When people mention artificial intelligence, some of us think of robots taking over the world. The reality, however, is much more sober and grounded. AI is now here, and it‘s helping the same humans it tries to mimic.
AI is in your home, updating your grocery list while also booking you an Uber. And it’s in your workplace, as well. AI has been used for quite some time now, and to say that it has transformed the way businesses and brands do their marketing is an understatement.
Here’s a look at seven key ways artificial intelligence has transformed marketing.
1. Search Engine Results Improved by AI
Right now, search engines tend to ignore certain words that are called filter words, including:
- a
- an
- and
- of
- or
- the
Search engines also have problems with prepositions, in that they don’t know how to interpret even the most common prepositions. So, while humans search for “how to bake a cake with no oven,” search engines may read it as “how bake cake oven.“
The results you get are all about suggestions on baking a cake using an oven: the very opposite of what you were looking for in the first place.
AI has the power to help search engines understand your search terms and give you the right links and articles for them, explains Jason Mazur, Online Marketing Director & Founding Partner of All Points Digital. With the introduction of Google BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) the search engine can now use natural language programming to fine tune its search results. Instead of relying on your string, Google BERT can think like a human’ and understand exactly what you’re trying to look for.
So how does this impact your search engine optimization efforts? Not much, if you’ve been putting out content that’s highly readable by humans, Mazur says. But you might be in trouble if you’re only going for keywords rather than useful content. Google BERT helps the search engine understand what people are searching for, but it doesn’t look at your website or its content.
2. Your Site’s Content Written by Artificial Intelligence
So, if you were able to get away with topping the search engine results pages just by winging it, then it’s time to change your content strategy. Right now, that means hours and hours spent on determining the keywords that your customers are using to search for your products or services.
But that will change soon. With big data in place, you can have AI pore over large volumes of information and come up with the keywords you need. AI can even write it for you. For instance, Wordsmith uses natural language processing to write human-sounding blog posts and content. You can supply it with data, information, and even sports scores. It will write content that reads like it’s been prepared by a human writer.
While AI content writers cannot write opinion pieces, or perhaps industry advice, they can handle some of the more routine writing, such as annual reports, dividends, and other content that you don’t enjoy writing.
As AI becomes smarter, it may even take over your content strategy in the future by:
- knowing which keywords to focus on;
- determining what type of content will draw the most engagement; and then
- writing the content you need.
3. AI Can Also Curate Your Content
Artificial intelligence can help you show the most relevant content to your visitors. Right now, you can see this in action with recommendation engines. For instance, when reading about how to care for an air plant, you are shown other articles about tips and tricks to help your air plant survive.
If you’re looking at a product on Amazon, you are shown a variety of related products and even competing brands. The next time you’re on Netflix, take note of what shows they recommend to you. It’s probably based on the movies and TV shows that you’ve watched before.
Having AI know what to show your visitors can help you engage with them in a meaningful way. Instead of blindly linking to products and pages that they might not be interested in, you’re giving them links to things that they are already looking for.
4. AI Helps You Personalize Your Marketing
Don’t you just hate it when someone offers you 50 percent discounts on all drinks at a bar in Los Angeles, but you live in New York City? One size fits all doesn’t really equate to effective marketing. And even if you can serve up content to a market segment, i.e. the boomers or the millennials, it really helps to personalize your marketing.
AI is not just being able to greet your site visitors using their first name. For one, you can use location data and show them directions to the nearest physical store. You can also serve up the content they’re most likely to read.
For instance, if it’s their first time visiting your website, then you might want to show them content that informs them about your products and services. If they’ve been on your site more than a few times, then they’re more likely to want to see how your products will benefit them.
If you sell chocolate chips, for example, and it’s your visitor’s first time on your website, you can offer them introductory discounts, articles on why your chocolate chips are better than others, and other content that helps introduce your business to them. If the customer has been to your site a couple of times, you can serve up blog posts that help them make the decision to purchase, such as a rewards program, delicious recipes that use chocolate chips, or loyalty discounts.
5. Chatbots
Think of the frustration that your customers have when they have a question, but no one is answering them. Chatbots ensure that customers get answers, even if they ask it at two in the morning.
Instead of hiring more customer service representatives, companies are investing in chatbots that are not human but can understand what the customer is asking and then give the right answer. What’s more, your customers will not even know that they’re talking to AI.
Chatbots are helpful in self-service situations, as well as gathering customer information that gets passed to a live agent. They can also be used by human agents as a guide when resolving a customer issue. Chatbots can greet your customers promptly.
6. Voice Search Will Push Long Tail Keywords and Local Search
“Alexa, where can I find the best pizza places near me?”
Voice activated virtual assistants is an AI technology that is currently used at home, and their skills and capabilities are growing every day. Businesses can use voice search for marketing, as well.
For instance, more than one in every five voice searches ask for location. If you’re not optimizing for local search, then you should. Voice search will also make use of long-tail search terms. Instead of “best dentist New York City” you will probably want to rank higher for “who is the best dentist in New York City?“.
Your content should also shift, in that you should include a clear and direct answer to these questions, much like how Google uses snippets in their search results.
7. AI Analyzes Data Like No Human Can
When it comes to marketing, you will need insights into what your customers want not just now, but also in the future. This is the reason why an increasing number of companies are hiring data scientists, market analysts, and programmers, and putting these professionals on their marketing teams.
But no matter how good humans are at crunching numbers, they will be no match for the huge amount of data your company collects. Artificial intelligence, using machine learning and big data tools, can crunch those numbers and give you easy to digest insights into your customers.
These insights can tell you more about your customers, their preferences, buying habits, and maybe even what they will want to buy in the near future. You can use these insights to create more meaningful customer experiences, predict their future behavior, and personalize down to the smallest details.
How AI Transforms Marketing
The thing with being a global business is that it becomes harder and harder to connect with customers over the years. In the old days, when you went inside a hardware store, you could talk to the owner and describe what you were trying to do, and he or she could recommend the right products for your project. It’s fast and efficient, and the customer feels properly looked after.
AI enables technologies that can bring back that kind of customer experience in the digital world. In effect, with AI tools such as chatbots, recommendation engines, and even content creation and curation, your business goes beyond marketing to market segments and demographics, allowing you to market to actual people “ even if they are buying from the other side of the world.
