How AI is changing Marketing but why we should remain wary

Artificial intelligence (AI) hasn’t been around for that long, but is already being used all around us and is employed in a variety of industries including marketing. So, how is AI changing marketing and is it always good to use?

Personalisation +

As 2.8 billion people are now using at least one social media website, they are becoming the top digital platforms to advertise on. Social media sites use AI and algorithms to improve hyper-personalization. This means they can pick up on your interests, previous searches, online behaviour and other factors to determine the best adverts and content to present to you. This is great news for marketers who have done paid adverts for their company on social media as you know that people who are likely to be interested in your company are going to see your ad. Companies are also using this AI to personalise and prioritise particular content to an individual based on this information. Making news feeds, adverts, apps and website content more personalised, can be a great way to target people when advertising and will make it easier for potential customers who would be interested in your products and services, in turn making it more likely they will buy from your company, increasing your overall revenue.

Customer service +

AI is increasingly being used to provide customer service all over the world. A Chatbot is a computer programme combined with AI that can be used on your website to mimic conversation and provide customer service. As Chatbots are improving constantly and becoming more intelligent it is now being used more readily by lots of companies to improve their customer service. Chatbots operate 24/7, which makes it a great way for customers to ask any questions they have about products or services, easily and quickly getting answers without wasting too much of their or your company’s time and resources. This will help increase overall customer satisfaction and mean that the company will have less angry customers to deal with when things have gone wrong, potentially leading to better customer loyalty rates, meaning more customers will come back to your company in the future, as they had a positive experience before.

Voice Search +

According to Google, the ratio of voice search is growing significantly more than typed searches. As sceptical as we were when digital assistants such as Siri, Cortana, Alexa and Google assist became integrated into our everyday lives, we’ve grown to love them, as they can help us out with day-to-day tasks such as setting alarms and reminders. There skill set is only going to expand. In June 2015 Siri handled more than one billion requests per week all conducted through speech. Whether you’re a small local business or a global success, voice searches have become a huge social trend and has been great for marketers as it helps people find your company and website more easily. There are ways to optimise your site for voice search such as making all your companies information clear, using key words and updating your Google Business listing. A brand that get voice search optimisation right can bring in a lot of organic traffic with a high probability of conversion due to the nature of the search.

Predictive Analysis +

AI is being used to help with predicting customer behaviour such as how likely they are to convert, how much they are likely to spend or whether they are likely to become a repeat customer. This is great for marketers as it allows them to find out vital information on customers and change their marketing techniques in order to appeal to certain groups of people, for example showing or sending information on cheaper products for those predicted to spend a lower amount.

Although there are many benefits of using AI in marketing there are also a few draw backs that sometimes put marketers off using AI at least for all of their marketing needs.

Not as good as human interaction –

Even though AI has become very sophisticated, it will never be completely perfect and there will always be a need for human interaction. Some customers don’t like to just deal with a machine and want to talk to a real human in order to sort various issues out and gives them an improved customer experience. Machines don’t fully understand human interaction and emotion, so in order to come up with posts and appeal to your target audience there will always be a need for a human to determine this.

Algorithms can be wrong –

Although algorithms are high tech technology they too can go wrong. Even though they may statistically or formulaically be ‘right’, humans are much more complex that formulas and stats, so often we can see AI get something completely wrong which can cause a load of problems for the company. Examples of this can be seen when people are shown adverts that they would never be interested, when voice searches are misunderstood, or the AI comes up with the wrong answer and when chatbots are sometimes far from helpful.

Should you use AI?

Whether you believe AI is a great marketing tool or not, it is already being used by many companies all over the world, so in order to keep up with the competition you will have to get on board. However, solely using AI to do particular aspects of your marketing is not the best technique, using AI to just aid your campaigns and business, monitoring it constantly, seems to be the best way to integrate this new technology.

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