Marketing is one of the areas where AI does its basic operation that is collect, reason, act. Even though this AI operation is brought to near perfection with the complex algorithms intertwined with our daily tasks, so much that we don’t pay attention any more, marketers still use informed decisions that in fact include a lot of guesswork. The thing is that the companies are so much focused on collecting data, they still cope with use of that data. Advancement of AI will enable more efficient use of collected data. So the algorithms will become more complex. As for now the personalized marketing is taking of hugely. Meaning that every bit of info that we leave on the net, is analyzed towards more focused customer experience.
Is needless to say that this shared customer experience brings out and increases the “heard” instinct to buy more of the products that are seen to be popular. The feedback mechanisms to bring back information about the perceived popularity of a product is where AI, and other new technologies excel. The smart – cart, and RFID not only ease the consuming habits, they teach the marketing companies and researchers about consumers habits, and introduce new findings into consumer market, such as “swarm-moves” model that is widely excepted by supermarkets and shopping moles because it increases buying without the need to offer discounts.
AI is transforming the marketing with the development of search engines, social media, recommendation engines, chatbots and voice data analyzing. The early adopters such as Google and Facebook traced the way to whole new way of reaching the consumer.
Facebook and Google Ad platforms are basically huge data crunchers that analyze user information via complex algorithms to extract usable data such as best demographic for marketing companies to invest.
Their best implementation of AI is the Adext, an Audience Management as a Service, using machine and deep learning to analyze different audiences in order to find the one that is most suitable for investment and most likely to return profit.
Now the question that we ask ourselves, is do we need digital marketing or we can do it in the old fashioned way?
To answer that question we have to take in consideration the pros and cons of digital marketing.
Pros:
1. Reduced amount of time to pick the most profitable audience
2. Greater outreach of marketing, i.e. our products can be easily advertised literally on the other side of the world
3. More personalized advertising
4. New marketing technologies emerging almost every day
Cons:
1. Privacy issues that arise by using data collection
2. The amount of time spent online
3. Easier to copy brand or campaign
4. Can generate negative publicity
I think by now most of the readers made a decision to ditch SEO in favor of new AI based digital marketing. The reason for that is obvious: If you don’t catch up you will fall out.
The benefits of digital marketing are easy to spot, as they rapidly overcome the shortcomings. To what extent we embrace and rely on AI based digital marketing is question for the sceptics or, even better to influencers that rely heavily on transferring their experiences online. The power of image, in both senses, are not to underestimate. The ones that carefully craft their image and online presence over time, are indispensable and of great value to marketing companies that value more traditional approach and rely on niche marketing.
We must not forget that AI is still developing and the results are not perfect. Even though the ALGORITHM is omnipresent some take it with a grain of salt. Especially high rollers, which is understable. When you put a lot of money and trust in the new technologies the error margin is very low, but, paradoxically, the new technologies need time and resources to polish and spit results. Either way, the future looks bright if you are in digital marketing. Time to embrace the ALGORITHM.