We all know that the new fashionable trend in business is artificial intelligence (AI).
From how suitable profiles are screened and recruited to how online customers are handled, AI technologies are transforming the way businesses operate in the twenty-first century.
According to a study, 61% of marketers say that AI is the most important aspect of data strategy.
Whether we talk about staying ahead in the gaming world or sci-fi movies, AI has proved to be a major revolution in the new world.
For digital marketing efforts, AI has also proved to be effective.
How artificial intelligence is changing the face of digital marketing
Here are some of the ways in which AI is benefitting digital marketing communications.
1. Service chatbots for marketing automation
AI bots can revolutionize your bland digital marketing strategy.
Gartner predicts, by 2020, 85% of the relationships between customers and enterprises will be managed without the involvement of a human agent.
Following are the ways in which AI is strengthening business communication.
a) Instant responses
Chatbots deliver 24/7 automated replies to customer queries regarding products or website without getting exhausted.
It means your business can operate and offer support even after business hours while your team gets more free time to work on important projects.
b) Chatbot Advertising
Advertising and promoting products through bots are not only cost-effective but also an effective strategy leading to better returns. Customers can head to the website for ordering right from the messenger interface.
c) Connecting marketing and sales
Chatbots are eliminating the gap between sales and marketing by identifying qualifying leads and empowering teams with the updated information. See how a chatbot from Crowd Writer UK does it for them.
d) Personalized recommendations with a human touch
Intelligent bots create personalized ads by learning about what customers are looking for. A virtual assistant assists customers with choosing the right product and keep them engaged throughout the buying journey.
Here are some best chatbot building tools.
Google Cloud AI
Creating your own chatbot has become easier for digital marketing professionals with Google Cloud AI. It is an easy-to-use and safe tool to use artificially intelligent pre-trained models like Google Assistant, Cortana, or Siri.
Mobile Monkey
It is known as the best platform for building chatbots for Facebook messenger. Bots developed by this builder can be designed to answer FAQs, make appointments, and generate content by understanding intent through keywords and interactions.
Amazon Lex
Developed in 2017, Amazon Lex empowers Amazon Alexa with its deep-learning abilities. Businesses are creating their own natural language bots Lex who can chat in any voice or language and work perfectly fine on a range of devices, including web, desktop, and smartphones.
2. AI for content creation
The biggest challenge for marketers is creating engaging content. The obvious reason behind their opinion is the fact that creating quality content that appeals to customers is time-consuming.
Today, marketers can use AI technologies for both content marketing and acquiring new ideas for content. You can generate some of the content such as email subject lines, social media ads, and irresistible titles with the help of AI-generated language.
The AI-supported content is highly customer-focused and generated keeping in minds the user intent without requiring employees to spend countless hours analyzing what the target audience is interested in.
3. AI for market research
Good market research is the backbone of eCommerce marketing success.
Evidence suggests that 93% of researchers see AI as an opportunity and 80% believe it is going to impact the market research industry (Qualtrics).
AI is also reinventing the market research industry in the following ways.
a) Efficiency
Intelligent tools and robots powered by machine learning automate tasks such as data analysis and perform a ton of other marketing activities in the blink of an eye. This helps businesses save billions of dollars.
b) People trust technology
The new generation’s need for immediate gratification can be fulfilled with self-serving options backed by AI. Evidence revealed that 52% and 35% of millennials and internet users are comfortable with using a chatbot for making local purchases.
These technologies also enhanced the response rate of customers by removing the fear of being judged.
c) Ability to handle more customers
AI-led chatbots have the capacity to facilitate hundreds of customers at the same time without getting confused. More data means better and accurate insights.
d) Conversational surveys
At least 50% of people abandon surveys because they are boring. But AI-enabled chatbots provide interactions using natural language processing (NLP), which enables companies to gain important feedback by initiating conversations.
Chatbots use conversation logs and interactions and store them in a repository. Instead of asking robotic-sounding questions, it collects information through personalized quizzes and polls without them knowing they are participating in surreys.
e) Changes in the job description of live agents
Human agents will be relieved from doing repetitive tasks such as providing product details and collecting feedback. Their jobs will become more strategic and qualitative, focusing on checking the accuracy of AI produced data.
4. Image recognition technology
Visual search is one of the biggest digital marketing trends of 2020. The latest findings revealed that
Image recognition technology can personalize user experiences. For instance, many clothing and home décor retailers are using AI-enabled image search software apps that let buyers upload a picture of a product or item to find something similar in their online stores.
According to Gartner, now only 8% of retailers are using visual search features in their web inventory. Technologies like Google Lens and platforms like Pinterest has made visual search an ordinary task.
5. Email marketing with AI
Digital marketing success is incomplete if you are not leveraging the power of email.
The latest figures showed that internet users are expected to grow from 3.9 billion in 2019 to 4.3 billion by 2023 (Statista). In fact, email marketing is supported by 9 out of 10 marketers for content distribution organically (Oberlo).
Read on to know the ways in which AI is improving the email marketing efforts of companies.
a) Optimized content and subject lines
AI allows businesses to generate human-like content, including CTA’s consistent with brand values.
b) Know the optimal time
AI is also empowering businesses by letting them know the best time to send emails. By optimizing the email send times, marketers are no longer required to do the guessing work of choosing the time and frequency of email campaigns.
c) Email personalization
According to 74% of marketers, emails with a personalized tag line have a six times higher click-through rate.
Personalization has become a key factor in email marketing that users now expect it. Non-personalized, boring emails with subject lines ‘Dear customer’ or anything without the real name of the customer appear spammy and will be ignored.
AI is enabling companies to send personalized emails using data such as name, gender, birthday, profession, marital status, etc.
Here are some best email automation tools that companies are using.
Mailchimp
The software allows you to send follow-up emails triggered by the website activity of users, such as subscribing to email, abandoned carts, inactivity, etc. It comes with so many integration possibilities that make it an all-in-one solution.
Leadsquared
This email automation software helps businesses streamline their lead generation by integrating it with the sales funnel.
6. AI for smart SEO
Businesses cannot make themselves popular in the internet world without the help of good SEO practices.
The role of AI in search engine optimization is predicted to be highly notable. Combining AI with SEO strategy can help businesses in the following ways.
a) An AI-enabled site
- AI-enabled search engines prioritize user intent and offer relevant results. To create an optimized site, businesses need to be more proactive about the context and concept behind the user query.
- When you understand the intent, your website ranking will increase, which indicates high credibility and brings in more traffic.
b) AI for voice search
National language processing (NLP) is the subcategory of AI that has made human interactions possible. As prefer conversational searches, the AI algorithm is helping marketers recognize natural phrases to guess queries.
c) Improved local SEO
Your digital marketing efforts will go in vain if your local business doesn’t appear to the local people. Using AI in your SEO efforts can benefit your business as 97% of users learn about a local company online.
Platforms like Yest use AI to make modifications in your company’s search listings that reflect across all search engines.
d) Elimination of old school SEO practices
With the advent of AI, the black hat SEO tactics are almost obsoleted. It has discouraged marketers who were previously using risky practices as it can hurt the business image.
The AI system RankBrain is so intelligent that it displays the best results for the user. This is great news for digital marketers because now they can be more focused on core competencies as the rest will be handled by the Google algorithms.
The final verdict
Marketers around the world love the fact that AI has become a norm that can take them ahead by developing a successful digital marketing strategy. By having a deeper understanding of AI’s influence on digital marketing, marketers can redesign their efforts by leveraging its power.
