How AI is Changing Marketing at Swift

What started out as a mere idea among 10 scientists in 1956 is what we know as AI or Artificial Intelligence today. It is a common word for us now, and we see examples of it everywhere. Take Siri or Alexa, for example. We are so used to using them. It doesn’t even feel unusual anymore. And yet, they are some machines that own the cognitive skills of humans. They are machines that can solve problems for us to make our lives easier. This is how much AI has changed the world. So how AI is changing marketing is a valid question.

In this article, we will dive into an in-depth discussion about the impact of AI in the marketing sector. Read on to find out about how AI is changing the marketing of the present world.

What does the incorporation of AI mean for marketing?

The use of AI in marketing is still a rather new concept. But it’s only a matter of time until it becomes an inseparable part of this sector. Deep learning is a concept that was introduced around the 2010s. And now, a decade later, this deep learning is helping marketers out in so many different ways. At present, many companies have already started including AI in their marketing strategies. This impact is more noticeable in digital marketing. 

So what exactly does this connection with AI do for marketing? A wide array of things, that’s for sure. For one, AI is playing a significant role in increasing efficiency in marketing. This allows companies to dive deeper into the consumer psyche. Companies are able to figure out who their target audience is. This helps them create a unique experience catered to their preferences. The optimization of customer data and the creation of a new workflow is now possible too.

There is more to how AI is changing marketing. It is possible to conduct behavioral and predictive analytics with AI. This used to be the job of data scientists. Companies can augment product feeds with image recognition. They can use their data analytics to create better marketing strategies. As a result, customer reach, engagement, loyalty, and satisfaction are increasing at rapid rates.

This is only a fractional picture of all the changes happening. The potential AI holds much further than that. These changes are happening faster because AI marketing tools have become accessible and affordable to all.

How AI is changing customer interactions to a more personalized one

The first answer to how AI is changing marketing should be the personalization of customer experiences. Brands are able to give equal importance to each and every customer. It is possible to create a customer journey that is unique and tailored to personal needs. As a result, new levels of customer interactions are being formed. This, in turn, is increasing the customer satisfaction points as well as brand loyalty. Such a difficult task is now easy, thanks to the development of AI technology.   

The scope of this sector is only expanding more as the days pass. Marketers are able to collect all the important data about their customers, starting from purchase history to contextual relevance. They can identify new customer segments by optimizing these data. With that, they can align the experience they want their customers to have with what the customers want to experience. They can write marketing messages more relevant to customer needs. It doesn’t take a genius to realize how profitable this can be for businesses all over the world.

In fact, many companies have already started applying different tools for this purpose. Using the Customer Experience Analysis tool, AI helps marketers visualize the customer journey. Marketers will thereby be able to identify the individual areas of friction. Thus they can make sure the journey of their customers is smooth and helpful. This can lead to increased conversion rates and so much more. According to a Google study, 36 percent of customers are likely to pay more for a service if it is personalized.

Regardless of how fruitful this is, it also brings in new challenges for brands, how you may ask. In simple words, a better customer experience also means bigger customer expectations. You see, AI makes the personal experience of customers richer and smoother for sure. All the high brand expectations are being met. But once the high expectations become normalized, it attains a new height. Living up to these increased expectations can be a difficult task, especially for smaller businesses with lesser resources. 

How it is changing advertising in marketing

We talked about the personalization of customer interactions in the previous point. Of course, this also applies to their ad experiences. We cannot leave out how AI is changing advertising in marketing. Thanks to AI, customers are also able to enjoy ads tailored to their needs and preferences. Brands can carve a unique ad journey for the customers based on past searches. Only customers who might be willing to purchase the products will see the ads. As a result of this, digital ad platforms can achieve better levels of communication. 

This is a huge transformation in the field of marketing. Earlier, a person would always see irrelevant ads and feel annoyed. If they saw ads from the same brand again and again, they would only feel distaste for those brands. On the one hand, this was useless and harmful for the companies those ads belonged to.

On the other hand, companies with products relevant to the person’s needs lost their space to advertise. This is no longer an issue now that AI has joined the party. AI works with complex algorithms and massive sets of data. AI can correctly identify its target audience. As a result, brands can now make the ads appear only to them.

And that’s not all. Brand advertisement used to be a rare thing before. According to a survey, 71% of the marketing respondents claim that brands don’t understand their consumer base. That is no longer an issue with AI. AI helps build more customer awareness and increase brand investments. In short, it brings benefits from both sides. 

