Artificial intelligence is on a roll, especially in the marketing domain.

2017 opened with reports of global investments gaining momentum in the “fields of AI, robotics, and IoT technologies”.

The same report indicated a significant shift in investments by Chinese VCs, particularly in the Artificial Intelligence domain. It is believed that in five years’ time, every company should be prepared to compete in the AI domain to survive.

So are you aware that artificial intelligence can actually help marketers thrive?

The power to understand customer needs, emotions, and preferences globally is a big boon of this emerging technology.

Paradoxically enough, AI’s greatest strength may be in creating a more personal experience for your customer.

From visual search to virtual personal shoppers, digital marketing is on the verge of getting a superb makeover.

So let’s discuss how artificial intelligence (and the fruits of its artificial loins) can positively impact your marketing strategy.

1. It helps you know your customers better

Imagine knowing for sure what a customer has in mind when they connect with you or visit your website. Isn’t that at the heart of every marketer’s dream?

Knowing a customer’s needs, desires and expectations in advance enables marketers to plot out resources and personalize high-quality communications. And artificial intelligence is going to make it easy.

Personalization in marketing is obviously nothing new. Many eCommerce stores already use collaborative filtering to provide customers with relevant recommendations. However with the real-time personalization provided by AI, marketers will gain the ability to deliver different experiences to individual customers visiting their site or reading their emails, based on their previous behavior or demographic data.

One such project is already being tested at USAA, incorporating AI technology built by Saffron, now a division of Intel.

This AI technology analyzes thousands of factors and matches them with individual customers. The broad customer behavioral patterns are aligned with individual members, and as per reports, the technology has thus far helped USAA improve their guess rate from 50% to 88% accuracy. The guesswork mainly involves knowing how future contacts will get in touch, and for what products.

Predictive customer service is also going to be a huge side effect of artificial intelligence for marketers across the globe – a very positive one.

Think about the amount of time you spend analyzing the demographics of each customer and making templates sound personal. If you can know when, why and how each of your customers plans to communicate with you, you’ll have the golden opportunity to plan out your nurturing process on a much more advanced level.

2. It takes search engine algorithms to a new level

When Google admitted to using RankBrain in 2015, an AI system, to break down search queries, it was big news. RankBrain uses high-end natural language processing to break down large search queries. It also helps improve user context and voice search.

A simple way to explain it is as follows: a customer who has visited a particular food destination posts a review about his or her experience. Now, a customer typically writes a review in language that is ‘real’ and to some extent rhetorical, too. Let’s say they write, ‘This place has the best breakfast mushrooms that don’t cost a fortune’. With RankBrain, this automatically becomes a solution for someone who is searching for a place…