If you?re a marketer or business owner in today?s competitive marketplace, you?ve probably tried just about everything you can think of to maximize your success. You?ve dabbled in digital marketing, visited trade shows, paid for print advertising, and incentivized customer testimonials. It?s probably resulted in lots of stress, sleepless nights, and CBD oil drops to give you the energy and focus to keep going. Marketing requires multiple approaches to succeed, so while you should stick with the things you?ve been doing successfully, you?ll also want to include artificial intelligence (AI) in your current strategy. If you haven?t already, you might be falling behind your competitors. As many as 80 percent of marketers believe that AI will be the most effective tool by 2020. AI marketing techniques increase the efficiency of your marketing budget and are often more effective than some of the traditional tactics you may be using. You?ll combine big data and inbound marketing to deliver a practical marketing strategy that drives conversions. Here are some ways you can apply this seemingly magical tool.
1. Customer Personas
The most basic rule about marketing is that you can?t hope to run successful campaigns if you don?t know who you?re targeting. A good marketer will create customer personas that tell you who your target market is and how you can best service them. Personas are made at the basic level by listing demographics, interests, and other information that can help you target an audience. About 53 percent of marketers say that AI is extremely useful in identifying customers. It provides information that you might not have otherwise considered when drafting a marketing strategy. This is extremely valuable since more specific information leads to more effective marketing. In order to capture this essential data, look through your company analytics. Define the demographics of those who follow you on social media, make purchases on your website, and comment or inquire about your products/services. This essential data can develop a more profound persona designed to target the right customer base.
2. Digital Advertising Campaigns
Many marketers have heard about the essentials of a digital advertising campaign in furthering sales, but they haven?t seen the results they hoped for. Artificial intelligence can significantly improve these campaigns. Once you?ve created a comprehensive view of your customer base, you?ll experience far more effective digital advertising campaigns. A great example of this is Facebook advertising, which is named by many marketing experts as the best bang for your buck. It allows you to create advertisements that are specifically targeted towards those who are most likely to make a purchase. However, it only works if you know exactly who your target audience is. Thanks to the abundance of consumer data collected by websites, social sites, and keyword searches, you?ll have all the information you need for more effective digital ads.
3. Automated Email and SMS Campaigns
Email and SMS marketing are considered some of the best lead-generating marketing tactics out there. Email is the number-one source of business communication with 86 percent of consumers and business professionals reporting it as their preferred source. More importantly for sales, nearly 60 percent say it?s their most effective channel for revenue generation. SMS marketing, although not as popular as email among marketers, boasts similar data for millennial clients, or those aged 18-36. Thanks to AI, we know that about 83 percent of millennials open an SMS message within 90 seconds of receiving it. Three quarters say they prefer SMS for promotions, surveys, reminders, and similar communications from brands. With the help of AI, we not only understand the essentials of email and SMS for marketing, but we have insights that help to make it better. AI-enabled tools make facilitate targeted campaigns to a specific audience. They handle the busy work behind these campaigns so that you can focus more on developing products and customer service.
4. Market Research
Savvy marketers begin every new campaign with market research, gathering information about customers, effective marketing strategies, and trends in the industry. This information is invaluable for directing campaigns effectively and making products more appealing to the intended audience. Big data provides all that information for you, although it?s difficult to understand it all on the surface. There?s so much information that you?ll need analytics tools to decipher the most useful data that can be used to direct your marketing efforts. Once you?ve broadened your horizons with data-deciphering tools, you?ll have an easier time interpreting customer emotions and their perceptions of your brand. You?ll be able to make changes or continue implementing an effective strategy with this insightful information.
5. User Experience
As business owners know, it?s all about the user experience. A good marketing campaign begins with a website and advertisements designed specifically for customers? benefit. In fact, customers are beginning to demand information, products, and services at lightning speed. AI can help you give that to them. One example is the use of chatbots for customer service. When customers reach out to you on Facebook Messenger, for example, you can set up a chatbot to respond immediately and let them know you?ll be with them shortly. Another example is personalization that comes through AI. As you know your audience better, you can set your advertisements and website experiences to be catered to the individual. Each time they log onto your website, they?ll be greeted by name and advertisements all over the web will show them only the things they?re interested in seeing. Email marketing will improve with personalization as well. Social media and Google advertisements are all about catering more directly to the user experience. The data you collect about individual consumers all but guarantees your ads will be shown to the right people.
6. Sales Forecasting
Fruitful marketing drives sales, a metric that?s easier to forecast and understand with the use of AI. Marketers can use all the information derived from inbound communication and compare it to traditional metrics in order to determine updates and improvements for sales strategies. It can show you a forecasting of the results of a certain metric, so you can determine if it?s worth the expense to do so. This can save marketers significant time and money in the industry all while driving more sales and growth as a result.
AI is Redefining the State of Marketing
Artificial intelligence is having a profound impact on the state of marketing in 2019. AI technology will be even more influential in the years to come. Make sure that you understand its impact and find ways to utilize it to its full potential.