As computers grow smarter and faster, artificial intelligence’s (AI’s) capabilities are increasing. More tasks across every industry are becoming automated. AI has already impacted marketing significantly, including sorting through customer data in intuitive and in-depth ways. It can point out patterns and make actionable suggestions. However, additional changes are en route.
Customer experience is everything. While only 15% of organizations currently use AI, 31% say they plan to invest within the next 12 months. Most businesses understand that adapting to technological advances is key to long-term success.
Expect change as computers learn to think more autonomously. Discover six clear ways AI will streamline marketing in 2020 and beyond.
1. Improve Social Media Targeting
Industry leads say the use of AI for social media marketing will grow by about 28.3% between now and 2023. Much of the changes will come in the form of segmentation and better targeting of the audience. Deep learning technology will study and learn from buyer behavior patterns in a fraction of the time. Some of the service impacted will include Google Ads, Facebook, Twitter and other social media giants.
2. Time Posts Perfectly
Companies can use predictive software to see when posts get the most engagement and time efforts accordingly. As machines learn and sort through data at faster speeds, expect analytics of target audiences to get more refined. Marketers can also anticipate campaigns that study competitors, including when they are posting and how effective they are. Marketers will see what types of posts work best at different times of the day or week.
3. Secure Customer Loyalty
It is much cheaper to keep an existing customer than find a new one. Better insight through AI will help businesses reach out to customers late in the buying cycle in more intuitive ways and secure them as lifelong fans. Marketing in later phases of the sales funnel will become more personalized throughout 2020 and beyond. Campaigns to win back customers who’ve left will also improve based on better data and tracking.
4. Personalize Content
Most people have probably felt the personal effects of better predictive analytics for serving up content. On a site such as Amazon, for example, they offer recommendations to users based on past browsing and buying behavior. Companies will use this concept more to ensure people receive offers and content that meets their specific needs.
5. Market More Productively
AI allows companies to easily automate tasks human workers used to do manually. For example, smart software can automatically generate a list of email subscribers based on customer data and segment it into groups based on demographics. It can also find relevant industry articles online and post interesting tidbits to social media pages.
As AI advances, the ability of machines to figure out what readers are most interested in improves. There will come a time when companies can trust computers to make these decisions and allow marketing teams to work on a new ad campaign.
6. Amplify Customer Experience
In 2020, customer experience is one of the biggest things that differentiate one brand from another. Some features are pretty commonplace this decade, such as fast and cheap shipping, product quality and online presence. Companies can show superiority in the way they treat their customers. AI takes all the massive data at a business’s disposal and spits it out in an easily understood format that allows them to improve experience.
Because of AI’s predictive nature, companies can understand customers’ needs before they do. Imagine a brand tracks order history and gets an alert when there’s a pattern of a person ordering every three months. They could then send out a reminder to the customer that it’s been a few months since they’ve ordered. They can also showcase new products their customers might love.
AI in Marketing — Promises of the Future
While there are some clear advantages to using AI, benefits we’ve never dreamed of will manifest in the coming years. Experts predict the overall AI software market will grow 154% in 2020 and 2021 before tapering off slightly through 2025.
Smart businesses will stay abreast of technological changes and implement them into their marketing programs. With a little foresight and a lot of automation, PR teams can run at maximum capacity.
