When you think of using artificial intelligence (AI) in digital marketing, what do you envision? Robots taking phone calls? While automation is part of the equation, it’s not the whole picture.
What artificial intelligence does for digital marketing is to help analyze data and interact with customers more effectively. Let’s take a look at how.
Benefits of Artificial Intelligence in Marketing
There’s a slew of technology available today that incorporates AI for marketing. Google Analytics helps business owners break down data and understand the algorithms that influence who sees your content. But what, specifically, does AI do to enhance digital marketing?
Predictions and Personalization
If you’ve ever considered a product launch, you’re probably familiar with feeling anxious. Will anyone want it? What’s the best price point? How should you market it, and to whom? With AI, you can predict customer behavior to help answer some of your questions. Based on how customers have behaved in the past, your AI software can determine who will be most receptive to your product or service, and help you target that demographic in your marketing.
Customer Behaviors are Analyzed by AI
Depending on the platform collecting data, AI can analyze the following:
- Shopping history
- Browsing history
- What ads they’ve lingered on
- Apps downloaded
- Media streamed
Additionally, AI can steer you in the right direction when it comes to personalizing content for your customers. You may not go so far as to have a bot create a blog article for your site, but you could rely on it to generate social media captions or headlines that grab the attention of your customers. Also, AI can help bring up your business when customers search for something in your niche using their phone near your brick-and-mortar store. For example, if they’re searching for dance costumes and you sell leotards, tights, and ballet flats, if your search engine optimization (SEO) has been assisted by AI, you’re more likely to show up in search results. At our Utah marketing firm, Gravitate One integrates SEO and analytics to help create and promote your content efficiently.
AI can also determine which platform is the best for promoting your content, and when it should be published. Analytics explain when your customers are online, what type of device they’re using, and what they’re clicking on in their feeds. It takes the guesswork out of publishing so you can spend more time and money elsewhere.
Pricing Products
Obviously, you want to price your products so you make a profit. But how big do your margins need to be? How can you ensure you’re pricing fairly, and competitively? AI can help analyze current trends for your product and service, and help you not only pick the right price point but also when it’s best to offer sales.
Dynamic pricing can help create demand for your goods, and limited-time deals can create a sense of urgency in your customers. Using AI to price your products can ensure you not only cover your overhead but have proceeds to reinvest in your business and pay yourself/employees.
Customer Service
A big role played by artificial intelligence is that of customer service agent. We’ve mentioned this before, but it’s more than likely that when you visit a website or a brand’s social media, a bot pops up in a chat box to offer assistance. Customer service bots can respond to keywords to help customers answer frequently asked questions, or navigate through the system to speak to a live representative. Having a bot programmed to help customers can free up human employees to do other tasks that aren’t automated, or to have regular business hours with time off.
Examples of Customer Service Bots
If you’re not convinced that customer service bots are a feasible solution for your business, keep in mind the following are bots that many of us rely on daily.
- Alexa
- Cortana
- Google Assistant
- Siri
How often do you ask these virtual assistants to answer questions for you? Think about the benefits of having simple chatbots on your site or social media to be available to your customers 24/7. Additionally, a chatbot never lets personal experiences affect their attitude — because they don’t have any! A customer service chatbot will always be in a good mood, ready and willing to assist your customers no matter what.
Ad Optimization
With all the information you have at your fingertips, it seems like creating ads for your business would be a simple formula of A + B = conversions. Unfortunately, there are a lot of variables when it comes to making ads that convert. Artificial intelligence can demystify algorithms and use them to your advantage. Pay-per-click marketing can be expensive if no one ends up choosing your link on a search engine results page (SERP); use AI to ensure your headlines are catchy and informative.
We can’t say it enough, but using artificial intelligence can help you work smarter instead of harder. There’s a lot of data to interpret when it comes to digital marketing, and AI can help you keep up.