The 2017 Marketing Word of the Year, according to the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), was artificial intelligence, or AI. However, 34 percent of marketers say AI is the trend they feel the least prepared to address in 2018.
The key to understanding AI is that it takes large amounts of unstructured data and uses machine learning over time to give the data structure.
AI already powers many of our daily tasks, including chatboxes on websites and recommended playlists on Pandora or Netflix. In marketing, artificial intelligence is currently powering pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, recommendation engines, personalized website experiences, chatbots and programmatic media buying.
As AI continues to evolve from a nebulous marketing term to real-world implementation, here are some tips to embrace all that AI has to offer in your 2018 B2B marketing efforts.
1. Personalize Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM).
Using AI, emails can be curated to address the individual subscriber level. This enables a true one-to-one channel to communicate your brand based on your customers’ individual preferences.
2. Mine customer insights.
AI analyzes visitor website data to understand customer interactions. The most practical application of this is visitor lead scoring. Consider using an AI partner to segment your website visitors into specific customer groups based on the behaviors or interests they express with their digital actions.
3. Make 2018 the year of “dynamic creative”.
Imagine a world where you can customize your retargeting display ads to the individual visitor level. AI can enable customized images, content and direct response messages based on previous customer interactions.
4. Amplify social with on-demand content.
AI can be implemented to analyze customer behavior on social platforms, then serve specific content that is tailored to those behaviors and experiences.
5. Accelerate the path to purchase.
Through AI-enabled image match, a buyer could snap a picture of your product and be sent directly to your ecommerce site for purchase.
These are only a few examples where AI will push the boundaries forward in B2B marketing. Still too much science fiction for you? Let us know how we can help!