How Introducing Artificial Intelligence Into Marketing Will Help Businesses

There are no people capable of processing terabytes of information. Marketers see customers as segments of the audience. They do not adapt to each client based on the customer’s personal preferences. They tend to lose customers requiring special attention, and the old mechanisms for attracting consumers do not give the desired result. So it’s time to introduce artificial intelligence into marketing.

What artificial intelligence does in marketing

Artificial intelligence will not solve all the problems of a business or marketing department, but it will help with the analysis of any data. It will take on the execution of routine work that marketers cannot handle.

The primary task of AI is to analyse the customer base and find an individual approach to each of them. It all starts with sorting each customer’s past purchase records. AI must map the purchase history to a calendar with all holidays marked. Exact matches and minor deviations from such dates mean that a person probably bought the goods as a gift for the holiday. AI will remember such cases and the choice of a gift to propose a similar product next year.

Is it too long to wait for the result for a whole year? Then let AI find customers in the database who regularly buy the same product (or products of the same type). Perhaps someone is buying supplies for their equipment or for hand-made items in an online store. At best, human marketers will notify such a customer of receiving a batch or discounts on their favourite product, if at all they will keep records of such a narrow scale. An AI marketer will calculate the days when a customer is expected to run out of supplies to remind the client in advance to purchase.

Suppose previous actions have borne fruit: regular customers are satisfied, now they order everything at all from you, and they also told friends that your store cares better than others. The load has grown, which means that you need to work harder. The traditional way is to add more staff; the modern way is to retrain the same AI expanding its capabilities. Indeed, it was AI that ensured the influx of new customers and the loyalty of the old ones, let it serve them now since it is so smart.

What will the introduction of artificial intelligence give?

The mutual understanding between a marketing department and a programming department (or between a director of a trading company and an outsourced development team) is the key to increasing sales. With the cooperation of two departments/fields, the company will reach a new level.

If automation is correctly organised, the company will achieve its goals 2-3 times faster. AI will help marketers personalize sales: identify the habits of each customer, determine future needs, and offer suitable options based on interests. For business owners, AI will find effective methods of promotion.

Why hasn’t everyone implemented artificial intelligence yet?

On the Internet, old-school entrepreneurs often criticise artificial intelligence. They believe that:

• the technology is at an early stage of development, so we cannot take it seriously so far;
• the main rule of success is to improve the product, not the machine;
• AI solves only 20% of the tasks, and these are easy ones; only a person can develop a business strategy;
• chatbots and virtual assistants lack emotions and intuition that are necessary for customer service;
• AI will not reduce the costs of the company but increase them since you have to hire a programmer or engineer;
• introduction of such high technology is available only to corporations with a billionth turnover, and small businesses cannot afford it.

However, they are mistaken. Artificial intelligence technology has advanced far: machines have become smarter and more humane, and their training became more affordable and easier. AI is used by both large companies (Amazon, Facebook) and small startups. Their marketing specialists made sure that AI significantly affects sales.