Is AI in Marketing Merely Over-promoted?


Does it seem like you hear about artificial intelligence (AI) everywhere you turn these days? That’s no surprise when you consider that hype and popularity go hand in hand. Business owners claim that AI will change the way that every employee works while consumers state it will change their lives. At the same time, many people feel worried that the automation available with AI will become too powerful too fast and take away many jobs.

Are these legitimate claims and concerns or merely hype? That can be a difficult question to answer but looking at AI as it relates to marketing is a good place to start. Answering the three questions below can help you decide if AI is just a fad or something that’s here to stay.

What Are Some Real-Life Cases of AI in Marketing?
Hearing about the potential of AI can be exciting but reading about real examples of success is far more inspiring. Below are some examples of what implementing AI has done for some actual companies:

·         Using the Salesforce Commerce Cloud and AI, the Stonewall Kitchen Company revamped its website completely. Because of these tools, the website understands and acts upon the unique behavior of each customer. As an example, customers who abandon their shopping cart with items still in it will receive emails encouraging them to complete the sale or directing them to more appropriate products.

·         A company called StoryStream uses AI to create user-generated content that’s completely at scale. Another food business, Co-op, used AI to power a marketing campaign entitled #nowcookit.
Other companies have enabled AI to automatically write subject lines for emails, improve online content, and improve search performance and content marketing.

Is It Possible for Marketers to Implement AI-Powered Technology?
AI has only been around for a few years and is truly still in the infancy stage. Naturally, a lot of hype still surrounds it. For it to live up to the hype, marketers must implement the technology it offers across various industries and at scale. That presents a few major challenges.

The first challenge to consider is that the developers of AI created it to solve cases involving narrow use like the ones highlighted above. To fully integrate AI requires businesses to potentially add more than a dozen new marketing tools. This can make AI integration too complex for companies that already struggle to manage the existing marketing stack.

Secondly, start-up business owners currently build some of the most innovative marketing technologies that utilize AI. While these companies often have significant start-up funding, many also have few case studies to demonstrate success and are therefore largely unproven. Additionally, these start-up businesses sometimes struggle to explain how using AI makes their services and products more effective and efficient.

Lastly, the larger marketing platforms often end up buying the small start-ups and further limiting the availability of genuine AI talent. This means that brands left behind must try to replace their most valuable assets and tools.

Despite these challenges, marketing powered by AI technology still has the ability to completely transform the industry. Brands must take a highly strategic approach to research, selection, and integration of the most effective solutions.

How Can AI Affect Return on Investment?
After fully implementing AI and redesigning its website, the Stonewall Kitchen Company reported an increase in revenue of 10 percent. Co-op posted even more impressive results, including an 11 percent increase in conversion, an eight-fold content curation improvement, and a five-fold increase in the time spent implementing StoryStream from its website. Other companies report cutting their lead times in half and seeing an improvement in email open rates of 35 percent.

It’s clear to see that many brands have received value from implementing AI. One reason for this is that marketers have access to increasing amounts of data while consumers continue to demand greater personalization across multiple channels. That makes AI one of the only effective ways to scale marketing driven by data in today’s complex marketplace.

Organizations that can’t identify specific uses for AI and then follow that up by attracting the best talent can’t expect positive results. A new era demands a proactive and innovative leader who isn’t afraid to seek new solutions via AI to continuously learn. This approach is the only way to meet ROI goals as related to AI.

Wrapping It All Up
There’s no doubt that AI is complicated. However, it has already proven it can offer excellent marketing applications if leaders are willing to meet specific challenges. The best way to ensure that you remain ahead in this movement is to stay updated on AI news and continue to look for AI case studies that you can apply to your own business.

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