AI in Marketing: What, How, and Why You Should Use it

Artificial Intelligence is revolutionizing the way we live: from unlocking your phone, and banking, to our daily commute. No wonder it has also started influencing our professional activities. AI marketing, even in its relative infancy, is quickly changing the game from both the perspectives of a marketer and a customer.

What does it mean in practice? Look no further - we've prepared a general guide covering some of the bases of AI marketing. In this article we'll show you what AI-supported marketing really means and how you can take advantage of it.

What is AI (Artificial Intelligence) in Marketing?

Artificial Intelligence in digital marketing primarily collects and analyzes large sets of data to automate certain tasks within the marketing process. Machine learning (ML) based programs can easily track economic trends, create customer profiles, and produce extra notes about your audience.

• For marketers, AI means saving time, money, and power on data mining - manually analyzing it to launch and manage successful campaigns.
• For customers, AI-driven marketing directly recommends the best offers, suited to one's needs or preferences, delivered through the preferred channels at the optimal time.

How does AI in marketing actually work?

The modern world produces large amounts of data that exponentially grows every second. Anything and everything can be converted into data, like social media posts, sales data, and transaction records. Manually managing all that information is impossible, but machine learning algorithms can do it easily. How?

First, AI is “fed” sample data in order to “learn” how to make decisions and predictions without the need for programming. Building a training model is later followed by hyperparameter tuning and testing before the algorithm can be used.

This technology can find patterns in massive sets of data, analyze them and report back to you. AI in marketing is an essential tool if you want to create next-level strategies and keep up with the competition.

Why is AI Marketing Important?

Today, every marketer has to have a deep understanding of their target audience. AI solutions make it possible for professionals and organizations to build customer insights that can help to develop long-lasting relationships, prevent customer churn, and improve customer lifetime value (CLV).

How can AI be used in digital marketing?

1. Automation – AI systems work very quickly and gather large amounts of data and analyze them. Intelligent algorithms make data-driven decisions and can execute marketing activities more effectively.
2. Segmentation - AI can effortlessly identify potential customers and group them by identifying certain patterns to later engage with them and have a high chance of generating a positive response.
3. Personalization - customer data analysis serves to create targeted advertising, personal offers, and better communication. With this you can optimize your campaigns, boost engagement, and ultimately improve ROI.
4. Predicting - with enough data, AI can generate business forecasts and foresee what actions will result in the best outcome.

In a nutshell, AI-powered marketing is essential nowadays because in a more and more competitive world, we have to make faster, more effective decisions. AI can process larger amounts of data and make data-driven choices, thus providing customers a better, more personalized experience. As a marketer you can stay ahead of the curve and faster adapt to changes in an ever-changing digital landscape.

11 Ways to Utilize AI in Marketing

1.    Home and Landing Page Optimization

As you already know, AI in marketing helps you save time and resources in many ways - one of them is landing page optimization. For example, running automated A/B tests can determine which design, message or layout performs the best.

Instead of the marketer deciding what elements in the content should be changed, AI creates A/B tests with multiple variables. Running complex tests for a specific period results in a more engaging and results-oriented home or landing page. 

AI-based designing tools use machine learning algorithms to generate landing pages that are tailor-made for a specific audience.

2.    Advanced Content Marketing

With the help of AI, content marketing can also be optimized. Machine learning programs make it relevant, readable and highly effective. How? AI in content creation, after analyzing data, identifies areas for improvement, such as:

• Gaps in information and other inconsistencies 
• Changes to your headlines, calls-to-action (CTAs) 
• Keywords that are relevant to your target audience, enabling you to optimize your content for search engines

The technology can also assist in generating content from scratch, such as headlines or product descriptions, using natural language processing (NLP).

3.    Elevated Customer Experience

Savvy, conscious customers don't want to feel like they're being advertised to. Predictive AI for customer experience provides personalized, real-time interactions that engage and delight your audience. 

A big part of the consumer experience is useful and accurate recommendations. AI-powered customer experience constructs personalized product and content recommendations based on each customer's unique preferences and purchase history.

4.    Smart Pricing

AI pricing means dynamic pricing - AI tools analyze the market trends and adjust your pricing in real time based on supply, demand and other factors. All that data ultimately leads to pricing optimization to maximize your revenue and profits.

