Think of all the time baristas get your name wrong on a coffee cup. But with machine learning in the mix, instances like these don’t happen so much. That’s perhaps the greatest advantage of artificial intelligence: its potential to reduce and eventually eliminate all human error. By alleviating mundane tasks and enhancing convenience in our lives, AI is well on its way to advancing human potential. 

Essentially, AI is technology that can perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. It combines large data sets, algorithms, and powerful computing to produce outcomes that mimic human thinking. In fact, AI is now becoming so advanced that it can recognize individuals’ emotions and deliver personalized experiences.

Are your marketing strategies taking advantage of the massive leaps in technological innovation? In this article, we explain how AI is significantly impacting the human potential of marketing.

Where do AI and Marketing Intersect?

It’s often underestimated how often AI is used today in marketing. Think about the following examples in your daily life:

• Facebook using facial recognition to recommend who to tag in photos

• Netflix using machine learning to recommend personalized recommendations 

• Amazon using natural language processing for Alexa 

By leveraging technology and artificial intelligence, marketers can improve the customer journey and subsequently increase their ROI. Tools like big data and machine learning can help a brand gain insights into its target audience and better market to them.

Even more, AI can be used to automate complex processes that could at one point only be done manually. These include email marketing, content generation, PPC ads, and even some forms of web design.

Why Marketers Should Pay Attention to AI

With the introduction of AI, marketers can more easily streamline and optimize marketing campaigns. They can cluster consumer behaviors to predict future behaviors, allowing them to make intelligent product and content recommendations. 

Here are the top three ways marketers should integrate AI into their strategies:

1 - AI Frees Up Time

With AI, marketers have more time to shape their brand’s strategy, messaging, and brand purpose. Because AI outperforms humans in tasks including data gathering, prediction, judgement, and action, marketers can focus on the emotion-driven functions, like how certain copy and graphics will resonate with their target audience on a deeper level.

So instead of hiring another customer service representative, companies may opt to build a branded chatbot. Automatic ad placement on Facebook, Google, and other social media platforms eliminates the need for humans to manually place them. What’s more, AI-powered solutions can help shape your content strategy by suggesting keywords and phrases that are performing particularly well for your brand.

2 - Predictive Analysis Can Predict Purchasing Patterns 

Companies such as Target have used predictive analysis to help inform their business decisions. In 2012, the retailer made headlines when they correctly predicted the pregnancy of a woman before she told her closest friends and family. 

Because Target assigns every customer a Guest ID number tied to their credit card, name, or email address. On top of this, Target can see a history of everything a consumer has bought. Using this data, Target's statistician Andrew Pole noticed that women on baby registries were buying larger volumes of unscented lotion at the beginning of their second trimester. 

Using all this data, Pole assigned a pregnancy prediction score to customers based on purchase and purchase volume or certain Target products. Target was then able to send these consumers personalized ads for baby-related items, like cribs, diapers, and baby clothes.

Nowadays, more and more companies are hiring data scientists and programmers. These highly-skilled professionals will soon become the backbone of many marketing departments.

3 - Consumers Expect It 

Over the past decade, consumers have become conditioned to give up data and privacy in exchange for more personalized experiences. 

Think about how many people have a digital assistant, like an Amazon Alexa, Google Home, or even Apple’s Siri. Ask one of these devices a simple question, and they are slowly compiling data about you — your habits, behaviors, and personality. With the proliferation of devices like these that use artificial intelligence, consumers expect instant gratification that can only be solved by today’s most sophisticated technologies. 

Similarly, consumers have become very attuned to chatbots. And not just ordinary ones, but interactive, personalized chatbots. With the help of intelligent chatbots, companies are providing consumers intuitive, 1:1 interactions. One of the early adopters of chatbots is Sephora, who has many chatbot services including Sephora Reservation Assistant and Sephora Color Match. From allowing consumers to make appointments with beauty specialists at a Sephora location quickly to helping consumers virtually pick out and match colors, these chatbot services are very useful.

Conclusion

As the prevalence of AI grows, so will the expectations of consumers for brands to replicate the quality of service it provides. Ultimately, AI is the tool that can improve the relationship between brands and their consumers. Soon, companies will be using AI to improve every aspect of the customer journey.