The Artificial Intelligence Revolution in Marketing

The increase in artificial intelligence capability and application area requires a reconsideration of the traditional definition and application areas of marketing. According to a study, 80 percent of marketers believe that artificial intelligence will revolutionize the marketing industry.

Artificial intelligence is defined as a powerful technology that provides a machine with the ability to perform cognitive functions such as sensing, reasoning, and learning. Factors such as changing consumer habits, the development of technology and service quality increase the importance of artificial intelligence day by day. As such, marketers can reduce costs by intelligently automating data-driven and repetitive tasks, and increase revenue by improving their ability to insight at scale.

Statistics indicate that COVID-19 has accelerated AIpowered digital transformation across companies. A study by Gartner in 2021 reveals that artificial intelligence projects will create $2.9 trillion in business value and 6.2 billion hours of employee productivity worldwide. McKinsey estimates that artificial intelligence and other analytics will have an annual impact of up to $5.9 trillion on marketing and sales. About 2.400 executives, who participated in a survey conducted by McKinsey, say that they have adopted artificial intelligence more due to the pandemic. PwC’s research, which provides industry-focused auditing, tax and advisory services to private organizations worldwide, reveals that artificial intelligence may show a truly global impact from, with an estimated 14 percent increase in global GDP by 2030 and that it can contribute a total of $15.7 trillion to the world economy, thanks to both increased productivity and increased consumption. The US-based research company IDC also states that the efficiencies that can be obtained from artificial intelligence in CRM can account for more than 800.000 net new jobs.

Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Marketing

Artificial intelligence allows businesses to match information about the products and services offered by potential consumers with the information they need in the most effective way. For instance, with the help of artificial intelligence, it is possible to recognize faces in images and to tag users on Facebook, Siri can understand the user’s voice and act accordingly, and Tesla was able to develop self-driving cars. In addition, the applications of artificial intelligence in the field of marketing are developing rapidly in addition to modern software and services that brands can implement today. In other words, with the application of this technology, it is possible to see the marketing potential in its various formats and gain some insights.

Hyper Personalization

In this advanced consumption era, where consumers are actively seeking information in order to make informed decisions, consumer behavior is heavily influenced by the content created by consumers. At this point, we come across the concept of hyper personalization to influence consumer behavior. Hyper personalization leverages artificial intelligence techniques and real-time data to provide more relevant content, product, and service information to each user, thereby taking personalized marketing to the next level.

Examples of hyper personalization include platforms such as Spotify and Netflix. In these platforms, the options that users may like are presented with algorithms created with the support of artificial intelligence and machine learning, considering their previous activities. In this way, users can easily access the content they like.

Getting Deeper Insights

Artificial intelligence offers significant opportunities for businesses to monitor and integrate data. Customer segmentation plays an important role in obtaining deep insights into consumer behavior at macro and micro levels. Therefore, since businesses can obtain comprehensive information about consumers, their marketing messages can also be personalized, which enables success in returns. In addition, obtaining deeper insights can help establish long-term relationships with consumers by enabling direct marketing efforts.

Easier Access via Chatbots

Chatbots are defined as artificial intelligence-based software where users engage in conversations via text or voice. As a result, it creates the feeling that there is a human being on the other side of the user. Artificial intelligence-based chatbots are positioned like a store staff that greets customers, establishes a dialogue with them and represents the corporate culture with their behaviors in digital marketing efforts. A study by Aspect Software reveals that two-thirds of consumers feel better when they don’t have to interact with a customer service representative, and half of the consumers prefer to engage in customer service interactions via messaging.

Retargeting

Retargeting, which is also seen as a form of digital advertising closely related to machine learning, enables reaching an audience that has previously been interested in products and services and has expressed their interest by interacting. Third-party data such as browser cookies and first-party data play an important role in ensuring that the most appropriate advertising purchase is made to the information tracked about the user (viewing history, recently purchased products, other behaviors). Retargeting often uses personalization processes to deliver more relevant messages to customers. Naturally, this helps to provide higher click-through rates in retargeting ads compared to traditional online ads.

Social Media Monitoring

It is an undeniable fact that social media platforms are important platforms for businesses to obtain consumer orientation data in their marketing initiatives and to carry out active digital marketing activities. The concept of artificial intelligence has the potential to transform the way brands create and manage their marketing efforts on social media, and in fact, it is an important component of the most popular social networks. For example, Facebook uses advanced machine learning techniques for everything from facial recognition in a photo to targeting ads to eligible users, while Instagram uses artificial intelligence to identify images. LinkedIn uses artificial intelligence to offer people relevant job recommendations, suggest people you might want to connect with, and deliver stream-friendly content.

Interactive Marketing with Face Recognition

Monitoring people’s biological characteristics also offers interesting possibilities for marketers. Although these technologies are mostly used in security fields today, they can help marketers identify customers and create more personalized messages.

Expedia’s “Discover Your Aloha” campaign in 2016 is a good example of interactive marketing using facial recognition. Because within the scope of this campaign, different parts of Hawaii were watched by users with webcams on and with face recognition technology, it was determined especially in which parts users responded more positively and which parts they liked more. After this process, promotional options such as discount coupons were offered to users for the region for which they reacted most positively.

AI Platforms Used in Marketing

According to Gartner’s study, 61 percent of marketing executives think that artificial intelligence will have a huge impact on their business to deliver the right message in the right channel at the right time. Leading brands in different sectors receive support from these applications, which we will talk about now, in order to quickly analyze and measure their PR and marketing efforts and to produce new tactics in the light of these evaluations.

Advantages of AI in Marketing

• Accelerates revenue growth,
• Creates personalized consumer experiences at scale,
• Generates greater ROI on campaigns while driving costs down,
• Get more actionable insights from marketing data,
• Predicts consumer needs and behavior with greater accuracy,
• Reduces time spent on repetitive, data-driven tasks,
• Shortens the sales cycle,
• Provides more value from marketing technologies,
• Marketers have the opportunity to create a significant and sustainable competitive advantage for their business and themselves.