Financial Implications of Using Artificial Inteligence in Marketing

When starting a business depends on cash, it can feel like a luxury even though it isn't. Fortunately for founders, artificial intelligence (AI)-influenced technologies can empower small business teams. In fact, according to a Company survey of nearly 600 companies across 11 industries, almost 40% of respondents said they had already used or were considering using the product. Most global business leaders are expected to rapidly adopt AI-powered marketing tools in the next two years; McKinsey's research shows that 90% expect to use generative AI frequently.

One of the reasons for its rapid adoption is that business is characterized by a combination of creativity and knowledge-oriented work; This combination makes the field a prime target for creating AI interventions. As a digital marketing professional working with startups, established businesses, and executives looking to grow and increase sales on a limited budget, I've found it smart to prioritize the services I provide. It allows beginners to quickly and cost-effectively perform simple business activities such as web analytics, search engine optimization, and email marketing, especially when lack of budget makes many tasks difficult or impossible.

As companies integrate smart technology into their business, the biggest challenge is choosing solutions that suit their unique needs. Today's AI is evolving at a breakneck pace and in many ways that even the most tech-savvy business owners struggle to achieve. Take, for example, ChatGPT, an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI that can perform data analysis, content creation, and other business-related tasks. Although it has been publicly available for less than a year, it already has more than 1.7 billion users. This is just one of many new intelligence tools and platforms that the world's largest technology companies are launching and are constantly updating to stay ahead of the curve.

First thing about new tools and platforms The point of intelligence-powered marketing platforms is that they don't change what you need to be successful in your business. Instead, they change the way you perform these tasks. Artificial intelligence can save you time and money by performing many challenging daily tasks, such as analyzing real-time data and deriving personalized marketing content. However, it should not be forgotten that people's perspective and creativity are important. AI-powered tools are stripped of emotions, thoughts, and behaviors that enable people to better complete creative tasks, such as adding a special touch and aligning with target information needs, key takeaways, and messaging.

In this article, I will show you how artificial intelligence can help companies achieve five important business goals.

Understand customer preferences

A great marketing strategy involves customizing the message based on your customers' interests, habits, and preferences. This personal attention makes customers feel understood and valued, increasing their connection to the brand. This can lead to increased engagement, stronger loyalty, increased conversions and ultimately more sales.

Implementing these strategies includes data analysis, classification, content creation and implementation. It can be time-consuming, labor-intensive and costly; often requires additional personnel, specialized software, or third-party services; Resources may not always be in the hands of small businesses and initiatives.

One of my clients is a small retailer and wants to understand his customers' preferences. Before implementing AI-driven solutions, the boutique owner collected purchase history and customer feedback data and conducted research, including months of big data. Once they have sufficient knowledge about their customers' preferences, the next step is to hire consultants who will influence them through business insights.

But for a fraction of the cost ($10,000 to $25,000 per year, depending on the scope of work), AI tools like ChatGPT and the AdAdobe Experience Platform can analyze the interactions customers have while shopping. go online or visit the website. There are many products. The data collected includes customers' browsing history, purchase history, and products they clicked on. This tool can track social media related to your products based on customer privacy. AI then uses algorithms to identify patterns, trends, relationships, and tendencies in the data.

Smart tools can segment customers based on their behavior and preferences by grouping people who tend to buy similar products or exhibit similar behavior. It is easier for companies to offer individual products. These platforms can also track the customer's journey through the sales pipeline, identify where customers are left off, and uncover issues like confusing financial processes or irrelevant content.

Some AI-powered applications can use existing data to make decisions and predict future customer behavior and purchases; This allows companies to: The company provides recommendations to customers through email campaigns with pop-up recommendations and recommendations based on past purchases. and even invitations to chat with an assistant virtual interface that can recommend products based on searches and search history. Companies can use these tools because they aim to provide customers with a consistent experience.

Improve customers' position

To attract, acquire and retain customers, companies need to fully understand customer behavior. For smaller companies without strong marketing capabilities, this may require purchasing third-party data and insights and then hiring external analysts to help develop the content. Personal need to retain customers. In my experience, the cost of these services can range from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on space and scale.

One tool that can reduce these costs is Tableau AI, an analytics program that costs less than $100 per user per month. Tableau can analyze customer behavior and compare it to successful conversion methods in relevant industries to determine where customers are likely to convert; These methods save small groups of volunteers significant time and money.

Companies can use this information to adjust marketing strategies, make changes to the sales process and customers, allowing them to focus their efforts on the customers who will buy. This is just one smart way to save money by reducing the need for third-party services or special software.

