Digital Technologies are evolving at a steady pace. Needless to say, AI or Artificial Intelligence is the name of the adoption game now in most industries. AI nowadays is a buzzword and everyone is trying to jump on the bandwagon. This is because AI paves the way for sophistication and further automation in the marketing realm. Be it, digital marketing training or digital marketing strategies, AI would ease the adoption of new solutions and techniques for even more market penetration and revenue generation.
Let us now take a look at how AI and related technologies like Machine Learning can affect the future of Digital Marketing.
AI-powered Digital Advertising
Digital Advertising has been leveraging the power of AI to ensure maximum reach and minimum costs. It is being used across platforms like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Instagram, etc. to provide the best possible experience. Studying user information like age, gender, areas of interest, and other aspects goes a long way to showing them relevant ads.
According to eMarketer, digital ad spend worldwide was estimated to be $357.31 billion in 2020 and this is expected to increase further. With AI technology, marketers can spot micro-trends and even predict trends. They can then make strategic decisions about where they allocate their budgets and who they target. As a result, brands can reduce digital advertising costs while ensuring that their spend delivers the best possible results. AI can also help in developing digital marketing training modules by analyzing the market trends.
It’s commonplace nowadays to see annoying ads that interrupt your videos while streaming on the web. To address this, Chinese tech giant Tencent is trying something different – embedding the ad into an object right within the video you’re watching.
For example, if an actor is holding a cup of coffee, you’ll see an ad on the cup. Check out the interesting video below posted by Matthew Brannan, an analyst who focuses on Chinese companies.
Wow! Worth watching this. China's largest video platform #Tencentvideo (97M paying China subscribers) will begin inserting extra ads into movies/series that didn't exist in the original. #computervision pic.twitter.com/qltsQz9jdF
— Matthew Brennan (@mbrennanchina) October 15, 2019
Email Marketing With AI
Brands are striving to customizing emails to reach their target audience with the power of AI. They can now personalize content based on customer behavior and preferences. This makes it possible to better connect with them and, with lady luck at work, turn them into long-term clients.
Machine learning can play a part here, as it can automate the process of analyzing various datasets about a particular consumer. It can then determine the best times/ days of the week to contact him/her, the recommended frequency, the content that catches his/her attention the most, and which email subjects and titles generate more clicks.
You might think, that’s what A/B tests are for. And you won’t be wrong. A marketer with some digital marketing training under his/her belt would know how to A/B test different types of messages and designs. But A/B tests are time consuming and carry a certain margin of error. Enter AI. It can prove to be a great tool in personalizing email content for each subscriber.
Boomtrain, Phrasee, and Persado are some AI based tools for email marketing. As per Phrasee, its generation of email subject lines surpasses those of a human by over 95%. Persado even goes on to say that its cognitive content exceeds what a human could do 100% of the time! Well well.
(BoomTrain UI – Courtesy of Software Advice)
(Phrasee Analysis of Human Emotion – Courtesy of Phrasee)
(Email Subject Line Generation – Courtesy of Phrasee)
(Human Emotion Wheel – Courtesy of Persado)
Voice Search and SEO
The manner in which consumers perform online searches has changed. Searches no longer need to be performed by hitting those keys hastily. Now we can simply hold down a button and speak out our queries. No prizes for guessing, this is Voice Search.
Voice search is no more a gimmicky new feature in 2020, it has comfortably crossed the threshold of early adopters. It has gained traction as it is easier for a user to speak with an assistant than to type. The results of voice queries, as per some experts, are a tad faster as well.
Purna Virji, a senior training manager at Microsoft, talked about how voice search is shaping our world.
Everything from TV remotes to hotel rooms (and room service 😀 ) can be powered by voice. People want quick answers nowadays. Voice searches can be done one-handed, typing may or may not be depending on the device in question. No wonder voice searches are getting popular.
RankBrain which is one of Google’s algorithms has changed the dynamics of voice searches. RankBrain was created to get much more relevant search results. It interprets the user’s voice searches and, using the power of AI, provides the user with the best results according to what it interpreted from the user’s language and context.
Hummingbird is another of Google’s algorithmic update released in 2013. It, for the first time, incorporated the user intent and contextual meaning of queries. Marketers had to refine their strategy quickly. They went from stuffing keywords in articles to addressing the main pain points of their target audience.
Commercial innovations like Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple’s Siri, and Microsoft’s Cortana make it easy for people to perform searches by just pressing a button or saying a voice command.
Voice search is normally powered by Natural Language Processing (NLP) to recognize voice texture, interests, and behavior.
(NLP Semantics of Voice Search)
With continued usage, Google and other search engines “learn” the language, accent, and other patterns in an individual user’s speech. The major focus is always on the semantics and the wider contextual relevance of the user’s query.
AI powered Chatbots
If you follow our blog space regularly, you must have come across our dedicated blog on Chatbot Marketing.
The development of semantic recognition, NLP and voice conversion technology has meant that AI customer service is easier to use and delivers a better experience. Compared to flesh-and-bones customer support, AI chatbots have more pros than cons.
- Firstly, AI chatbots empower businesses go beyond the traditional “one-to-one” & “many-to-many” forms of customer service. Instead, chatbots can deliver a “one-to-many” support, catering to a number of customers at the same time and in different time zones.
- Secondly, AI chatbots don’t need to rest like poor humans, so they can answer customer queries around the clock and in real time. Not only does this mean they are highly efficient, but they can also provide support outside of office hours, improving customer experience.
In addition to these benefits, customers can choose the language used by AI customer service according to their needs, allowing a brand to deliver localized customer service.
(Sephora Chatbot in action – Courtesy Sephora)
It is an open secret that AI is now more accessible for businesses, making it a valuable tool for digital marketers. It is irrefutable that AI can largely predict and model the choices of customers, helping to provide relevant recommendations and timely customer service.
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