How it is changing efficiency levels by developing automation

Another crucial point of how AI is changing marketing is the way it is reducing workload. AI can accomplish the same tasks as humans but faster. There is a myriad of tasks to be carried out in marketing. Some are simpler and don’t require any human intelligence or complex decision-making. But these exact tasks take a long time to do and are very repetitive as well. Hence, they cannot dedicate enough time to jobs that need complex thinking.

That’s when AI comes into the picture. Simpler and repetitive tasks can be automated with the help of certain tools. Instead of assigning those tasks to humans, use their manpower in harder activities. There are lots of difficult tasks that marketers fail to work on due to lack of time.

But leaving the rather mundane task to the robots will allow them to allocate more time behind those. This can lead to wild successes in the business. On the one hand, less time will be required to accomplish a day’s worth of tasks. On the other hand, there will be more time to solve the bigger problems at hand. This will save not only time but also money and energy.

Another sector where AI automation is working is content generation. Content marketing is the most prevalent type of marketing in the present age. With the help of AI, companies can automate content marketing at the basic level. By curating and generating the content, they can present it to the right audience on the right platform. AI’s skills can also help in mapping business strategies. The whole process of content marketing becomes easier and more effective. Once again, businesses save time, energy, and money.

So this is how AI continues to increase the efficiency of businesses by automation. Here businesses can save a lot of time. Thus they can invest this time behind human interactions with customers. They can develop their marketing campaigns. They can also work on improving the creative quality of their ads. AI can help them out in the generation of new ideas and ways of storytelling. As one thing leads to another, how AI is changing marketing remains a fascinating chain of events.

How it is changing the relationship between customers and companies

AI has played a significant role in developing the relationship between consumers and companies. In the present age, increasing the number of human interactions between companies and consumers has become of high importance. Especially because everything else has become artificial due to technology, despite the digitization of everything else, this is the one part companies can’t use AI in a direct way. Despite being a replica of human intelligence, an AI cannot carry a natural and emotional conversation with a human.  But AI can still contribute to this from a different direction.

As we mentioned before, the automation of simple tasks and content generation leaves more time in hand. Many good companies are using this time to connect with their customers and increase levels of interactions. This can be both in a digital way or a physical way. As a result, companies are able to connect more closely with their customers. They can understand their customers’ demands and struggles on an emotional level. Then they can work on helping out the customers by improving their products and services. Brand loyalty is developing, lead generation and conversion are increasing.

Another important point of how AI is changing marketing is the use of chatbots. Many websites are already using it. These chatbots can reach out to site visitors for any queries at any time. They are programmed to answer all frequently asked questions. This is beneficial from both sides as well.

Companies with fewer employees can’t handle customer queries all around the clock. It can also become monotonous for them to answer the same questions again and again. So their workload is significantly reduced. This again leaves more time for direct customer interactions. On the other hand, customers are also satisfied. All their queries are being answered immediately. As this is done in a chatting system, it feels more natural and friendlier.

AI has more roles in changing the relationship between customers and companies. For one, they have changed the perspectives of the companies. Brian Solis, author, and principal analyst at Altimeter said that AI helped companies understand how to be human better. It’s ironic, but it’s true. AI brought a big change in the way companies to engage with their customers. The gap created due to digital technologies is now being bridged because of AI.

Is it necessary for businesses to integrate AI into their marketing strategies?

The answer to that is a big, fat “yes.” After all this discussion about how AI is changing marketing, it should be obvious to you just how much a business can achieve with the help of AI tools. It’s not an exaggeration to say that AI can work as a game-changer in the field of marketing. In this digital world, technology is always being upgraded to newer, better forms. Anyone who doesn’t adapt to these upgrades falls out of the loop. They lag behind. A business without AI tools will be no different.

Research has found that current AI technology can boost business productivity by 80%. So without AI tools, you will have 80% less productivity than a business with AI tools. It will be hard for you even to make it into the competition, let alone compete. So the necessity of AI in marketing cannot be denied. However, it is important to have the right digital literacy in this case. You should keep in mind that AI is amazing, but it cannot replace humans. So you first have to identify the fields AI can play a positive role in and proceed according to that.

The changes AI solutions will bring to marketing in the future are unimaginable. Marketing campaigns are already being revolutionized, thanks to it. A brighter future awaits within arm’s reach. Businesses that adapt to AI’s many ways of changing the world and improving themselves will undoubtedly lead the industry. But for now, how AI is changing marketing remains an important topic of discussion.