How AI will Transform the World of Digital Marketing
How AI will Transform the World of Digital Marketing, artificial intelligence
In 2019 the first Marketing Artificial Intelligence Conference (MAICON) was held in Cleveland, Ohio. At the conference, Paul Roetzer, Founder and CEO of Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute, made a stark prediction: “Eighty percent of what [digital marketers] do every day will be intelligently automated to some degree in the next three to five years”. We have since come to find out that Roetzer was seemingly correct. For most of us, we utilize AI technology in basic functions of our work, but how transformative will AI be for digital marketing in the near future?
Where We Are Now
When we use the term “Artificial Intelligence”, images of walking robots, talking computers, or self-service kiosks may immediately come to mind. While these are all valid examples of the technology in some industries, AI in digital marketing can be more nuanced- nonetheless, impactful. AI is defined as any software or system that can learn and complete tasks better without human intervention.
In the world of digital marketing, we most commonly utilize AI through “insight” features; computer generated metric readings that relay performance information based on the data imputed. Over the years, this software has been improving significantly in many services, minimizing the need for human calculation and guesswork in the marketing process. Email campaigning is one example of a digital marketing focus that uses AI metrics to find and collect relevant contacts and calculate results and predictions of A/B testing. Automated emails are also becoming increasingly more common.
More recently, headline and content generation AI software, through services like Jarvais.ai, have patched and improved many of their algorithms to allow users to utilize suggestions that maximize keyword and SEO elements intended to catch or keep readers’ attention.
Benefits and Predictions
One of the biggest benefits for using AI in marketing is improving ROI by making your work more efficient. Quickly developing technology is gaining a greater ability to determine who is and isn’t interested in certain products or services, streamlining the process of where our efforts are placed in marketing. Amazon was one of the first companies to seize this initiative with their recommendation engine. Google and Facebook also expanded on this method with their targeted advertising algorithms.
This AI augmented technology is becoming faster and more efficient every year and absolutely critical in your capacity to compete in the market by identifying and tracking buyers’ habits.
Chatbots are also useful in customer relationship management. If an automated tool of your marketing can incorporate insight metrics and learn customer behavior, it can act as a front-of-house employee that can welcome and create relevant dialogue with the viewer by executing a script that guides them to personally valuable information on your website. AI dialogue technology such as chatbots appear to be developing at a pace where it can sometimes be difficult to tell the difference between human and AI conversation.
Despite this, we digital marketers should not be dissuaded from encouraging the use of AI for ourselves out of fear it may replace us. To the contrary, experts predict that the growing AI market will actually create more jobs in this industry within the next decade and would more likely shift our focuses away from technical responsibilities and toward more creative and strategic ones.
The Metaverse
One very important channel to keep an eye on as digital marketers is the recently established “Metaverse”. The Metaverse, at the time of this writing, is an amorphous web of VR worlds that includes elements of gaming, community hangouts, and other augmented reality experiences. Major successful brands have hedged their bets that the Metaverse will become a revolutionary new hub to promote themselves and sell their products. Many, such as Disney, Nike, and even artists like Snoop Dogg, have already begun buying up digital space.
Current estimates are projecting the Metaverse market to grow by 44% in the next seven years and this will become a competitive new battleground for digital marketing. Success of the marketing effort in the Metaverse will inevitably depend on how companies and individuals incorporate the use of AI. Within these worlds, delivering valuable customer experiences will be the most crucial factor in brand growth and success.
Customer journeys will be experienced through a vast digital ocean of sights and locations within the Metaverse, creating a demand for technical AI features and functions to help them navigate and interact with those spaces.
Should You Prioritize AI?
The short answer- yes. AI has become a fundamental tool to take advantage of, saving both time and energy in delivering powerful marketing experiences. Whether for the benefit of the marketer or the customer’s experience, it can take many of the technical headaches and guess work away if properly implemented. Some of the best tools can be found on free or subscription based software services across the web, with many options available depending on your specific needs or style. Researching and following new developments in the AI industry that can further improve your workflow will help keep you informed and ahead of the competition as we continue to see technology expand.