5 Ways to Leverage Your Marketing Efforts With Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence is already a reality in digital marketing, and in this article we’ll show how you can be practical in applying it today. Some of it even look like something that came out of the movies!

But first, what is Artificial Intelligence (or AI)?

They are algorithms – mathematical models – that perform specific tasks in a verisimilar way to human behavior. Of course, with the advantage of the machine: extremely fast and predictable.

Artificial Intelligence operates on the basis of Neural Networks, which are algorithms – mainly based on statistical mathematics – that allow machines to learn from previous results in order to continually evolve their work. These algorithms, also called Machine Learning, need to be “trained” in order to solve specific problems.

Of course, we, as final users of artificial intelligence, do not normally need to “train” these products. This is done previously by the supplier to solve a specific task, which then puts it into a “package” as a product ready for use.

Practical examples of Artificial Intelligence applied to Digital Marketing

Chat Robots

The rise of chats in our lives is meteoric. Whether it’s talking to friends and coworkers via WhatsApp, receiving live service on websites, or even relating to vendors and service providers, text chat is always around us.

In fact, e-commerces tend to sell by chat and even Enterprise Resource Planning (ERPs) systems provide information to their users via text conversation!

To get an idea, according to Gartner data:

In 2018 more than three million workers worldwide will be led by robot bosses;

20% of work related content will be managed by machines;

And 45% of high-potential companies will have fewer employees than machines represented.

The technology is already available, and there are great success cases, such as the bank Bradesco, which offers a chat robot that knows how to respond to more than 50,000 questions related to internal processes.

Another curious case of a chat bot was Microsoft’s Tay, which in 2016, after only 16 hours exchanging Tweets and “learning” with its interlocutors, had to be deactivated for having acquired racist and xenophobic opinions that shocked the internet.

See here an IBM tutorial on how to build a bot chat in only 10 minutes!

Automated Content Generation

Did you know that today companies use robots to generate news about their financial results? Forbes is an example. Isn’t it something worthy of a science fiction movie!?

Complex tools like Wordsmith, or simpler like Arria, are capable of generating content that follows templates, such as ads, financial reporting, and more, all automagically!

See here examples of Forbes articles written by Quill, a product of automated content generation.

Customer Segmentation

One of the most essential ways today for companies to understand their customers and thus create more assertive campaigns is to categorize them as cohorts or segments. Cohorts are ratings of your audience by geographic location, interests, income, involvement with a brand or product, and more. Segmentation by age groups or gender alone, for example, does not support a competitive client acquisition cost these days.

Audience needs to be extremely specific and match several criteria to get, for example, more efficient ads and lower cost-per-click rates. The trend in digital marketing today is segmentation being as specific as possible, and to get to the cutting edge, the application of Artificial Intelligence may be the cheapest way.

An example of a tool that automates this work is Sap Hybris.

Search and Custom Recommendations

Machine Learning algorithms are very good at analyzing historical and shopping habits – using, for example, the customer segmentation logics we mentioned above – and suggesting related products in an e-commerce, for example, or bringing personalized results to searches.

Google uses Artificial Intelligence in its search engine, and also in other examples such as Chaordic, a Brazilian company that works with IA-based products, and Klevu, which can transform the search of your site or product into a your client.

Sales Processes and Tracking

It’s natural that companies that operate with low-touch sales process or with a medium or lower sales cycle have a giant number of leads and a numerically small customer conversion percentage, always needing to be optimized.

These companies in particular are challenged daily to optimize their conversion rates at each level of the funnel and to make specific campaigns for certain client cohorts or even direct human contact with some leads that may have more potential.

In this sense, solutions are emerging to connect your website and email automation tool and even your CRM, to understand the complete journey from the transformation of your lead into customer and identify the hottest leads of your base!

Some players in this market are Conversica, Infer and the Brazilian Intexfy (still in restricted in beta version, but Contentools is already using it and having amazing results).

One note: Is my job at risk ??

No! Artificial Intelligence does not intend to retire the Marketing Manager or the Content Manager, nor does it eliminate the need to have a person with that focus.

However, using what is at the forefront of technology for marketing will certainly allow the person in charge to automate tasks of their daily lives, thus being able to evolve with their strategy doing things that they had no time to do before, besides developing their “aim” by using more accurate data – and thus maximizing the outcome of your digital strategy as a whole.

In short: Artificial Intelligence has come to stay, it does not take anyone’s job (instead, it generates more skilled jobs) and increases sales results.

These are just some of the possible applications of Artificial Intelligence in digital marketing.

If you’ve come this far and are worried about the high value of some of these solutions or are afraid of hiring a “rocket scientist”, take it easy.

This is just the first in a series of articles we’re writing about Artificial Intelligence, and the next one will be more hand in hand! To receive our articles first hand and participate in the forefront of digital marketing, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter in the side menu.

It’s natural that new technologies focus primarily on enterprise companies. The good news is that Contentools is currently working to bring Artificial Intelligence a click away from you!

Do you have questions about the topic or suggestions of what we could add in our platform to help with your demands? Write them here in the comments, our consultants are here to help yoi!