The world of marketing is growing and developing every day, every hour. It is already not enough to know the essentials of advertisement, navigate freely through the ocean of social networks and be able to detect what is to be fixed on a website in order to bring more traffic.
Today's marketers and growth hackers need to learn new technology and how it can affect our lives. The upcoming changes in the robotics industry will give a lot of space to creativity and innovation also in the field of marketing.
According to Contagious Communications, "soon your smartphone could know more about your emotional state than your closest friends and family". How will this be possible? Through artificial intelligence and machine learning.
š” ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, or AI, is any kind of "intelligence" performed by computers.
š» MACHINE LEARNING, or ML, is the application of AI that allows the computers to find patterns in the information and learn from them. These tools have been used for years and decades to improve our day-to-day lives and facilitate our work. Remember the smart houses, voice command on the Android phones with "Okay, Google" or the music playlists that Spotify picks according to your tastes? These are all the examples of the artificial intelligence, that we see daily in our lives.
Marketers can already benefit from the use of AI in their campaigns: Facebook or Google advertising algorithm are based on these principles when they monitor the audience and select the ones that meet the target criteria. The same idea lies behind the remarketing tactics. Some copywriters even use their smartphones for the blog drafts because the feature of autofill and autocorrect will save their time on typing, as well as correct the eventual grammar mistakes.
But how will marketing develop hand in hand with the AI? What will we do in, actually, a very near future to attract users and convert leads?
Before answering these questions, let's first clarify one very important point here: How will AI affect your job?
š¤ EXPECTATIONS: THE HOT TOPIC OF HUMAN REPLACEMENT BY MACHINES
It looks like the predictions from a couple of years ago about the impossibility of the computers to learn "creativity" are no longer valid. More and more often we hear about the new products and software that write poems, draw paintings or create music. More and more often we learn that humans cannot tell the difference between what was produced by machines and whatā-āby their peers. Some examples would be the software Logojoy, an AI-powered logo generator, Lyrebird, an AI-powered speechwriter, together with the new very promising (and alerting) invention called Persado, an AI system that generates marketing copy.
Sounds scary? Indeed, computers are capable of creativity and in some cases they even outperform humans. But the main point to take away here is that, as Alan Jenkins states, you won't lose your job to a computer, you'll lose your job to a human that's better at using a computer than you. This means that we as marketers need to prepare for the next trends in our profession and face this future with a complete understanding of how to use this huge power.
šŖ REALITY: THE WAYS IN WHICH AI AND ML WILL IMPROVE YOUR WORKFLOW
To start with the essentials, the first step marketers take to determine their audience and understand how to deliver their message was by creating the typical "buyer personas". These were people of a certain age, certain sex and status, all put in the same category. But this vision is rather obsolete now: a white man in his forties may love sports and another white man in his forties may like beer. They would be completely different from one another if not their demographic profile. And targeting them for it would mean losing one or another.
This is where Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning could step up. These systems don't need to create personas; they find real customers in the world wide web by monitoring their actual online behaviors. Having collected the data, computers will build the unique schemes of approach for these new AI-personas and deliver the message. WIth the response (or absence of it), AI can determine what message works and what doesn't.
With AI the results of the marketing campaigns are guaranteed: by means of the machine learning it will implement only the winning tactics and techniques and eliminate the unnecessary moves, which humans tend to perform with the usual guesswork when planning campaigns.
For example, when Harley-Davidson decided to use AI in their marketing research, they discovered that ads with the word "call" performed 447% better than ads containing the word "Buy". After changing this one word in their communication, their ROI skyrocketed.
Another great benefit the AI tools can bring to the marketers can be the processing of millions of interactions a minute. It means it can elaborate various creative campaigns with hundreds of thousands of keywords to predict optimal outcomes in a very short time. This procedure would take ages to a human, otherwise.
HSo, how can marketers benefit from AI, concretely? The most relevant features of the Artificial Intelligence for business are:
āŖ Data collectionā-āAI collects tons of different key characteristics of customers that define their touch points (like the upcoming Adobe Analytics that will understand how much a certain consumer is worth based on their behavior);
āŖWork volume and automationā-āAI performs the routine and automatic steps faster and more efficiently (for example, a virtual assistant Angie sends about 30,000 emails a month and interprets the responses to determine who is a hot lead);
Conversational Interfacesā-āAI can "humanize" the brand and facilitate the communication (keep in mind chatbots and intelligent personal assistants like Alexa);
āŖ Personalizationā-āAI can make a collection of digital material based on the user's preferences (like Spotify picks Your Daily Mix or Netflix selects the shows you may like);
āŖ Advanced Analyticsā-āAI will able to detect patterns from data and monitor what works and what does not.
Artificial Intelligence paired with Machine Learning can bring great results to the workflow optimization and marketing planning. The strategic thinking of the AI as an ally rather than a future enemy is the key to jump on the train of the marketing of tomorrow.
HOW MARKETERS CAN BE ON š WITH AI
The future of advertising and marketing is bright and exciting. Already today machines are able to recognize our emotions with an accuracy of 86ā99%. Imagine how we can use this methods: the street ads are changing according to the mood of who is near them, the cars detect our emotions and make suggestions on where we can go and personal assistants develop overtime their personality according to ours.
It is all possible and it is all happening already today. Many marketers embrace these changes and come up with (for now) revolutionary ideas on how to implement the machine learning and artificial intelligence tools in their communication plan.
What can you do today, instead?
Perhaps, you can learn more about the chatbots and think of how you can use this tool in your communications, for instance, for customer support.
Or you can start using one of the creative AI tools to produce your future ad copy.
The marketing of the future is about engaging with technology and employing it to deliver more precise, compelling messages. And the future of marketing depends on our curiosity to explore these new opportunities.