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Artificial intelligence has been around for a long time. The computer that played Pong with bar patrons in the early 1970s was artificial intelligence, for example. However, recent advancements in machine learning have changed the way we think about the term.
That’s not the only thing they’ve changed. Nearly every industry has been radically transformed by AI in just the past couple of years. The marketing industry is no exception. The rise of large language models like ChatGPT has had an obvious impact on content marketing. In this article, we’ll take a look at that and other ways that AI is transforming the industry.
Historical Context of AI in Marketing
In the early stages of AI marketing tools, we saw the use of email autoresponders. These allowed marketers to respond to leads without having to wait for a human to see the email and manually type a reply. But these were simple, rules-based tools. They didn’t allow for extensive personalization, intelligent timing of emails, or other factors that go into a great marketing strategy.
Another common, rules-based approach was the chatbot. Customers don’t like waiting around for answers to questions. For frequently asked questions, a chatbot could easily answer them immediately. However, these early chatbots were very limited in the language they understood. They required very specific prompts and gave very generic answers.
With increasingly powerful machine learning tools becoming available, the rules-based, static nature of these tools is changing. The tools now have the ability to process the large amounts of data companies gather on their customers and use that data to gain important insights into what customers want and how to best interact with them.
Current State of AI in Marketing
Machine learning advancements have brought with them three major areas of change in marketing. Together, they reduce the manual effort required to get results and provide marketers with a wealth of information that wouldn’t have been possible before.
Chatbots
Modern chatbots, with their advanced AI, are capable of understanding natural language as well as any human can. Gone are the strict scripts and canned responses they once relied on. They can now instantly draw from the company’s knowledge base to provide helpful, dynamic conversations that greatly enhance the customer experience. The result is not only a reduction in manual labor required from support staff but a level of personalized response previously impossible. Now, when a customer has a question, they can get an answer 24/7 with an experience almost identical to that of interacting with a friendly human customer support agent.
Predictive Analytics
In the early days of AI, predictive analytics was limited to basic trend analysis. Modern machine learning allows for a much more nuanced view of the data. Combined with the huge amount of data available now, these tools can accurately forecast consumer behaviors and preferences. With them, marketers can tailor their strategies more effectively, responding not only to current trends but anticipating what the next will be. This forward-looking approach enables marketers to stay ahead of the curve, creating campaigns that resonate with future customer demands and setting new industry standards.
Personalization
A good salesman knows what his customers like and is able to suggest products that they’re most likely to buy. With the personalization and recommendation algorithms made possible by AI, now marketers have access to that level of knowledge at scale. Millions of customers can all be shown products that they are most likely to purchase, or content that they are most likely to enjoy. The most famous examples of this are recommendations by Amazon and Netflix. But any company can take advantage of this powerful sales lever. Marketing emails, storefronts, and more can all be given a huge ROI boost.
Transformative Impacts of AI on Marketing Strategies
So far, we’ve discussed a few large and relatively large impacts of AI on marketing strategies. However, the technology goes beyond surface-level efficiencies. In changing the way marketing teams operate, AI has allowed businesses of all sizes to enhance their reach. Below are some key areas where this impact is most felt:
Data-Driven Marketing Decisions
AI enables marketers to make more intelligent decisions in a number of ways. One way is by better understanding how content performs. By using AI tools, marketing teams can analyze which pieces of content are most effective. In doing so, they’ll better understand why certain content resonates with their audience and can use the patterns they identify to produce more engaging content in the future.
While metrics like viewership counts have long been available, AI can examine deeper metrics. Engagement durations, interaction rates, and even emotional responses can all be tracked and analyzed by modern AI marketing tools. These metrics unlock unprecedented power to refine marketing strategies and keep messaging impactful.
Another area where AI can enhance existing analytics is customer segmentation and targeting. AI algorithms can process large amounts of data, allowing marketers to identify significantly more granular customer segments. The result is more effective targeting, which in turn results in greater ROI as marketing efforts reach the right audience with the right message.
Optimization of Marketing Campaigns
Being able to target more effectively is certainly a campaign optimization. But AI can go much deeper. In the past, managing a campaign meant keeping track of bids, allocating budgets effectively, and tweaking ad copy manually based on ongoing analytics data. Without this strategy of continuous refinement, marketing campaigns would lose steam and potentially fail to provide a return on investment. Modern AI tools can automate that work, making adjustments much more frequently than humans could and with far greater accuracy.
Another area of continuous refinement in marketing is the customer’s journey. By analyzing customer interactions in fine detail, AI can find the areas in a customer’s journey that are the most impactful on conversion or engagement. Using these insights, marketers can make more informed decisions about the interventions they make. When campaigns are more closely aligned with the customer’s journey, not only are they more effective but they boost customer satisfaction and loyalty as well.
AI as an Equalizer
In many ways, artificial intelligence acts as an additional employee, working all day long and year-round. With all the tools available, and the many tasks that each can perform, this brings the power of a large marketing team even to small businesses. This allows small and medium-sized businesses to compete more effectively with their larger counterparts.
