It’s a fear that's been harboured by the public since technology started leaping, bounding and changing our every day – the fear that soon, machines will take over everything. Leaving us to become obsolete and outperformed by the technology we've created… (Nothing like a bit of cyber-doom to brighten up your day, is there?)
However, this fear might not be solidified by any proof. In fact, when it comes to marketing, making use of artificial intelligence can be helpful. It’s reported that current AI technology can boost productivity by a whopping 40%. So, how are startups utilising it for their marketing campaigns?
First, we need to understand what AI marketing means. It’s constantly evolving and developing, like any technology in the world, so pinning it down can be a bit tricky. The general idea is that AI marketing is utilising intelligence technologies to collect data, customer insights, anticipate customers’ next moves, and make automated decisions that impact marketing decisions. With AI, you can gain insight quickly from your customer base. Allowing you to target them with the right marketing strategy from understanding their wants and needs.
With a growing need from customers to know that the startup they’re supporting understands their expectations and anticipates their needs, completing this kind of in-depth research that use of AI promises will take far too long to conduct manually. Which makes you tired just thinking about it, doesn’t it? Whereas, with AI implemented, the time is cut considerably.
This is not everything artificial intelligence can do when it comes to marketing. Think about when you’re ready to release any content, you’ll have a list of things that need to be checked before it can go live. You’ll have to comb through keywords, data, trends, and SEO – perhaps even more than once. That all adds up to valuable time you could be spending completing other pressing tasks. Plus, before you even get to the point of creating the content, you have to come up with fresh ideas that your target audience will want to see.
With an AI strategy in place, you’ll be able to track and analyse what content your target audience are interacting and engaging with. It takes the guesswork out of finding that golden formula for your marketing efforts. Then, once this content has been created, it can be run through platforms, like Hemingway, which will check for readability – helping you tick off your checklist that bit faster.
As you’ll notice, one of the main positives for AI’s is their ability to save you and your business time. There’s always an increasing demand for everyone to be available all hours of the day since the internet has connected us all, and this is the same for startups. Customers want their queries answered promptly, whether they send it at 1am or 1pm. We don’t need to tell you this just isn’t sustainable for a startup of any size to be able to offer. Then enters: chatbots.
Chatbots offer around the clock interaction with users and are becoming an impressive piece of AI. Instead of getting users to fill out a form that usually takes too long to get a reply to, they can now speak to the bot who will be able to guide them to the answer that solves their query. They’re becoming so good that users now feel like they’re talking to a real human, as opposed to a robot.
All in all, AI can create a better customer experience when they visit your startup. By enabling marketers to spend more time on the customer experience, their needs are taken care of faster. Use of AI also increases the amount of personalisation you can include within your campaigns. Many companies use AI to personalise anything from emails, websites, social media posts, and more.
This isn’t to say every startup should be handing over the reins to artificial intelligence. Though they can do all these amazing things, including content creation, when used too much, your audiences will be able to tell. You can’t replicate the human touches that come with creating campaigns and content yourself, but the quality and quantity of these can be helped along with AI technologies.
Maybe it’s time we let the machines take over for a little bit to leave us free to focus on our other pressing matters. It seems like they’ve been doing a pretty good job so far…
