It's amazing how quickly new technologies get adopted. It was only two years ago that I was Introduced to HubSpot's GrowthBot, a chat bot - that you can interact with, often in a conversational way using text interfaces like SMS, Facebook Messenger, Slack, and others. Now it seems Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are popping up everywhere ... with lots of new and exciting developments using AI applications for marketing.
Earlier this year Google made a series of announcements about using AI and ML to improve the user AdWords experience - this made sense, as the tech giant generates around 90% of its revenue from advertising, most of which is pay per click. As digital marketing professionals, we were impressed with the introduction of the technology to make our jobs easier, and we know it will get better, but to date, we're not thrilled with the results - early days for AI ... right?!
As data becomes more prevalent, then comes the opportunities to access it, analyze it and learn from it; and with AI, marketers now have an opportunity to spot patterns and find trends in data and make their jobs a whole lot easier.
One thing is for sure. AI in marketing is very much here to stay. From start-ups to major corporations, everyone is jumping on the AI bandwagon to figure out how it can help lift profits and wedge the competitive gap - and you don’t have to be an analytical tech genius to get going with it.
What is Marketing AI?
AI is a new kind of technology that adapts and teaches itself, automatically - it learns as it goes along - the more interactions it has, the more data it collects, and the more accurate its learning and recommendations become.
This technology is really useful for marketers because instead of manually thinking of ways to “optimize for conversion” for example, you can set it and forget it, trusting that it has calculations going on in the background to do all the hard work for you.
By analyzing data in ‘real-time’, marketers can now be highly responsive to what is working and what isn’t in an instant. This makes marketers more responsive and also allows for better budget management because results can be measured much sooner.
AI allows you to make decisions based on those data points. It’s how Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify are able to make such on-point recommendations for what you should buy, watch, or listen to next.
What is Machine Learning?
Machine learning (ML) on the other hand, is an application of AI and takes it a step further, allowing computers to continuously perfect those decisions, honing in on what works and letting go of what doesn’t.
What is Big Data?
This refers to large, complex datasets that can be difficult to organize and analyze. Modern technology and the internet of things (IoT) means we’re able to collect more data than ever before, but we can't expect to analyze the data manually - we need AI and ML to do it for us.
More Accurate Targeting
Machine learning algorithms are doing the hard work for marketers when it comes to digital ad placement - programmatic advertising, for example, allows marketers to target prospects using demographics, geography, interests, time of day, weather, and device. So for example, you can target people in a certain demographic, who use mobile devices on their lunch break, when it’s sunny outside, in northeastern US states.
More Personalized Experiences
We’re not quite at the stage yet where AI can build a whole website from scratch (it's coming soon!) but intelligent algorithms can help personalize a user’s experience.
Data points such as location, device, and demographics can help analyze a buyer's journey and can then offer the most appropriate and suitable content or offers based on that data. It can also make push notifications more customized to a user based on their behavior.
HubSpot Is Ready For AI
After HubSpot purchased Kemvi - a fantastic AI start-up that was already pushing the envelope years before anyone else, we knew AI for Marketing was going Inbound Marketing mainstream ... and HubSpot would be a leading player.
Now we have HubSpot adding AI features and functionality into its platform. We're seeing predictive lead scoring, the new content strategy functionality, more personalization options, conversations and chat - all being led by AI, with much more exciting stuff to come.
If you're interested in an AI chat - drop me a line.
THE BRIT AGENCY is a B2B Digital Marketing Agency providing Inbound Marketing, Inbound Website Design, and Inbound Sales services to companies around the world. We're focused on growing website traffic, qualified leads and sales, using the Inbound lead generation and marketing automation process.
THE BRIT AGENCY is a Certified Platinum Tier Hubspot Partner, a HubSpot CMS and GDD certified Inbound Website Design Agency, a HubSpot Certified Trainer, a Shopify eCommerce Partner, and a certified "Google Badged Agency Partner". We have offices in Toronto and Barrie, Canada ... and Salisbury, UK.