Review of current marketing AI technology and how it will evolve to advance marketing strategies in the future
By Zeeshan Mallick
When you created your first macro in Excel which automated a process in your spreadsheet, that was you using a bit of basic Artificial Intelligence (AI). Of course this was decades ago and since then, AI has been developing and evolving in to a more efficient and powerful system that is now a valuable and insightful element of modern marketing practices.
Since 2004, the use of the phrase in the marketing industry was fairly consistent however in 2017, it has been on a steady increase showing a continued interest and growth of the technology.
Source: Google Trends data of the term Artificial Intelligence in the Marketing industry.
In recent months, many large companies have been talking about AI being integral to their current solution or future activities. In May this year, Mark Sullivan reported how Facebook is using robots to drive forward its work in Artificial Intelligence. As AI is becoming more mainstream, the impact it has will grow too.
Automating marketing
Marketing is built on strategies that bring two sides of a market together in the hopes of increasing sales, leads, sign ups and conversions. Using AI to automate the process of bringing buyers and sellers together brings about instant results that are more efficient and insightful than any human could do with a team of 20 given the digital target market size is often in the 100s of thousands.
Data mountains
Capturing data and analyzing it to find trends, gaps and opportunities has been the gold standard of marketing practices. As we use more and more automation to run our businesses, the more data is created. This mean, someone has to analyse that data to find trends and opportunities for the business to utilize and expand itself.
Given the amount of data that comes in now, there is no reasonable way that a human can manage this which means AI is in a perfect position to analyse the Big Data as it can run, 24/7 and never get tired.
Are you talking with a bot?
Have you ever gone on to a company website and a little chat window pops up asking if you have any questions or if they can help you? Chances are, that is a little piece of code that has been pre-programmed to ask questions, give you preset answer options and based on your answers will send you to the most relevant page. These were the early days of chat bots, in 2019 these have become far more advanced and can have almost human like conversations with you. With text recognition and the ability to learn, Chat AI is going to be more and more utilized in the future for customer service.
How did they know what I like?
As more data comes in, the more we learn about people. This means, ad targeting and ad content is going to become more and more relevant to the user. Today, you will see ads that are not relevant to you as the targeting is still based on fairly generic groupings however, as more and more AI powered marketing comes in to play by bringing in very personalized advertising as well as learning user behavior thus making the users experience that much more relevant.
The future is automation
We have only just started to scratch the surface of AI in Marketing. AI helps marketers to be more efficient but as more time goes by and the combination of big data, automated analysis and full personalization, it may not be long before AI is building web pages, websites, applications, adverts and improving the process itself to be more and more efficient at targeting consumers and providing them the exact service that they require.
With over 19 years of digital marketing experience, Zeeshan Mallick has a multi-channel business marketing background, having worked in the public & private sector, as well as agency and client side, in finance, e-commerce, travel, technology, start-ups and finance. Zeeshan is now CEO of YouYaa Ltd in London providing advanced ad strategy for businesses looking to scale.
Marketing stock photo by mrmohock/Shutterstock