The platforms I recommend to companies that want to improve customer targeting are:

1. Adobe Experience Platform provides instant customer segmentation and targeting. At $50,000 or more per year, this can be an expensive option, but depending on your company's needs, it can be a worthwhile investment.
2. Salesforce Einstein is an analytics tool that integrates with Salesforce's customer relationship management platform and helps companies automate scoring and customer segmentation. Einstein pricing varies depending on your company's specific Salesforce plans.
3. Google Analytics 4 is a free tool that provides comprehensive information about user behavior and interaction with advertising platforms. Google plans to integrate intelligence to help companies identify the ads that connect most with customers, making it useful for small businesses looking to find and improve their ads. Google also has an enterprise-level version called Google Analytics 360, which costs around $150,000 per year.

Automated customer support

AI-powered chatbots and email bots; improves customer support by improving scalability, customization, and optimization. With enough guidance, tools like ChatGPT, Ada, and Google Dialogflow become a mystery to people while chatting.

Another advantage of artificial intelligence in customer support is that these tools are always ready when customers need them. I need help. I recently asked "How do I change my travel dates?"

Zendesk AI is best for small businesses. Small businesses with tough customer questions. 24/7 availability and learning allow companies to improve customer experience and manage complexity, often at lower cost than traditional environments.

To measure the effectiveness of the tool, businesses can ask customers for feedback after an AI chat or call. This can be done by conducting a simple survey of customers who are satisfied with the answers they receive. AI chat machines say, “Thanks, that was helpful!” It can perform emotional analysis on answers such as. and “This won't work” to measure the user's satisfaction level.

For frequently asked or difficult questions outside of AI training, AI systems may suggest transferring the user to a human agent, email service, or service call. Alternatively, the chatbot can provide a general answer or send a link to the relevant FAQ section.

In addition to providing easy customer support, Dialogflow can create interactive dialogues to help with complex questions, offer personalized recommendations, and even help increase sales. For example, Dialogflow can be configured (with appropriate integration) to search for products and respond to product questions.

While these tools and other AI provide services to customers and businesses, they do not replace the need for human involvement, especially in training and communicating with customers. Instead, AI allows employees to shift their focus from leadership to the next level of qualification and empowerment.

Build relationships with vision

Creating and maintaining social relationships takes a lot of time and effort because it requires new flows, company-specific strategies, tracking, and creative visuals like images. Even professional social media editors are busy managing their company's image on various social platforms. Artificial intelligence can also provide powerful assistance here. Tools like Canva's free AI image maker, Midjourney, and DALL-E 2 can create images for social media and make it easy to create beautiful visuals for your website and business across different platforms.

However, I would like to point out that image building is one of the most controversial marketing tools powered by artificial intelligence. Critics of AI-generated images argue that because AI learns from existing images created by human artists, it effectively copies artists' work. Supporters of the latest advances in rendering consider that each image created by AI is unique and that the results depend on many aspects of the input provided by humans. Debates continue about what to do in the absence of regulation (not what is ethical).

Despite this uncertainty and the legal challenges it faces, the market for AI-generated images is growing rapidly. AI-powered content recognition tools – Midjourney, DALL-E 2 (integrated with Bing Chat's Copilot), Adobe Firefly (including newer versions of Photoshop), and Amazon Rekognition create images based on text-to-Speech cues and resemble images. For companies looking to move away from stock images and other generic visuals, this tool can create unique visuals that fit the company's brand. AI's continuous learning capabilities mean these tools can optimize and improve the quality of content seen in real time, managing its type and quality without the need for a monitor. keep checking in people.

For clients looking to combat legal and criminal issues, I recommend using Adobe Firefly Image Generator, which works by drawing from an image. Links between Adobe's own products and images are licensed free of charge to prevent copyright infringement. Open AI's DALL-E 3 also has some protections, such as denying requests for images created by live actors.

Create an effective email marketing plan

Traditionally, effective email marketing has required work at all levels, including collaboration between writers, designers, marketing managers, and perhaps even people working in IT. This is time-consuming and expensive, especially for companies that lack in-house expertise because they must outsource these activities.

Artificial Intelligence can improve many aspects of email marketing, including segmenting visitors by behavior and interaction, creating personalized content, creating templates Create a focal point, and even try different email marketing. See what works best. In general, I recommend that small businesses with limited budgets, especially those operating in e-commerce, use the free version of ChatGPT to write newsletters.

AI tools need human partners

AI can create content marketing based on trends, past content, trends, and audiences, but this information must be curated by humans. Fortunately, training and using AI marketing tools does not require deep technical knowledge. Many technologies provide user-friendly interfaces and customer support to automatically guide users through the process. (However, partnering with team members or outside experts can give your company a solid foundation of expertise and facilitate greater adoption.)

Provide a solid foundation with appropriate training and professional skills and support. complex application. ). Try these tools and find the one that best suits your company's business goals. You may find, as I did, that AI can alleviate many of the daily work stresses, allowing people to focus their vision and creativity on what matters most.