What is an AI Tool, and Why is it so Important for Marketers in Today's Digital Era?

• By Alexa Perk
• 12-08-2022
• Artificial Intelligence

Many companies and their marketing teams are adopting AI tools to make operations more efficient and improve the customer experience. Through these platforms, marketers can learn more about their target audiences and understand them better. The information learned through this process can then be used to boost conversions and make marketing teams' jobs easier.

What is Marketing with Artificial Intelligence (AI)?
AI marketing uses technologies based on artificial intelligence to make decisions automatically based on data collection, data analysis, and other observations of audience or economic trends that could affect marketing efforts. AI is often used in marketing when speed is critical. AI tools use data and customer profiles to learn how to talk to customers effectively. They then send customers personalised messages at the right time without any help from the marketing team. This ensures that the most work gets done in the least amount of time. AI tools are used by many marketers today to help their marketing teams or to do more tactical tasks that don't need as much human nuance.

Some ways AI is used in marketing are:
• data analysis
• natural language processing
• media buying
• making decisions by machine
• content generation
• real-time personalization

How AI is used in marketing

AI plays an essential role in helping marketers connect with customers. Today's top AI marketing solutions are made up of the following parts that help bridge the gap between the vast amounts of customer data that are being collected and the next steps that can be used in future campaigns:

Learning by Machine

Artificial intelligence makes machine learning work, and it uses computer algorithms that can analyze information and get better on their own as they learn more. Machine-learning devices look at new information in the context of relevant data from the past. This helps them make decisions based on what has and hasn't worked in the past.

Analytics and Big Data

The rise of digital media has led to a lot of big data, which has given marketers a chance to see how their efforts are paying off and accurately assign value across channels. This has also led to too much data, making it hard for marketers to know which data sets are worth collecting.

Solutions for AI Platform

AI-powered solutions that work well give marketers a central place to manage the vast amounts of data they are collecting. These platforms can provide helpful marketing information about your target audience so you can make decisions based on data about how to reach them in the best way.

Challenges for AI Marketing

Modern marketing requires a deep understanding of what customers want and need and the ability to act quickly and effectively on that knowledge. AI has become very important for marketing stakeholders because it can help them make real-time data-based decisions. But marketing teams need to be smart about how they decide to use AI in their campaigns and operations. AI tools are still being made and used in their early stages. So, there are a few things to keep in mind when putting AI to use in marketing.

Time to Train and Quality of Data

AI tools don't know by themselves what steps to take to reach marketing goals. They need time and training to learn about organisational goals, customer preferences, historical trends, and the big picture and to become experts in their field. Not only does this take time, but it also needs to ensure the data is correct. If AI tools aren't trained with high-quality data that is accurate, up-to-date, and representative, they will make decisions that aren't as good as they could be and don't match what consumers want, making the tool useless.

Privacy

Consumers and government agencies are getting stricter about how businesses use their data. Marketing teams must ensure they are ethically using customer data and in line with rules like GDPR, or they could face heavy fines and damage to their reputation. This is a problem when it comes to AI. If the AI tools aren't programmed to follow specific legal rules, they may go beyond what is acceptable when using customer data to personalise services.

Getting Buy-In

KPIs like ROI and efficiency are easy to measure, but it's not as easy to show how AI has improved customer experience or brand reputation. It can be challenging for marketing teams to show the value of AI investments to people in other parts of the business. With this in mind, marketing teams need to ensure they have the ways to measure that AI investments led to these improvements in quality.

Deployment Best Practices

AI tools are newer in marketing, so there aren't any best practices that marketing teams can follow when they first use them.

How to Change with the Marketing Scene

With the rise of AI, day-to-day marketing operations are being changed. Marketers have to figure out what jobs will be lost and what jobs will be made. One study found that marketing technology will take over about 6 of every 10 jobs for marketing specialists and analysts.

Using AI tool in marketing can be helpful in several ways

There are many ways to use AI in marketing, and each has different benefits, such as reducing risk, increasing speed, making customers happier, making more money, and more. Gifts may be quantifiable (number of sales) or not quantifiable (user satisfaction). There are a few significant advantages that can be applied to all AI uses:

ROI of campaigns has gone up

If marketers use AI correctly, it can change their whole marketing program by pulling out the most valuable information from their datasets and acting on it in real-time. AI platforms can quickly decide how to spend money on the best media channels or analyse the best ad placements to engage customers more consistently and get the most out of campaigns.

Better customer relationships and customization in real-time

AI can help you send customers personalised messages at the right time in their lifecycle. AI can also help marketers find customers likely to leave and send them information that will get them to come back.

Better ways to measure marketing

Many organisations have trouble keeping up with all digital campaigns' data, making it hard to figure out which campaigns led to success. AI-powered dashboards give a complete picture of what is working so that it can be repeated across channels, and budgets can be set up to match.

Decide things more quickly

AI can do tactical data analysis faster than humans can and use machine learning to quickly draw conclusions based on the context of a campaign or customer. This gives team members time to work on strategic projects that can then be used to improve campaigns that use AI. With AI, marketers don't have to wait until the end of a campaign to make decisions. Instead, they can use real-time analytics to make better media choices. To avail of these benefits you can reach out to the ghostwriting agency.

Conclusion

In this new marketing environment, people in charge of marketing insights won't be able to compete either. Most of the people Gartner polled use or plan to use AI solutions in their marketing strategy. Only 13% don't think it will be helpful in the next three years.