How can AI be harnessed to drive more effective and efficient marketing? To learn more about how AI is impacting marketing and advertising, I talked with Ryan Coyne, the CEO of Starboard, a digital marketing and advertising firm.
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How AI is Changing Marketing
Consumer Understanding. Coyne suggests that there are several ways that AI is changing marketing. One way is that it now helps drive deeper consumer understanding by integrating and aggregating large amounts of consumer information. As an example, imagine a sales representative or customer support agent that not only knows every single detail about that product, but also knows every question ever asked about it and what the correct answer is. Now imagine there are an infinite number of those salespeople or support agents. The impact on sales and customer support will not only manifest itself in millions of jobs being replaced but will also create a more immediate and custom-tailored experience for the customer.
Customized Messaging. Coyne also suggests that “AI not only helps sellers to understand the needs and behavior of consumers, but it can also use this information to target individuals with personalized ads. For most consumers, it is common to get emails, messages, and pop-ups with product recommendations, however AI takes it to the next level by creating ads tailored for specific individuals or groups improving the chance that they will purchase their product or service.” For example, imagine you have a Labradoodle and you are a consumer at PetSmart. In the new world PetSmart will have the ability to reach out to you over text message and have a personalized conversation about your dog by name - and then convert you to an online customer by reminding you that your dog needs a specific product and sharing stories of how other Labradoodles in town are having success with the same products.
Predict Future Trends. Beyond enabling consumer insight generation, Coyne suggests that AI will be able to identify, capture, and predict future trends. By studying and analyzing social media content, AI “can have a more accurate prediction of consumers’ tastes, preferences, and needs, and how these indexes may change in the future. As a result, AI marketing can help human marketing agents predict future demand and supply, and also generate strategies for product improvements and future campaigns.”
Improve Customer Experience. As Coyne suggests: “AI-powered chatbots can provide personalized and efficient, 24/7 real-time customer support through natural language processing, allowing them to understand and respond to customer queries and requests. As natural language processing models get better the tool will help to identify every customer’s intent and will make it virtually impossible to differentiate between an AI-powered chatbot and a human.”
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