You’ve probably heard about the concept of AI, machine learning and marketing automation by now, but you may not understand what it means and how it can be used in your business. It is important to note that these tools won’t do you much good without a proper strategy, implementation, and human intervention.
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Marketing AI Tools
In this article, we’ll cover the basics of AI and machine learning and give you 10 ideas on how marketers can use AI to improve their efficiency and save time by automating certain tasks. We’ll also provide some examples of tools that can be used to make marketing efforts more automated. Read on to learn more!
1) Automated Marketing
We are living in an exciting time where marketing automation tools have started integrating artificial intelligence technology into their platforms. They’re able to run data analysis, automate processes and make suggestions for improvements based on data. They will also be able to conduct research, find new leads, and create content that resonates with your target audience.
The best part is that it will do all of these things without requiring you to lift a finger. If you don’t believe us, check out some of these automated marketing tools mentioned in the different sections of this article, many have free options – and of course, you can also check AppSumo for great deals.
The marketing industry has grown rapidly in recent years, and it’s no wonder why. It’s been predicted that by 2020, sales teams who use marketing automation technology will see a 15% increase in sales compared to those who don’t. With so many businesses relying on marketing campaigns as an essential element of their business model, these tools will become more and more valuable as time goes on. And if you aren’t already using them, we highly recommend you consider getting started now!
2) Data Mining
By now, most marketers have heard of data mining and are probably even aware of some applications. Data mining is particularly useful for businesses that have collected a large amount of customer information. The process involves running programs against existing databases and unearthing previously unknown information about customers’ behavior. It can be used to discover patterns that might not have been apparent without it (for example, you might identify certain groups of people who buy certain products together).
Instead, data mining can be used to automate processes that already exist in a business (for example, you can reclassify customers based on recent purchases). This type of automation is helpful when human error or fatigue could lead to mistakes in how you treat your customers.
Data mining can also be beneficial if you have a large amount of historical data and you want to find patterns that might apply to new data. For example, a bank might use data mining to discover more information about the credit rating of potential customers.
3) Predictive Analysis
Predictive analysis is an important part of your team’s marketing program. It helps you anticipate what will sell in a given location and informs decisions about inventory, advertising, promotions, and pricing. The result: better forecasting and less chance that a product won’t be sold for lack of knowledge about its likely appeal.
To be effective, predictive analysis requires high-quality data and advanced methods of statistics. Marketing companies can use big data platforms like Azure SQL Data Warehouse and Redshift to analyze terabytes of customer behavior data without slowing down applications or requiring expensive IT support.
4) Question Answering
Answering customer questions is essential in helping businesses understand what their customers want. Customer service inquiries can also be a great source of insights into customer problems and concerns that you can address with your product or service offerings.
There are many different ways that marketers can use artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning capabilities to help provide better customer service for clients. The first step should be talking with customers about how they’d like to engage, then automating when possible. For example, HubSpot Chat allows you to ask certain prompts and automate chat so you can answer FAQs, direct users, and even capture leads. This tool not only automate conversations, but you can then enroll the people who reach out into sequences or workflows so you can continue the conversation off-platform with minimal manpower.
5) Chatbots
Speaking of chatbots, they are far from new, but they continue to get more advanced and helpful in both customer services situations, as well as lead generation. While chatbots on websites have been common for a while, you can now take that technology on to different platforms.
A tool like ManyChat can be valuable to ensure that your account stays active and encourages interactions with followers. ManyChat allows you to automate pretty much any social media platform. For example, you can use this tool to run social campaigns that drive users to send a DM, but you won’t have to worry about 24/7 human monitoring.
These workflows can then talk to your CRM and capture leads, send emails, and bridge the gap between your social followers, and marketing contacts. Again, it may seem obvious, but automation is one of many ways to support marketers in making them more efficient.
Another tool worth mentioning is SavvyCal: A virtual assistant for helping you set up meetings via email. This idea is great for agencies or professionals who manage multiple accounts since most other options involve storing your contact lists online and letting someone else have access to them.
6) Natural Language Processing (NLP)
Natural language processing (NLP) refers to the branch of AI—concerned with giving computers the ability to understand the text and spoken words in much the same way human beings can.
NLP encompasses a wide variety of AI applications, but some of the most common are voice assistants like Siri and Alexa. Many tech experts believe these new interfaces represent the future of digital computing: they’re able to analyze language patterns in real-time, which allows them to predict how users will interact with your product or brand.
While NLP isn’t directly helpful to the common marketer just yet, utilizing the previously mentioned voice assistants can be helpful in day-to-day life. Whether you are asking Siri to solve a quick math problem for you, or having Google set reminders, they are hands-free tools that assist in daily productivity.
7) Automated Keyword Research
While compiling information for your content marketing strategy, it’s important to find keywords that are easy to rank and relevant. This can be a pain. Thankfully, there are sites like WordStream that offer automated keyword research services that take care of much of that grunt work.
It’s important to not take the automated research as is, but it is a great jumping-off point when starting research and building a content plan.
8) Automatic A/B Testing
Automated A/B testing tools help marketers understand which of their campaigns and content perform best. As a result, companies spend less time analyzing data and more time improving results.
For example, you can use an automated A/B testing tool like Optimizely to launch new emails or landing pages with your existing campaigns and track which version performs better at all stages of your funnel.
Instead of waiting for a report in Google Analytics or looking at reports in an email marketing platform like MailChimp, you can get real-time results right in your browser. This allows you to quickly identify what’s working and what isn’t so that you can experiment with new campaign ideas without losing precious time.
9) Overcoming Manual Inefficiencies
Manual processes and inefficiencies are marketers’ worst nightmare, especially if they cost valuable time and money. An automated marketing approach like AI can help you overcome those challenges by automating repetitive tasks and improving efficiency. Here are some ideas that show how marketers can make use of AI to improve workflows:
- Automating marketing surveys – Marketers are often tasked with generating consumer insights for decision-making purposes through marketing surveys. This can be tedious, time-consuming work that requires manual data entry and careful analysis. By automating this process through AI, marketers can reduce the amount of time it takes to complete a survey, increase response rates and improve overall quality.
- Automated blog writing – AI writers are not a replacement for human copywriters. They just assist the content writers by getting rid of writer’s block and generating content ideas at scale.
- Marketers can make use of AI to improve their workflows in many ways. One way is by using blogs generated by artificial intelligence as a starting point for their blog posts. Another way is by using AI-generated content to generate ideas for social media posts and other marketing campaigns.
- Automate lead generation – AI can trigger emails automatically based on data from other marketing channels. For example, this could be triggered by a visitor viewing your site for longer than 30 seconds.
- Eliminate repetitive tasks -With AI, you can automate tasks that are time-consuming and mind-numbing like simple forms or checkout flows.
10) Learning from Superhuman Intelligence
Artificial intelligence could be used for automated marketing and sales processes, such as content curation and response management. Artificial intelligence can learn from human actions by analyzing every customer’s message that is responded to, every tweet, comment, or post it sees. This collection of data sets AI up with its superhuman intelligence based on real-world experiences in which it’s observed humans responding in specific ways. It’s an infinite number of responses; without patterns, AI would not be able to learn and improve upon these responses.
And while AI is learning from human actions, as marketers, we can learn from AI. We are still a few years away from copying a pasting an AI blog with minimal to no copy editing, but the ideas generated are coming from a depth of knowledge that only a machine could generate. Pay attention to the content generated, and the data is pulled, it is not quite perfect but can teach us incredibly valuable lessons about the direction society are moving in and the effectiveness of our efforts moving forward.