According to a survey by Salesforce, 51% of marketers are already using AI. About 27% of marketers are contemplating incorporating AI-enabled technology into their marketing efforts come 2019. This rate of adoption surpasses even the Internet of Things (IoT) and marketing automatization.Both consumers and marketers have been affected by artificial intelligence, both personally and professionally. Voice-operated companions such as Siri and Alexa have changed the way people do things. Machine-learning based advanced analytics tools are becoming more accessible by the minute. Just a few years ago, marketers were reluctant to use AI in their digital marketing strategies. However, confidence in AI has gone up, and marketers are using constantly-evolving intelligent tools to aid marketing efforts. Here are a few things that marketers need to keep in mind about AI in 2019.

Data Quality

Advanced AI systems that are based around deep learning and neural networks take up a lot of data. Quantity is important, but data quality is paramount when it comes to artificial Intelligence in digital marketing. AI algorithms crunch data in sophisticated ways, to give marketers the results they seek. So if this data is noisy or poorly measured, AI systems will find it harder to identify meaningful patterns. This makes it difficult for the systems to offer reliable, decision-worthy predictions.

Fluent Knowledge of AI, Machine Learning and Advanced Analytics

All the marketers in your organization must be fluent in advanced analytics and machine learning. This does not mean they must reach any level of technical proficiency. It only means that they should have a reasonable understanding of the application of artificial intelligence in marketing. You might need to train your marketers but it’ll be worth it, as artificial intelligence marketing solutions become more and more common. Plus, you won’t have to rely so much on technical experts to guide your marketers at each step.

The Need to Use Automation with Care

Automation works best when the automation software can do things that humans cannot. For example, consider Ad purchase – a human cannot optimize an Ad buy within milliseconds but an AI system can. It is best to use automation to free up human time so that they can focus on strategic thinking and marketing tasks. So marketers need to focus on using AI in digital advertising not just to lower costs but to optimize their resources.

Consumer Trust

It’s the consumer who will determine whether AI marketing tools are successful or not. However, consumers, for the most part, do not understand AI and how AI can make their shopping experience better. Most consumers think in terms of driver-less cars, and other technological advancements when it comes to AI. Consumers tend to distrust ‘smart’ AI-based systems. This factor can undermine your efforts when it comes to building an advanced analytics system. Without consumer trust, you won’t have your quality data. Begin your marketing efforts with respect to AI by educating your consumers. Keep your data-driven practices accessible, open, transparent, honest and full of value-add. This will help you generate consumer trust and you can take your AI systems further.

AI-created Content

Yes, AI can be used to create content. This is a something that marketers can look into for 2019. We’re not talking highly educative blog posts or newspaper columns. AI can help lower costs and save time and resources by writing reports and news, using information and data made available to it. Check out intelligent tools such as Quill, Wordsmith and Articoolo; Forbes and the Associated Press are already using them to create news. These tools use templates and fill-in-the-blanks where keywords or data can be entered. The overall content gives the impression that a human wrote it.

Curating Content

AI can generate and curate content; this facility will enable marketers to show more relevant content to visitors. Marketers are using this technology to make personalized content recommendations to users. For example, retail sites point out that ‘people who buy Item 1 also buy Item 2’, as can be noted on all major retail sites. Marketers can use this feature to showcase blog content that’s relevant to user’s specific needs.

Email Marketing

The impact of artificial intelligence in digital marketing can be noted in the way marketers are using AI to personalize email campaigns. By doing this, marketers can better content with their visitors and turn them into successful leads. Artificial Intelligence can analyse millions of data pertaining to user needs and preferences. These systems can determine the perfect time to contact the user, and the content that’ll catch their attention the most. They can even determine which email titles will earn the more clicks. Check out AI-enabled email marketing tools such as Persado, Boomtrain and Phrasee. Phrasee generates relevant email subject lines much faster than humans can; in fact, it surpasses the human rate by over 95%. Persado’s cognitive content generation surpasses human efforts 100% of the time. So you won’t fail with these tools.

Digital Advertising

Digital advertising has successfully adopted artificial intelligence. AI-based systems analyse user’s interests, demographics and behaviour to find out the best brand audience. This has been well proven by Facebook and Google Ad platforms which find the most relevant audience using artificial intelligence marketing solutions.

Searches

Users have changed the way they search for information online. They like using voice commands and specific keywords.  Marketers are creating and optimizing web content using the best AI marketing tools such as SEO Voice Search and RankBrain. Several search innovations are already available, such as Siri, Cortana, Echo, and Google Home which allow voice searches.

Conclusion

Just in case marketers are getting nervous with all these advanced AI systems, let’s be clear on one thing. Artificial intelligence in marketing isn’t here to take away jobs from marketers and advertisers. The role of artificial intelligence in marketing is to unleash and optimize the creative and strategic potential of marketers and advertisers. So in the coming year, it’s a good idea for marketing professionals to adapt themselves to AI-based systems in marketing.