For the best results, Artificial Intelligence utilizes functionalities such as:

• Pricing forecasts
• Competitor analysis
• Customer Segmentation

5.    Engaging Customer Conversation

In recent years, customer conversation has become crucial in marketing as businesses strive to deliver personalized and engaging customer experiences. Conversational AI plays now a big role in creating long-lasting relationships with consumers while improving their loyalty.

Conversational AI enables machines to converse with humans in a natural, intuitive way. All thanks to natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML).

Talking with an AI is almost unrecognizable, so in marketing it is used to provide personalized and engaging customer experiences through chatbots and virtual assistants that can answer questions, give recommendations, and even process transactions.

A big benefit of using conversational AI in marketing is that it can provide customers with instant access to information and support, without the need for human intervention. This can help businesses improve customer satisfaction, increase efficiency, and reduce costs.

6.    Real-time Social Listening

Did you know that you can use AI to monitor and analyze conversations on social media platforms? It comes in very handy to understand what people are saying about your brand, product, or industry.

AI-powered topic modeling can be used to identify the most commonly discussed themes. Social listening tools allow for automated responses, influencer identification, and even image or video analysis. All of this provides valuable insights into how customers are using and interacting with a brand or product. This will help you stay up-to-date on industry trends and emerging topics of interest.

7.    Automated Sentiment Analysis

Linked to social media listening is sentiment analysis marketing. AI-powered sentiment analysis can be used to identify the sentiment of social media posts, whether they are positive, negative, or neutral. This can help businesses understand how customers feel about their brand or products and take action to address customer concerns.

With the right AI marketing tools, a marketer monitors brand reputation and identifies potential issues or crises. From a loyalty perspective, it can also help you to find natural influencers and turn them into brand ambassadors.

8.    Insightful Marketing Analytics

Your AI marketing strategy can include using machine learning algorithms to collect, process, and analyze marketing data from various sources, such as website and social media platform statistics or a loyalty management system.

A marketing analytics process powered by AI helps businesses make data-driven decisions by providing insights into marketing performance, consumer behavior, and other key metrics.

Smart marketing analysis tools:

• Identify patterns and trends in the data
• Measure the results that certain marketing activities bring out
• Predict customer behavior and recommend actions

9.    Reliable Customer Service

Contrary to a somewhat-popular belief, AI for customer service doesn't mean your audience has to struggle to get the help it needs.

It's quite the opposite - AI-powered virtual assistants provide instant support to customers, answer common questions, and guide them through the customer journey.

A simple speech recognition technology based on AI enables instant review of customer needs during customer service calls. Data analysis allows algorithms to predict potential issues and suggests the most beneficial support. Intelligent routing, based on the request, previous interactions, and other data, can also redirect each customer to the most appropriate agent or department.

10.    Proactive Chatbots

AI-powered chatbots can help reduce wait times and provide a seamless, 24/7 experience. They can be a real life saver, especially if you’re marketing products that need to be tested before buying. For example, a short exchange with your chatbot will make it easier for clients to choose the right shade of lipstick or preferred perfume.

Other benefits of AI chatbots include:

• Instant reaction
• Multilingual care
• Lead identification

11.    Intelligent Ad Optimization

AI algorithms can be also used to optimize ad campaigns by analyzing data on ad performance, identifying areas for improvement, and making real-time adjustments to improve ROI. Think about A/B testing – analyzing which version is the most effective ultimately helps achieve the brand’s marketing goals.

The Future of AI in Marketing

Looking back on the integration of AI in modern marketing, it is evident that the role of artificial intelligence will only continue to grow. The next decades are expected to bring even more revolutionary solutions for both marketers and customers. AI-powered personalization will continue to thrive, enabling marketers to deliver targeted content and tailor-made customer experiences. Additionally, AI will facilitate the creation of highly engaging content at scale, while data processing will further enhance the delivery of even more relevant marketing campaigns.

AI Marketing Tools That Are Changing the Game

Now you know how AI is changing marketing - Artificial Intelligence can help marketers improve their success. The key to using it efficiently is the right AI marketing tool, such as our loyalty program platform.

Comarch's Loyalty Marketing Platform is a comprehensive, AI-powered toolkit to boost customer lifetime value and improve your ROI. With our solution, you will:

• Build and manage engaging, personalized marketing projects
• Automate marketing programs
• Engage customers and create long-lasting relationships
• Effectively evolve your B2B partnerships

All the while, you will be saving time and resources on manual data analysis or complicated implementation.

See Comarch's Loyalty Marketing Platform in action and swiftly improve your marketing efforts!