The Role of AI in Marketing

While Artificial Intelligence (AI) in marketing is a relatively new concept, it has already proven to be an extremely effective addition to the marketing professional’s toolkit. Let’s explore how today's marketers are leveraging the power of AI to improve the effectiveness of their marketing strategies.

AI is a broad term that can be used to describe any technology that can learn and make automated decisions based on past learnings. All learning that an AI will develop comes from the data it receives. The more data the AI gathers, the faster it can adapt to fit the needs of your audience. Unlike human employees, AI solutions operate 24/7 and become increasingly capable of more complex functions over time. It’s these kinds of capabilities that make artificial intelligence so powerful.

Modern marketing professionals understand the need to have a comprehensive and insightful understanding of their audience. Today's AI platforms enable marketers and organisations to develop rich customer insights from a range of data sources which can help deepen customer connection, develop authentic engagement and drive more conversions. 

AI can be used for:

Marketing automation: This is the use of AI for tasks such as lead generation, lead scoring, and customer retention. It helps marketers identify potential customers and engage with them when they are most likely to be responsive to your marketing message.

Personalisation: An AI technology will create a profile of the customer based on the data collected from their purchase history. Marketers can then promote targeted advertising, offers and new products that will match their tastes. Targeted marketing developed from customer data helps improve engagement, conversion and ultimately marketing ROI.

Forecasting: AI is being used as a tool for predictive analytics and forecasting. Predictive analytics uses data from past customer interactions to predict what actions they may be likely to take next. When applied to larger audience segments and scaled it can also be used to forecast business metrics such as revenue outcomes.

Utilising AI in marketing is a great way to leverage those technologies that allow us to develop deeper customer insights across a whole range of touchpoints: 

Gather data-rich insights in a fraction of the time
AI also plays a pivotal role in data analytics and performance measurement. AI enables marketers to track campaign performance from mass-market messaging right down to individual social media posts. With the power of AI, marketers can leverage thousands of data points to optimise their measurement framework according to the targets and metrics that matter to the business.

Understand your target audience better
The data collected by AI can help provide us with a better understanding of our customers by collecting and analysing their social, behavioural and sales data so you can target your message to the right audience and better anticipate their needs. 

Streamline operations
Data drives modern marketing practices and AI plays a central role in achieving better business efficiencies and delivering better outcomes across marketing operations. AI can help streamline marketing operations as it will minimise the inefficiencies in your business’ operations allowing for more time to be spent on strategic action.

Utilising AI in marketing doesn’t come without challenges. Although AI technologies are becoming more common across many marketing practices, some important considerations should be accounted for.

Being mindful of these key rules to AI will help you be prepared and avoid any potential pitfalls:

Accurate data is a must
AI requires accurate, verifiable data inputs to make effective marketing initiatives. Low quality or incomplete data can cause more issues than no data so avoid inputting poor data at all costs.

Invest in quality AI technology
Successfully integrating AI into your marketing technology and services platform requires the appropriate technology resources. Investing in a quality AI system will ensure the adoption of the technology runs smoothly, where a cheaper system may break down. Organisations that struggle to fully invest in the hardware can opt to partner with a cloud provider who can help guide them with the right technology solutions.

Creating a technology adoption culture
Organisations that fully embrace the opportunities that come through building AI into their marketing operations will be in a strong position to make the most of the competitive advantage that AI can deliver. Develop this culture by providing training and support programs to help people understand how to best use the technology and understand what can be achieved with the new technology.