Marketing and Artificial Intelligence have had a great relationship for more than five years now. Although both fields emerged around the same time, marketing caught on because of the lack of technology requirement. We didn’t need to have computers to process sales and marketing strategies. Now that we’ve experienced the tip of the iceberg when it comes to AI, we can imagine a better future with AI and marketing together.
Technology Vs Marketing
Most brands have been using AI as a tool to create value for their customers from a purely technological standpoint. They create products, offer services and create benefits for their users as long as they’re subscribed to it. However, the brands that will succeed in the future will enable the successful integration of marketing and AI to create multi-fold revenue generation. For example, if you look at IoT as an automated doorbell, then your customers will view it as nothing more than an automated door bell. If you view AI-enabled software and home automation as a core marketing strategy, your customers will be more likely to choose you over your competitors.
Jean-Luc Chatelain, CTO at Accenture Analytics is confident that brands will be able to use AI to its maximum potential. They still have to fully understand its reach and they’re going to see its applications put to good use.
“We’re still at the dawn of AI adoption. Brands have yet to fully understand all the ways in which AI will change the marketing game. The practical applications we already see today in precision targeting, dynamic ad creation [and] marketing automation … are just the tip of the iceberg.”
AI applications in Marketing
Machine Learning: Machine learning is when a computer code picks up data points along the way and designs its own learning structure. This helps marketers in a big way, where it can generate tons of insights within minutes, all without hiring a data insights reporter. You can create strategies on the fly, invest in a marketing channel that’s outperforming and create product-customized customer experiences for everyone that interacts with your brand. Machine Learning is a great tool for marketing that will change its course, just like social media did five years ago.
Deep Learning: This is the next phase of machine learning, where computer technology can make actual decisions for marketers on their behalf. By reading trend reports and consumer preferences online, these technologies can create decisions based on “key experiences”.
In many fields, these robots have outperformed humans on tasks, and marketing is also going to be disrupted big time. The size of the job market will get cut down by over 50% and decision makers will have to work twice as hard to learn new skills for the future.
Natural Language Processing: When you ask Siri a question, you know what it’s thinking – that’s the power of NLP. When you have the upper hand in many of the questions that consumers can ask, you can design the answers to create better experiences for them. For example, in kiosks, web chats, phone calls and on WhatsApp, you can create bots that answer customer queries and even upsell (similar to a POS system). NLP has created new avenues for marketers who can gain insights from vast conversations and meta-data which helps them gain access to the thinking of the consumer.
Deep-insights and real-time decision making
There are unique propositions that come up when AI is introduced with marketing, including dynamic pricing, hyper customization and consumer preference awareness. It’s making human beings redundant, as creating insights and real-time decisions have become the norm. Also, it takes a network of AI bots to create something exemplary, but our human brains can’t connect with another for processing. That’s the advantage here. When AI can connect with other AI to maximize its potential, it is a cause for celebration.
As a consumer, if you can imagine receiving anything you want at any time of the day or night, you will be satisfied with your life’s preferences. Then you’d like to explore and venture beyond what AI can recommend to you. That’s where marketing will be in the future. It will operate in the aspirational and the new. While AI can create experiences that are unique and novel, it doesn’t have the problem-solving creativity that marketers do. AI needs marketing to be sold into the homes of billions, and marketing needs AI to make its life easier.
The synergistic future
The future of the two is synergistic to an extent, but marketing will win out by offering more unique experiences and data-backed decisions. The very idea of possibilities and hope is what marketing will aim to sell to consumers, while AI has a rational and intelligence-focused bend. The first sign of the two coming together was with the launch of the AI robot Sophia earlier in November which went viral with over 20 million views within days.
"Do you like human beings?"
"I love them," said Sophia.
"Why?" I asked.
"I am not sure I understand why yet."