Artificial Intelligence is a Key to Winning in Digital Marketing Nowadays
There is an increasing amount of talk these days about robots replacing human workers or even human soldiers. This talk about robots has even reached the digital marketing industry in the form of the buzzword “artificial intelligence”, commonly called “AI”.
AI is a fancy way of saying computers are trying to simulate human intelligence. In other words, computers are more than just calculators where you enter 2+2 and the computer spits out “4”. The idea with AI is that humans input certain data points into a computer program and then that program makes logical deductions, inferences and predictions to come close functionally to human reasoning, analysis and speech.
Why Should We Care About AI?
While AI is still a new field of innovation in digital marketing, there are multiple reasons to be excited about the prospects for its application to the marketing of businesses. By utilizing AI, brands can make their marketing content much more personalized than it previously could be. Personalized marketing content and messages are far more impactful than non-personalized ones.
In addition to increased personalization, AI also allows digital marketers to target content distribution much more accurately and precisely than in the past. Instead of blasting your digital marketing message to very large groups of people, AI can be used to produce much smaller and more specific marketing content distribution targets.
AI also has significant implications for digital marketing analytics. In the past, digital marketing analysts would digest a large amount of data points and spend hours piecing together an analysis. Nowadays AI programs are doing more of the heavy lifting in analyzing digital marketing performance data and even making predictions on future digital marketing performance.
Bringing AI Down to Earth
For many business owners, the idea of envisioning AI as part of their digital marketing plan is difficult. On the surface, AI seems like no more than lofty speech—an esoteric idea with little chance of real-world use. And there’s no denying there is an element of truth to these feelings. Afterall, AI is still in the very early stages of being rolled out by businesses into everyday use.
However, like many previous technology innovations, people are initially skeptical because they don’t fully understand the technology, but then change and adoption of the new technology occurs fairly rapidly.
In an effort to prepare our clients for the changes fast approaching digital marketing through AI, here are three areas where AI is already being used in everyday digital marketing:
AREA #1: SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)
Artificial intelligence has actually been in use in SEO for quite a while. Google, the predominant arbiter of SEO, has been using AI in its search algorithms for well over 10 years. One early example of AI use by Google that most of us have experienced as a user is when you go to type something into the Google search engine and before you have finished typing, Google has already suggested the complete search term for you. This is AI in use.
A more recent example of AI in use today in SEO is with voice searches done by consumers on Alexa and Google Home. With voice search, AI is heavily relied upon by Google and Amazon to take sound fragments coming through the microphone and translating these sound fragments into intelligible speech in order to produce a meaningful search result for the user.
At Results Digital we leverage all of the available Google tools such as the Search Console in order to put your businesses in the best position possible for AI-based voice searches on Alexa and Google Home. Indeed, voice searches are increasing in their use, and we keep our SEO clients on the cutting edge of this groundbreaking digital marketing AI technology.
AREA #2: FACEBOOK MARKETING
Facebook has also gradually adopted AI technology over the course of the evolution of its marketing platform. Early on these AI efforts focused on taking data from Facebook users who Liked particular Business Pages on Facebook and making inferences about other Business Pages these users were most likely to want to engage with. These data sets were then used as targets for digital marketing purposes in the Facebook Ads platform.
Presently, Facebook has greatly expanded its use of AI in the Facebook Ads platform. Now Facebook not only looks at what Business Pages users have Liked, but they also combine many more data points about users including data about their offline purchasing behavior to make even deeper inferences about what advertising content within Facebook will most likely resonate with a given set of users. As a result of these AI enhancement, digital marketers have far more targeting options within the Facebook Ads platform than ever before.
Our Facebook Ads Team here at Results Digital follows all the latest developments of AI use by Facebook to continuously improve its ad targeting capabilities. Our team can target a specific set of potential new customers for your business by using the super granular targeting points offered by AI programs within the Facebook Ads platform.
AREA #3: EMAIL MARKETING
A third important area of digital marketing that has been impacted by artificial intelligence is email marketing. AI has impacted email marketing through increased personalization both in email messaging and offer personalization.
In email messaging, AI now allows digital marketers to use dynamic tags to input personal names and company names into the text of emails. Instead of saying “Hello there” we can now use AI to say “Hi John” or “Hi Betsy” based on the specific name of each email recipient.
Additionally, AI has allowed marketing emails to make more personalized offers to recipients. John may be interested in offers for Toyotas and Hondas whereas Betsy may be more interested in receiving offers about Fords and Hyundais. Within a single email marketing blast, AI is now used to make sure John receives offers on Toyotas whereas Betsy receives offers on Fords. In this way, email offers are becoming much more personalized thanks to AI.
Change is Coming, How Will You Handle It?
The research giant Gartner estimates that by the end of 2024, 75% of organizations will shift from piloting to operationalizing AI, which will drive a 5 times increase in streaming data and analytics infrastructures. No one knows exactly what the total impact of these sweeping changes in AI will mean to everyday American life, but what’s clear from the research is that change brought about by AI is coming fast and coming forcefully.
From a digital marketing perspective for your business there will be no middle ground. Either you will adopt AI digital marketing tools and systems and continue to win at the digital marketing game or you will be late in adopting AI into your marketing and your competitors will pass you by in short order.
Results Digital Helps You Win with AI
Here at Results Digital, the nature of what we do requires us to be ready to change and adapt rapidly as digital marketing technologies evolve. We are the first to adopt and test the newest digital marketing technologies including AI-based technologies. We validate the AI technology and become experts on it so that we can then bring the power of marketing AI to your business at scale and with precision purpose. Contact us today to learn more about how to adopt AI into your digital marketing strategy.
