Artificial intelligence (AI) is playing a key role in society. From securing our homes, autocorrecting our text, and answering our queries, AI has penetrated our everyday lives and will impact the future of marketing.
In the marketing world, AI is hard at work. Targeting with Google Ads, chatbots that help answer customer queries and concerns 24/7, and semantic search to help customers find what they’re searching for faster on the net, are changing the way businesses interact online. In fact, an analysis by McKinsey & Co. involving over 400 cases of AI use has shown that AI demonstrates the greatest potential in the realm of sales and marketing.
The greatest potential value impact from using AI are both in top-line-oriented functions, such as in marketing and sales, and bottom-line-oriented operational functions, including supply chain management and manufacturing
(Chui ET AL., 2018).
And in the not-so-distant future, as its technology makes strides, expect to see AI having a huge impact on customer behaviors. Along with that market change, marketing strategies of brands and companies will continue to adapt to that change. It will alter business models, sales processes, and customer service interactions. Salesforce is seeing this intelligent tech to be the technology most adopted by marketers in the imminent future and its role in powering business.
Here are 5 Ways Artificial Intelligence Will Impact the Future of Marketing.
1. Hyper-personalization
Advertising and marketing are evolving. Thanks to on-demand apps and social media, people are becoming more and more demanding and impatient. They expect nothing but fresh and extraordinary experiences. Digital marketers know this and have been making strides to personalize marketing strategies, although the tech world has yet to see more innovation to improve market engagement according to market preferences and expectations.
By utilizing AI, data is now at the company’s fingertips, allowing businesses to take marketing strategies to new heights. However, one-on-one personalization is impossible without intelligent technology that is driven by behavior, which is why we use AI to make marketing more humane. Readily available AI and data can veer marketing game plans away from automation, towards personalization, and at some point in the future, anticipation, and prediction.
This is what futurist and brand strategist Brian Solis, Principal Analyst at Altimeter, shared in an interview with SAS.com. He foresees that AI will bring more individualized personalization into marketing strategies, veering them away from marketing automation.
Contextual and personally relevant engagements can come into the picture to elevate the complete customer journey further on than just the bounds of awareness, reach, and conversion. With the help of AI, marketers can create hyper-personalized messages, relevant content in the customer’s preferred medium, and preferred gadgets sent at their preferred time.
2. Joining in the Sales Call
The sales process of each industry is not immune to the effects of AI. While the phone call (or other forms of voice calls) would still play a crucial role in the sales process, AI will be “joining the conversation.” When AI joins the sales team, an AI agent will be tracking conversations on the phone in real-time. Potentially they could use state-of-the-art voice analysis to conclude from a customer’s tone any issues the customer may have, dictating next steps to ensure a positive customer experience. With this capability, AI can assist, in real-time, the salesperson in addressing such issues.
AI bots could also be used in the future to make initial calls to sales prospects. These cold calls could be immediately forwarded to a live agent, based on the information extracted from the initial customer response.
3. Automating Business Processes
Earlier we mentioned that AI will veer marketers away from marketing automation but AI will continue to expedite business processes by automating tasks that need minimal or no human involvement. Examples of this are replacing lost ATM cards, transferring data from call centers into record-keeping programs, and “reading” documents to draw out main stipulations through natural language processing.
4. Intelligent Data Processing and Analytics
Beyond merely recording or transferring data from emails, calls, and other interactions, AI can also pick up insights from customer records and transaction data. It can wade through data from voice, text, image, and facial expression and can process customers’ data from Pinterest, Facebook, and other social media platforms to detect expressed preferences. With AI insights, the marketer can foretell what a customer may possibly purchase, bring into play a targeted digital ad in real-time, or even predict issues like credit fraud.
5. Improved Bottom Line
By automating customer service, simple marketing tasks, and structured market transactions, companies can lower the cost of doing business. By helping marketers make better marketing decisions, AI can increase revenues. Thus, when used right, AI has the potential to improve the bottom line of a business on both sides of the equation.