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As per a report by International Data Corporation (IDC), industry spending on AI systems will reach $35.8 billion in 2019 and $79.2 billion by the year 2022. AI tools are already being used in many industries such as restaurant services, healthcare, finance, retail, automotive, e-commerce, and others. With so much excitement buzzing around AI, every organization would benefit from integrating AI into their marketing workflow. Here are four areas to explore first.
1. Buyer Personas
How well do you know your customer? A buyer persona — the representation of the ideal customer, based on the real and market data of the existing customers and prospects, respectively — helps you to get a deeper understanding of the customer. The more you know about your existing or potential customer, the easier it becomes to pitch your products and services to them.
AI can play an essential role in the process by collecting the relevant audience data to develop an accurate buyer persona. This can help provide a clear picture of the customer profiling process, spending motives, and their habits, aligning your marketing strategy with what your customers and prospects are looking for.
2. Customer Service and Engagement
Excellent customer service helps to win the trust of the customer and retain them. Customer experience has been termed as the new brand battlefield, as 89% of the companies compete based on the customer experience. The after-sales service is one of the significant contributors to maintain a relationship with the customer and provide them with a good experience.
AI-powered chatbots help businesses in increasing leads and sales by providing good customer engagement. Social messaging apps are also an excellent resource to connect with the audience on the platforms popular among them. With the integration of AI, the use of these apps helps in one-to-one communication with the customer. The apps can assist with:
- Helping the followers find the relevant content
- Capturing leads
- Providing updates inside Facebook Messenger
- Checking product inventory
- Booking sales and service appointment
- Sending notification reminders about any big event
3. Content Optimization
AI-powered technology helps in optimizing content based on the insights and analyses, thus boosting the visibility and traffic to the website.
Consumers are known to click and rate the valuable content before sharing it with their peers. AI helps in analyzing the actions of the user so that you can share the content as per the needs of the user. Content headlines getting more clicks also gets filtered out with the help of AI. It helps the content developer in crafting the content revolving around that subject.
AI also helps in analyzing the content popular on specific platforms. For example, it is reported that videos on Facebook earn 59% more engagement than other posts.
4. Social Media Monitoring
Social media has been a great word-of-mouth platform, and often a venting ground for many of the users. Monitoring social media can help you understand what exactly is going inside the customer’s mind, and with the help of AI-powered tools, you can keep a tab on how your brand is being perceived. It helps in:
- Selecting trending topics
- Recognizing thought influencers
- Segmenting customer information
- Identifying customer sentiment
- Listening for specific brand mentions
It has been seen that many times, customers do not provide negative reviews directly to the brand as feedback; instead, they share it on social media. AI can capture these reviews and inform you in order for improvements to be made. As per a Forbes report, by 2020, 75% of the B2B buyers will expect their vendors to predict their needs.
Some of the top AI tools for social media monitoring are:
- Digital Air Strike: This tool is an AI-powered intelligent messaging solution which captures the leads on the Facebook messenger, website, and text message.
- Crimson Hexagon: It is an AI-powered consumer insights solution which automates the discovery and delivery of the insights.
Whether you are a start-up or an established organization, AI will soon become an integral part of your marketing process. It, along with machine learning, will transform your present and future marketing strategy.
By Robert Jordan
Via Target Marketing Magazine