Marketing is as fundamental to a business as its product or services. We might not realise it but a lot of products that we know today became popularly known because of their marketing campaigns.
Take the fidget spinner as an example. Do you ever wonder why it became so popular even though it was first designed for people struggling with psychological stress, anxiety and other neurological disorders such as ADHD and Autism?
It was due to the amazingly crafted marketing campaign that made it look like fun and something that everyone could play with.
Marketing can make or break your business
This is just one example of how marketing can make a product spread like a wildfire among an audience. But, you can’t just make anything up and expect it to become an instant hit overnight.
Customers today are much smarter than they were a decade ago and understand the difference between clickbait and real value. A lot of marketers start cooking up fancy campaigns for different channels without even realising the value that a product adds to a customer’s life. Moreover, there are different segments of customers in the market with their individual needs and demands.
The same product could have a different meaning for a student and a professional. And quintessentially, if you are targeting both of them, your marketing campaigns must be able to speak to them individually.
The problem with today’s campaigns is that when customers look at it, they feel like it’s addressed to the masses, instead of them.
The point is if brands don’t care enough to speak to the needs of an individual customer, why customers should be interested in their product or services. And then the quality of your product or service doesn’t even come into consideration.
Also Read: How AI can benefit marketers in 2019
Marketing in today’s world has the potential to make or break your business, which is why successful campaigns are designed based on data. Data forms the foundation of a business’s marketing strategy. This means that marketers must dive down deep into it and form strategies that appeal to an individual segment of customers.
However, with the advancement of technology, there’s a lot that marketers can do without having to fuss over the tiresome processes.
AI and marketing
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are on an expansion spree across the world. Every other industry and organization is taking measures to implement AI in different areas. And marketing is no exception to it.
Statistics suggest that the beginning of 2020 will see more than 50 per cent of marketers adopt AI or ML in some form. Marketers are using AI for more than a few reasons, but most importantly to carve a niche for themselves in the market.
The cutthroat competition is here to stay in the market and AI is the key for marketers to differentiate themselves from their competitors. One of the biggest factors that must be taken into consideration for standing out in the market is personalisation.
While everyone is vying for the top spot out there, it is those who utilise personalisation, make it big.
The reality is that everyone is trying to guess what the customers want and the way that they want it using different methods. While some are using their intuition, others rely on traditional practices.
AI, on the other hand, can be the difference between spending endless time analyzing customer demands and smoothly eliminating all the guesswork with concrete data.
As 2020 draws upon us, it will only be a matter of time before everyone starts seeing the benefits of AI in designing successful campaigns.
After all, it does dive into several data points all at once, providing real-time insights and recommendations along with automating several key processes at once. It removes the need for any mundane task and leaves humans to more essential jobs of strategising and planning.
Greater engagement
There are several ways in which AI is powering greater engagement for people. First marketers can utilise the historical data to analyse which of their campaigns worked and which didn’t.
Based upon the nature of the customer, the market timing, and other relevant factors, businesses can enhance their strategies for sales and boost customer engagement by many folds.
This enables the marketer to understand the segment of customers who are likely to engage with communication on a particular channel or medium. Similarly, based on the previous buying patterns of the customer, the target channels for further campaigns can be determined with ease.
Also read: Why AI will be critical to brand strategy
Consider, for example, the ML-powered bots used by organisations such as Sephora and Levi’s. These bots ask the customer questions about their products that determine factors around their immediate needs and future preferences.
In contrast to a retail salesman, these bots do the perfect jobs by handling a significant amount of traffic adequately and answering some of the basic questions of the customer effortlessly.
The era of personalisation
If businesses have to emerge as huge successes, they have to pay attention to personalization, no matter what. AI can help marketers personalise their campaigns when it comes to ads on different platforms, suggesting recommendations and others.
It also provides them with content that is relevant to each customer along with the appropriate timing, when most customers are active on a particular Java platform.
Similarly, personalised recommendations are becoming an instant hit these days. Take Amazon for an example. It studies the customer’s browsing history, past purchases along with other factors to suggest those products, they’d like to buy in advance.
All this keeps a peek into how AI can help businesses understand customer behavioural insights and capitalise on them.
The scope of AI in marketing is endless. Businesses can accomplish a lot without having to invest in many human resources, with one self-sufficient AI.
And since every other brand is using it out there to entice and engage the customers, not capitalising on the cutting edge technology will only leave you far behind in the market race.
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