas such as: chatbots, lead generation, predictive analytics and advertising.
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Author: Pete Gypps
Director of Business Development
Specialisations in transforming SMB and Enterprise businesses from On-Premise Communication products to Cloud Technology.
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